Group of Nevada state lawmakers supports graduate assistants' union

Katie Futterman, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Jan 16, 2025

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Democratic state legislators signed a letter Thursday urging the Nevada System of Higher Education to recognize graduate assistants’ ongoing efforts to be recognized as a union.

The letter, signed by nine senators and 28 members of the Assembly, urges NHSE Interim Chancellor Patty Charlton, University of Nevada, Reno President Brian Sandoval and University of Nevada, Las Vegas President Keith Whitfield to “immediately recognize” the workers’ union.

“We stand ready to work with both parties to continue advancing the rights of Graduate Assistants and the values and missions of NHSE,” the legislators wrote.

In November, UNLV, UNR and Desert Research Institute graduate assistants received a supermajority vote to unionize under the United Auto Workers union, now known as NGSW-UAW.

NHSE did not respond to the graduate assistants’ requests to meet until Tuesday, when Charlton wrote in an email that neither the chancellor nor NHSE presidents have authority to formally recognize or negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the union.

“Nevertheless, the presidents of our respective institutions and I would like the opportunity to better understand the challenges Graduate Assistants may be facing and, in the spirit of mutual respect and cooperation, explore potential solutions to those challenges outside of a collective bargaining setting,” Charlton wrote.

In a statement to The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the NHSE, also speaking on behalf of individual university presidents, echoed this sentiment.

In a news conference on Thursday, graduate assistants jeered the chancellor’s response, and Evelyn Ariam said it was “not acceptable.”

Whitfield has met with the organizers but has not committed to supporting the process of union recognition, according to Ariam, who said Sandoval has ignored requests from graduate assistants to meet.

Ariam was joined on Thursday by fellow graduate assistants, state Sen. Fabian Donate, a Democrat, and Nevada State AFL-CIO officials, who stood outside NHSE on Thursday afternoon to call for it to recognize the union.

“Life is always better in a union,” Susie Martinez, executive secretary treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO. She called the graduate assistants the “unseen backbone” of the university and said the graduate assistants would not give up until they were recognized.

In their letter, the legislators called the graduate workers “essential drivers of the University’s academic mission.” In 2023, their work helped generate $565 million in state support for instruction and $294 million in federal research grants and contracts, the letter said.

“The best way to fix education is to give the workers, our educators, our researchers, the rights that they deserve, pay them what they deserve, so that we can have our students actually succeed,” Donate said.

The letter also highlighted what it called “persistent inequalities” that graduate assistants experience in the workplace, including workplace harassment, lack of job security and low pay, which it said detracts from the graduate assistants’ ability to perform their work.

“GA’s have spent years giving input and trying to get the university to listen and improve these issues, only to see little to no change to the crucial issues that we face,” Ariam said.

In a survey, one in four graduate students said they had witnessed or been subjected to harassment based on experience or status and one in four had witnessed or experienced retaliation. Nearly 80% of the graduate assistants said that their pay was not enough to cover living expenses.

Reina Benefiel, a graduate assistant in the School of Life Sciences at UNLV, said that she is regularly expected to work 12 to 14 hours in the lab.

“Some of my colleagues either have had to take time off, abandon entirely something they dreamed of potentially their whole life, or just continue to struggle every day to meet their basic needs,” Benefiel said.

Another graduate assistant, Patricia Orellana, discussed the difficulty she had when she had to return to work six weeks after having a cesarean birth, meaning she had to return to work while still in pain. Orellana said that her supervisor created a “difficult work environment,” and she had to be her own advocate in order to get breaks for breast pumping. In one instance, a student came into the office with a gun after verbally assaulting graduate students, yet Orellana said graduate students were unable to receive more protection.

“They’re not asking for handouts, they’re asking for respect and recognition of their invaluable contributions,” Donate said.