Bargaining 2025 Updates
United Graduate Workers of UNM initiated a renegotiation of our Collective Bargaining Agreement in March of 2025. The Bargaining Committee has been meeting with the university Admin’s team since April 2025 and will continue to meet with this team until all articles of our Collective Bargaining Agreement have been closed in a Tentative Agreement between UGW and university Admin. After all articles have been Tentatively Agreed upon, the Bargaining Committee will bring the tentative contract to general membership who will then make the final decision about whether or not we ratify this agreement with the university Admin.
In order to be as clear and transparent as possible about the bargaining process, members of UGW’s Bargaining Committee put together a Bargaining Tracker so that membership is able to see each iteration of the bargaining process between university Admin and UGW’s Bargaining Committee. Please find the Bargaining Tracker below as well as copies of Bargaining Updates sent out to membership after each bargaining session.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to any member of the UGW Bargaining Committee or your UGW steward!
Live Bargaining Tracker
Bargaining Updates to Membership
All updates communicated to membership are located below. They are in order of most recent update to oldest update.
Bargaining Update 7/2/2025
Dear UNM Grad Workers:
Today the UGW Bargaining Committee met with UNM administration for our latest Bargaining Session. Read on for the bargaining update!
Today’s big takeaways: finalizing our grievance procedure and the Administration reveals their economic package.
Grievance Procedure Update
After several back and forth proposals, we have just about come to an agreement on the grievance procedure. The grievance procedure is our biggest tool for protecting workers’ rights. If you encounter a workplace violation, the grievance procedure is the way to rectify the university’s wrongdoings. We also secured the right to file a grievance on behalf of the whole bargaining unit. This means if several workers across departments encounter the same issue, we can take the grievance to the university in an escalated manner. We clarified some of the language and timelines for this procedure making it easier for us to use. (NOTE: if you face a workplace issue, contact your union steward ASAP! We only have 15 business days to start this process.)
🤑 Show Me the Money:
Today, the Administration presented their economic package proposal. This proposal only included $1.1 million dollars to wage increases, or a 3% increase for all workers. This equates to less than $1 per hour increases for most graduate workers.
The money that the Administration has budgeted for these wages are allocated to the Administration specifically for grad workers’ pay. This money was only won when House Bill 2 passed the state legislature in 2024, due to the lobbying efforts of UGW alone!
Remember: Admin refused to lobby with us for these funds.
They are now also refusing to allocate any other money from the university’s $1 billion budget to any other parts of our contract that would cost money (parking, paid time off, and health benefits).
The Administration shared with us the estimated costs of our proposals, calling it the “richest proposal” they’ve ever seen. UGW has only existed for less than three years, and before then grad workers didn’t receive significant raises for years. If this is a rich proposal, it’s because our current economic situation has deteriorated immensely.
Plus, our proposal for dental and vision coverage would only cost the university $575K. This is less than what our University President makes each year.
We stressed that the top priorities of graduate workers (according to our bargaining survey) are: higher wages, increased health benefits, and tuition coverage.
International Workers Rights Update
The Administration declined to address language on an international worker’s rights article, citing that there is no budget for the economics in the article. We followed up by asking to include some of the language that is not economic in nature in this article. For example, this could be a written commitment by the Administration to provide immigration related resources and guidance to graduate workers. The Admin’s legal counsel responded by saying, “Didn’t the president send out emails in support of international students?” to which we responded that an email is nothing compared to committing to meaningful policy.
What You Can Do
Follow along with all proposals and counterproposals using the bargaining tracker.
Come out to a contract action team meeting Thursdays (tomorrow!) at 5pm at the union office (3003 Monte Vista).
Our next bargaining sessions will be held on July 11th and July 23rd
Bargaining Update 6/18/2025
Dear UNM Grad Workers:
The bargaining team met with the administration this morning. We presented all outstanding articles to our contract including Union Rights, Compensation, Benefits, Paid Time Off (PTO), Parking and Transportation, and Assistantship Contracts. Here are some of the highlights.
Today, we proposed expanded dental and vision coverage for graduate workers.When we explained to the administration that several workers have had to forgo serious medical procedures and have lived with intense pain because they could not afford dental work, UNM’s lawyer told us that we should simply go to the UNM dental hygiene school. While the dental school does offer cleaning and x-ray services at low costs, they cover nothing else, including more serious dental procedures. This simple suggestion is not representative the systematic changes needed to protect our bargaining unit and shows they are not taking us seriously.
While advocating for increased benefit coverage, including dependent coverage, we shared that many international workers come to UNM with spouses and families and are living off of just one paycheck. UNM’s lawyer chose instead to blame workers for their conditions and instead argued that international workers make their own choices. We stressed that we have had many personal conversations with international workers who are struggling financially and worried about the wellness of their families. Their continued dismissal of these claims indicates that they do not have our best interests in mind.
In the assistantship contracts article, we are proposing that departments adhere to equitable workloads between workers. We’ve heard from many members about disparate workloads even within the same department. We want FTEs to accurately reflect the work that people are doing, for people in departments to be assigned equal work, and for past practices in departments to be honored. As such, no one should be offered less work and less money in order to adhere to this.
By the end of the session, we signed a tentative agreement on the Health and Safety article, which remains the same as our current collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
Check out the bargaining tracker here to read all proposals thus far.
We also discussed counterproposals to language that has already been introduced, including on Intellectual Property, Academic Freedom, Discipline and Discharge, and Non-Discrimination.
We are in favor of tying most of these articles to existing university policy, under the condition that if policies change, we reserve the right to bargain over these changes. Their lawyer mentioned that if we tie our rights to existing policies, and they get better in the future, this could limit the protections we have. Given the current political climate, we can soundly reject this premise. We want to ensure that we have the widest possible net of protected classes enshrined in our contract to protect our most vulnerable workers, and by seeking to bargain over these changes, we keep power in the hands of the workers.
Admin’s team continues to threaten us with stalled raises after only agreeing to meet with us 5 times in the past 3 months. We don’t meet with the administration again until Wednesday July 2nd. Now is the time to get involved with your union and pressure administration to give us equitable, just, and fair working conditions that make graduate school accessible for workers from all walks of life.
Bargaining is the time to get involved with your union and help build the power we need to win what we deserve!
Join us to discuss contract articles and organizing at Contract Action Team (CAT). CAT takes place every Thursday at 5pm this summer at the Union Office, 3003 Monte Vista Blvd NE. As an exception, we will not meet this week since it is Juneteenth, which is recognized as a holiday.
Our next two bargaining sessions are scheduled for July 2nd and July 11th.
PS. UE will be hosting an International Worker Power panel on June 20th at 1pm. International worker organizers from some UE locals will be discussing how to build power with international workers on our campuses! If you’re interested, please RSVP here: https://forms.gle/TmMhU2zZtT5dWCrt7
Bargaining Update 6/11/2025
Dear Graduate Workers:
After over a month, we returned to the bargaining table this morning with the University Administration for another short (3-hour) bargaining session. Admin kicked it off by returning counterproposals on the following articles: Grievance Procedure, Non-discrimination, and Academic Freedom.
Admin proposed tying several of our contract articles to other university policies; some of these policies provide strong protections but do not necessarily give graduate workers a clear voice and input into the policy language. In addition, Admin’s proposal does not guarantee workers will have union representation in the procedures laid out in these policies.
Admin’s Academic Freedom counter-proposal was tied to the faculty handbook policy. We generally believe this to be a strong policy. By having this policy in our contract, we would have the power to fight any breaches of the policy with union representation.
One of our biggest concerns from these counter proposals are Admin’s cuts to our Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment proposal. Tying this to university policy feels like weak protection for our bargaining unit members, especially given the current political climate in which university policies might change.
Remember: our bargaining tracker has all information from bargaining easily accessible for membership. Please feel free to read through our proposals and each counter-proposal yourself.
After hearing admin’s counter-proposals to articles we presented earlier in bargaining, we presented our first proposals on Discipline and Discharge, Intellectual Property and Research Misconduct (a new article for us), and Bargaining Unit Member Rights (formerly Work Materials, Equipment and Workspace Article).
We worked quickly to return a second proposal on the Grievance Procedure. We held strong and rejected the university’s right to file grievances against workers. Our article proposal also firmly maintains our ability to file class action grievances and extends the amount of time workers have to start the grievance process.
Before ending, the Administration gave a counter proposal on Discipline and Discharge that closely aligns to our current contract language. They also returned a counter proposal on Intellectual Property and Research Misconduct, which proposed to remove the article from our contract completely, citing that these protections are already covered by university policy.
Throughout the session, the Administration’s legal counsel, Dina, tried to intimidate us about the progress of negotiations despite refusing to schedule more frequent bargaining sessions. Dina and her team want to push us to hold all bargaining sessions during the summer when they know we are at our lowest organizing capacity.
Bargaining is the time to get involved with your union and help build the power we need to win what we deserve!
Join us to discuss contract articles and organizing at Contract Action Team (CAT). CAT takes place every Thursday at 5pm this summer at the Union Office, 3003 Monte Vista. Join us tomorrow, June 12th, as we finalize our economic articles.
Our next two bargaining sessions are scheduled for June 18th and July 2nd.
Bargaining Update 5/9/2025
Dear Graduate Workers:
Your Bargaining Committee met with the University Admin’s bargaining team for the third time today, May 9th. Here is a brief update below on today’s bargaining session. In addition, the UGW bargaining committee has launched a bargaining tracker document to see the progress and of various proposals which you can access here:
The session began with Admin’s counter-proposal on Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression. They decided to completely ignore our proposed language and to instead tie graduate workers’ academic freedom to university faculty policy.
While the spirit of the existing faculty policy is in line with our proposal, we have serious concerns about tying our rights to the faculty policy.
While the existing faculty policy in spirit is in line with our proposal, we have serious concerns about tying our rights to faculty policy.
- First, this policy is governed by a closed faculty committee (Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee) in which graduate workers have no representation.
- Second, it is unreasonable to expect graduate workers to consult the faculty handbook for consultation on their rights.
- And lastly, as made recently clear with changes to UNM’s DEI policy, university policies are subject to change for the worst, and we want to protect against that.
We stuck strongly to our original language and returned a counterproposal on Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression.
Additionally, we offered a proposal on Grievance procedure. Our goal is to make the procedure more streamlined, to put pressure on administration to resolve grievances, and to allow grad workers more time to get through the process. Changes were proposed to timelines within the procedure to have clear start and stop dates.
Before closing this morning’s short session, we introduced our Non-Discrimination article. During our initial contract negotiations, we fought hard to ensure that we had a specific non-discrimination article despite protests of its non-necessity. Now, the inclusion of this article has proven to be a smart precaution – in the light of recent political developments, the importance of introducing further protections for our bargaining unit members is crucial.
These article revisions create necessary changes that will protect graduate workers and to create a process that allows them to address discrimination in their workplaces in a timely manner.
Lastly, we successfully TA’d the Recognition article, which reverts to original language with the understanding that the School of Law and Health Sciences Center are in our bargaining unit.
Admin has made it clear that they don’t want to give us a stronger contract or better working conditions. Graduate Workers MUST come together to fight for the changes we need to see in our contract.
Our next session will be held on June 11th. In the meantime, check out our bargaining tracker to see the actual language proposed by both sides and stay involved in bargaining over the summer by joining CAT. Please let us know when you would be able to attend a CAT meeting using the link below.
We look forward to continuing the fight for a stronger contract with you all!
Bargaining Update 5/1/2025
Dear Graduate Workers:
The University Administration’s team did not give us any proposals back today. They stated that they would not discuss articles that involved any economics (aka money) in them before seeing all article involving economics. University Admin said that they would take all articles to UNM Finance to get them priced out before being able to move on them.
Firstly, we want to express gratitude to everyone who came out to bargaining this morning. The people power that we are demonstrating is amazing and we love you all. We really want to express how thankful we are for everyone who came out on May Day for our union! And don’t forget about the May Day action this afternoon starting at 4:15 pm in Tiguex Park.
Here’s a Summary of Today:
The University Administration continues to use a “pie” analogy in which administration can only give graduate workers a lump sum of money and how it is divided will need to be worked out in negotiations—essentially pitting the interests of graduate workers against one another.
We know that this analogy is false. The University Administration can take funds from other areas of the budget to ensure that some of its lowest paid workers get treated with dignity and respect. For example, President Stokes makes over $600,000 a year, which is over 37 times the wages of the average graduate worker.
Our next session is Friday May 9th. Stay up-to-date with the bargaining tracker to see how the language changes between UGW and administration proposals.
Reach out to your steward or any member of the bargaining team for more info about bargaining. CAT will continue to meet over summer. If you are around, we would love to have you get involved!
Bargaining Update 4/10/2025
Dear Graduate Workers:
Bargaining 2025 is a GO!! Today marks the first session of our full contract negotiations–we kicked it off with a short 2 hour session.
The administration’s team includes Dina Holcomb, legal counsel for UNM, Joe Palmer with the Office of Academic Personnel (OAP), and Peter Fawcett, Associate Dean for Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Administration’s team proposed groundrules to abide by during this negotiation session. We historically do not accept these terms and did not accept them today. Part of their groundrules included agreeing to a tentative schedule, which was left blank, so we asked to work on setting some dates before signing—as an effort to stall. We made it clear that we need to meet on Main campus instead of North campus.
Our team gave opening statements that summed up the current social and political climate in which we are negotiating and laid out our priorities for the bargaining session (check our social media @unmgradworkers to watch their statements!).
We broke for caucus and asked them to set some additional dates—they came back with dates starting in May and into June, pushing our bargaining session into the summer and avoiding meeting during our week of action.
We presented our first article on our Labor Management Committee, the only change we made was to establish that administration would set the meeting dates at the beginning of each semester, something that has been in practice for the past two semesters. We came to a tentative agreement on this article and broke for the day.
Next session is set for Thursday May 1 from 9am-12pm. Location TBD—come and join us!!