Unionization Nears Record Levels as Students, Interns Organize

Unionization so far this year has hit near-historic levels, with more than 58,000 workers—driven largely by graduate students and medical interns—voting to organize within the last six months.

In the first half of 2023, organized labor has held onto its momentum from 2022, unionizing a total of 58,483 workers, 10,000 more than last year’s first-half tally of 43,502, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of National Labor Relations Board election data. The figure represents the second-highest first-half organizing total since 2000.

The size of new bargaining units also has grown, with elections involving over 500 members rising 58% compared to last year. Unions won 95% of elections among large units in 2023 compared to 84% in 2022.

The jump in the number of large units coincides with an influx of organizing among graduate students and medical residents. There have been union elections involving 17 units of either graduate students or medical residents so far this year.

This eclipses last year’s total of 16, making 2023 the most active year for unions representing these groups since the 1990s.

Grad students at Duke University voted this week 1000-131 to unionize after a brief battle from the school’s administration, which said it would seek to overturn board precedent finding that graduate students are employees under the National Labor Relations Act. Eight colleges now have seen graduate students vote to unionize in 2023, including Duke, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, and Dartmouth College.

On the medical front, over 2,300 interns and fellows at Mass General Brigham hospitals in Massachusetts became the country’s largest group of organized medical residents in early June. Fellows also voted to unionize at other prominent medical centers, including those at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Vermont.

Renee Fonseca, a fourth-year graduate student in the human genetics program at University of Chicago, said the Covid-19 pandemic helped push along organization efforts at the university. Around 3,200 students at UChicago voted to be represented by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in March.

“During the pandemic, we weren’t making enough money to pay the bills and we were being expected to do more and more work,” Fonseca said. “I know people who are in their labs every single day, all day, and it’s not sustainable or healthy.”

Union-Friendly Board

Graduate students have been unionizing since 2016, when the NLRB’s Columbia University decision determined they are employees under federal labor law.

But their organizing drive faltered during the Trump administration, when some prominent unions withdrew their representation petitions for fear that the majority-Republican board would reverse the precedent if presented with a case challenging election results.

That concern dissipated in March 2021 when the now-Democratic NLRB withdrew a proposed rule that would have excluded student teaching and research assistants from the definition of employees under federal labor law.

“Having that policy stay consistent from administration to administration, despite the Trump board’s efforts, really allowed these unions to build up some momentum and traction,” said Sharon Block, a former NLRB member who leads Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy.

Thomas Lenz, a partner at Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, said students are taking advantage of the NLRB’s current union-friendly stance, but organizing efforts could slow again if the board flips back to a Republican majority.

“If you’re on the labor side, the time is now but if you’re on the employer side, you need to stay tuned and be mindful that the law can always change,” he said.

Similar workplace issues are propelling both graduate students and medical residents to seek union representation: low wages, poor benefits, and long hours, which they say became more pronounced during the pandemic.

Sunyata Altenor, communications director for the Service Employees International Union’s Committee of Interns and Residents, said inquiries from medical residents spiked after 2020.

The union has won representation elections at 13 different medical centers across the nation in the last year, growing CIR’s member base by more than 70%, she said.

“It became very clear to them that our system was not equipped to handle a crisis like Covid,” Altenor said. “It left a lot of workers feeling unsafe in their workplace, which I think is driving the movement we’ve seen in the past two years.”

Unionization of medical residents and graduate students at prestigious universities and medical centers also is rooted in economic and societal shifts, she said.

“Perhaps 25 or 30 years ago, the prestige of these establishments could go a lot further,” Altenor said. “But workers can’t buy food or pay rent with prestige anymore so they’re demanding that these wealthy institutions treat them better.”

Ripple Effects

The organizing wave now stands to carry over into multiple sectors as student employees and interns or residents become full-time workers.

Organizing efforts earlier in a student’s working life could lead that worker to seek out unions later in their careers, Block said.

Physicians, for instance, are already beginning to turn to unions to address what they say is a loss of autonomy and deterioration of working conditions amid post-pandemic health-care mergers and acquisitions.

“Thousands of medical residents not only know what it’s like to be in a union, but have experience organizing that union from the ground up,” said Rebecca Kolins Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University. “That will very likely lead to more physician organizing because the residents will understand what it means as they continue their careers.”

Employers also may be inclined to offer higher pay and benefits if they perceive a workforce shortage and are trying to attract employees who have come from these unionized graduate student programs, Lenz said.

“They’ll have to be more attuned to what these new workers are expecting,” he said. “But if the employers have more power in the market, they might be less likely to do what the candidates want and therefore might be less open to unionizing.”

Fonseca said graduate student unionization should improve higher education and the workplaces of the future.

“Having better stipends, benefits, and grievance procedures are really important for making these spaces accessible and to allow people from underrepresented communities to flourish,” she said. “Creating these sorts of spaces in our education systems can only have positive impacts on the wider industries we will eventually go into.”