USC And Graduate Students Reach Deal, Avert Campus-Wide Strike

The University of Southern California and a union of graduate student workers announced on Monday they’ve reached a tentative labor agreement.

If approved, a three-year contract would raise pay 4.5% the first year of the contract and 3% in each of the next two years.

“We are delighted that we've reached a contract with the graduate students and that we can move forward and focus on the research and education that we all come to USC for,” said Andrew Stott, USC’s vice provost for academic programs and dean of the graduate school.

USC had been in negotiations with the newly created Graduate Student Worker Organizing Committee-UAW since the spring and in October members overwhelmingly voted to give union leaders strike authorization.

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“I’m really excited about this contract,” said Jackie Johnson, a fifth-year doctoral student in cinema and media studies and member of the union’s bargaining team.

"For a long time graduate student workers have felt like USC holds all of the power and gets to set all of the terms about what the work here looks like ... [now] we have a much bigger stake in our working and our learning environments," she said.

The specifics

Student leaders said the creation of the union and contract negotiations were driven by the rising cost of living in Southern California and the inability of grad students to keep up with those costs with the stipends paid by the university for part-time to full-time hours spent each week on academic work.

The deal would raise those stipends to a minimum of $40,000 in the first year.

Unionized graduate students at USC had approved a strike in October 2023.

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Courtesy Graduate Student Worker Organizing Committee-UAW

)

“We made progress on so many protections and rights for graduate student workers,” said Stepp Mayes, a fifth-year doctoral student in environmental engineering.

He’s talking about the following provisions, posted by USC and the union:

Non-discrimination: Independent arbitration in the case of work-related disputes, agreement to meet within 90 days of a complaint filed to discuss both interim measures and grievance resolution and establishing peer-led anti-discrimination training.

Paid leave: One semester of guaranteed parental leave, one semester of health leave, five annual sick days and five days of bereavement leave.

Child care/Short term hardship: A $400,000 annual child care fund as well as a $250,000 annual Short Term Hardship Fund to help defray unexpected financial burdens, such as health care costs for dependents.

Legal fund: A legal fund to provide financial support to international graduate students who lose their visa status. USC enrolled about 13,000 students from abroad in 2022; statistics from 2019 show that more than half of those students are enrolled in graduate studies.

Ending on a high note

USC thanked the student workers in a statement.

 “We remain grateful to our students and faculty for their dedication to the teaching and learning mission of the university and share our appreciation to the union’s student-led bargaining committee for their commitment to negotiating in good faith,” the university posted on its Monday update.

The roughly 3,000 graduate student union members are set to vote on the deal Sunday through Monday.