LAS CRUCES ‒ New Mexico State University’s Board of Regents, along with Chancellor Dan Arvizu, sat silently Thursday morning as more than a dozen members and supporters of the union representing graduate student workers aired frustration over negotiations with the university.
Grad students took to public comments during the regents’ public meeting to press the university for tuition coverage, higher pay and insurance options as part of their first contract. The graduate students, many of whom teach part- or full-time while also pursuing their own research and degrees, won recognition of their bargaining unit from the state Public Employee Labor Relations Board this spring.
Negotiations bogged down over the summer, however, and NMSU police were summoned on one occasion after students rejected a contract proposal, after a student tore her copy into several pieces and flung them into a meeting room at Hadley Hall on the main campus.
Approximately 40 supporters of the union, some of whom held signs calling for tuition coverage, crowded the regents’ chambers in the university’s Educational Services Center. Although a few folding chairs were added to accommodate more observers, several congregated outside the room.
Many of the students spoke of heavy workloads. Gauge Burnett, a second-year master’s student in mathematics and a teaching assistant, reported teaching 80 students and grading 130 assignments each week. “I’m getting paid less than $6,000 after tuition to take on that responsibility,” Burnett said.
Burnett and others added that graduate workers who are transgender or belong to other protected classes need common protections from workplace harassment and retaliation.
Several students disclosed health conditions requiring medication or treatment they could not afford, and one said they lived on two carefully planned meals per day, as they gave back most of what they earned for teaching undergraduates in tuition. They made the case that poor pay and unsustainable living conditions meant the university would lose talent even as it seeks to raise its profile as a research institution.
More than one who spoke shamed the university for engaging attorneys allegedly to fight the union rather than bargain in good faith. Laura Laemmle, an alumna and former member of the student Senate, told regents she was “embarrassed” by the treatment of the graduate workers at her alma mater.
“Land grant institutions are supposed to enrich the communities that they serve,” she told the regents. “They’re not supposed to depend on a workforce that lives under the federal poverty line.”
A representative of the union, speaking anonymously to describe the bargaining process, said the next bargaining session is set for the end of September. Back in July, students had proposed a contract that would have included tuition coverage and debt relief among other terms, only to receive a counter-offer that was “insulting.”
The NMSU graduate workers are organized under the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, as are their counterparts at the University of New Mexico, where graduate workers already have tuition covered, like other peer institutions.
“You’ve decided to turn this into a legal fight, and you’re using my money to pay an attorney to fight this the students,” history professor Iñigo García-Bryce told the regents. “You’re using the money of the taxpayers of the state of New Mexico, and this is a land grant institution whose mission it is to serve the citizens of the state of New Mexico. What I suggest is, if you do want to continue this fight, pay for it out of your own pockets.”
After public comments concluded, some of the students rose and demanded that the regents respond to them, but they did not do so. When the regents’ chairperson, Ammu Devasthali, asked for clarification on whether they could respond, NMSU general counsel Roy Collins cited labor law.
“The university is required to respect the bargaining process,” he said. “That means the university must defer any discussion of topics that may be the subject of bargaining to the designated bargaining teams.”
NMSU spokesperson Justin Bannister added that the regents were prohibited, under New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act, from taking action on items that are not listed on the meeting agenda, which is publicized in advance of a public session. Municipal bodies commonly refrain even from discussing matters presented at public comments that are not on the agenda.
According to data from the National Labor Relations Board, six unions of student workers at higher education institutions in the United States have been certified so far in 2022, already the highest number since 2017 (when nine were certified) and part of a marked increase in campus organizing in recent years despite stalling in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Algernon D’Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, [email protected] or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
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