Jack Shane is a 3rd-year Ph.D. Candidate in economics. He is also Co-Area Chief Steward of the Social Sciences for UE Local
1043 The Stanford Graduate Workers Union.
Liam Sherman is a 4th-year Ph.D. Candidate in physics. He is also the President of UE Local 1043 The Stanford Graduate Workers Union.
On Oct. 5, 2026, Residential Assistants United Rising (RAUR), a student-led campaign to unionize the residential student leaders on campus, declared that they had withdrawn their National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) petition for unionization. They took this difficult step as an act of solidarity, seeking to halt Stanford from stripping unionization rights from tens of thousands of graduate workers nationwide.
Why did they have to make this choice? In response to RAUR’s union election filing, Stanford University filed an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board arguing that RAUR did not have a right to unionize. Moreover, Stanford argued that even if the board declared that they did have the right to unionize under the prevailing Columbia decision (the 2016 NLRB decision which affirms the right of graduate workers at private institutions to unionize), Stanford believed that Columbia itself should be overturned, even going as far as calling this “an ideal opportunity to reconsider—and overrule—that decision.”
If Stanford’s arguments were accepted, it would be one of the largest losses of collective bargaining rights in United States history and would immediately strip protections from every graduate and undergraduate union at private universities across the country.
We greatly respect the leaders of RAUR for making the difficult decision to rescind their election petition in order to thwart Stanford’s attempt to restrict the rights of tens of thousands of workers nationwide. As members of the Stanford Graduate Workers Union, we know firsthand how essential these collective bargaining rights are.
Nonetheless, this has shown Stanford’s true colors. The University doesn’t think graduate workers deserve a seat at the table to bargain for a better workplace. They believe that we should be grateful for wages classified by Santa Clara County as “very low income” on a campus where housing costs exceed “affordable rent.”
We sacrifice on average six years during the peak of our earning potential to study, research and teach. We do this while many of us are intimately aware that we could be making more in the private sector, as the median wage for the Stanford undergraduates we teach four years after graduation is $136,959, well outpacing our graduate worker compensation of $58,460 here at Stanford.
We love the work we do and strive to advance the frontier of human knowledge through our research, but to do that we must be treated as humans first and foremost. We echo the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in our belief that “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for protection of their interests.” By continuing the legal battle even after RAUR withdrew their petition, Stanford demonstrates that they believe this right should be stripped from not just Stanford grad workers but from all private universities in the country.
The University claims we as graduate workers are not part of “the means of production.” In reality, Stanford would not function as the elite university it is without the graduate workers who teach and grade undergraduates, bring in millions in grant money and produce research at the cutting edge of their fields.
But don’t just take our word for it: take the word of the Stanford faculty. In 2000, the Faculty Senate wrote the guidelines for TA training that are in effect to this day. In these guidelines, they say explicitly: “Teaching assistants are an important, if not fundamental, part of instruction at Stanford, as they are at most research universities.” If our own faculty are intimately aware of the importance of graduate workers and have enshrined such importance in Stanford policy for 26 years, why is the University administration so out of step? We are not asking for the world; we are asking for fair compensation for the value we bring to Stanford day in and day out.
We do extensive labor supporting the school’s mission and have won our seat at the bargaining table thanks to the efforts of years of organizing and fighting for our rights. Yet the labor struggle has shown us time and time again that having a seat is not enough. Stanford would rather spend millions of dollars fighting against our right to unionize than face us. They recognize our power as workers, but for us to get the compensation and protections we deserve, we need all graduate workers to join the fight for a better life here at Stanford.
We all wish we could focus fully on the research that brought us to Stanford in the first place, but we will not sit idly by as the University attempts to run roughshod over graduate workers’ hard-earned rights.
We are fighting for these rights for all graduate workers, both at Stanford and across this country. As we prepare to enter bargaining next year, amplifying the voices of our fellow graduate workers is the most important way we can fight for a contract that supports everyone.
Towards this goal, our Union is holding our Bargaining Survey Launch Rally on November 17th where graduate workers will come together to discuss the demands we have for our next contract. Please check your inbox for time and location info! More generally, if you would like to support the graduate workers on campus, please reach out to contact ‘at’ sgwu.us to learn how you can get involved, whether or not you are a graduate student. We stand in solidarity with all workers, especially the brave workers of RAUR, and affirm that an injury to one is an injury to all. It is incumbent upon all of us to transform this university into one where our labor rights are protected and all workers are valued for the vital labor they perform. Stanford works because we do!