Fighting for fellows: MIT works because we do, too
MIT grads have made it clear — we want equal protections for equal work
I started graduate school in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, excited about my funding security with a Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) with the National Science Foundation (NSF). In my lab, I’ve been working on a project making mucus-inspired polymer hydrogels, hoping to apply them to studies for the vaginal microbiome. I’ve continued this project over my entire MIT career, even after my three years of NSF funding ended. It’s hard to tell what I do just from my appointment letters — I’ve since been funded by the MIT Energy Initiative, the Tata Center, seed funds, the Center for Advancing Sustainable and Distributed Fertilizer Production (CASFER), along with a whole hodgepodge of grant and funding sources — but my day-to-day work has never changed. Throughout my time at MIT, I’ve always attended group meetings, mentored undergraduates, performed laboratory work, written papers, written grant proposals, done journal reviews, and attended conferences — things that almost every graduate student does at MIT, regardless of funding source.
When graduate workers held an election to form a union at MIT, we petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to include fellows in the bargaining unit, or the set of workers represented by our union. However, they ultimately denied this, siding with MIT and claiming that fellows “don’t perform work in exchange for compensation.” But the NSF GRFP explicitly states that NSF is not my employer. Every day I perform the work described previously, generating publications and intellectual property under the ownership of MIT and my principal investigator (PI), in exchange for a stipend that pays my rent, utilities, food, and livelihood. A stipend that is set by MIT, specifically by my department. How is it that I don’t perform work in exchange for compensation from MIT, and therefore don’t have access to the same rights and benefits as all other employees?
When we ratified our first contract in 2023, we were still waiting for the decision from the NLRB, but we ratified the terms with the understanding that MIT would extend the same economic benefits to fellows. This includes things like the dental subsidy and the T-Pass (note to NSF fellows: yes, you too are eligible for the dental subsidy!). It was clear that MIT was using the classic union-busting tactic: divide and conquer. By creating a two-tier system, they want to convince fellows that they are better off without a union.
We’ve seen over the past few years that MIT has not held to this promise. In fact, fellows are left much more vulnerable to being underpaid, being denied benefits, and being denied access to fundamental rights and protections. We first saw this when MIT made a sweeping change, department by department, to reclassify as many teaching assistants (TAs) as possible to “teaching fellows.” If your department has a teaching requirement to graduate, your teaching work is now considered “academic” and you’re put on a teaching fellowship while completing that requirement. Despite the fact that you’re doing the exact same work as a TA, you are denied the hard-won rights and protections in the contract for TAs, including workload and appointment clarity, classroom tools and resources, and the doctoral TA stipend (which is $100 more per month than the doctoral RA stipend). If you are overworked or denied materials needed to perform your teaching fellow duties, you cannot file a grievance through our union’s grievance procedure to hold MIT accountable.
After this change, we saw one of the first examples of MIT cutting back on economic benefits: in the Math department, fellows are now paid over $100 less than their RA/TA counterparts per month for the exact same work. If you’re a research fellow doing the same work as an RA or a teaching fellow doing the same work as a TA, you receive less compensation with no explanation.
We also saw that MIT has removed bonuses for fellows in several departments, including Biological Engineering and Chemical Engineering. These bonuses previously rewarded fellows thousands of dollars per year as an incentive for bringing in additional grant money to MIT, but were removed without student input or advanced notice. If fellows were protected by a union contract, MIT would not be able to unilaterally remove benefits without our say — they would have to negotiate with workers and honor the economic benefits that were agreed upon in the union contract.
MIT has found other ways to undermine our contract — when administering the T-Pass subsidy, if you go to the Atlas center in-person but are on fellowship, you are suddenly only eligible for the 50% subsidy, not the 70% subsidy as stipulated in the contract. Because you are a fellow, you are unable to file a grievance to get the full subsidy (or file a grievance about anything else for that matter), preventing you from successfully grieving and enforcing our contract article, as we did previously when MIT tried penny-pinching on the T-pass subsidy.
MIT’s messaging has reinforced the idea that fellows don’t do work and don’t receive benefits, as per the OGE fellowships newsletter: “Extra financial support can also free up your time! Unlike research and teaching assistantships, fellowships have no work requirement.” The MIT administration even said in guidance on vacation and leave that “if you are fully supported on fellowship awards, you do not receive vacation days,” leaving fellows vulnerable to abuse by their PIs, who can deny them vacation and punish them for taking vacation with no options for recourse.
Beyond the penny-pinching and corner-cutting on economic benefits, the lack of noneconomic benefits has had real consequences for graduate worker fellows. Fellows are denied access to Weingarten rights, meaning they are not allowed to have a union steward advise them during disciplinary meetings. Fellows can be disciplined or fired by their PIs at will — they don’t have the option to file a grievance under our unjust discipline and discharge article. Meanwhile, our union has been able to use the grievance procedure to win RA/TA workers their jobs back, including international workers who’ve been threatened with losing their job along with their visa status. Furthermore, fellows experiencing harassment and discrimination face a roadblock in the IDHR process: IDHR often denies them formal investigations, even in cases of clear discrimination or sexual harassment on the job, and fellows do not have the option to grieve the outcome of their IDHR case. In short, without the protections of a union contract, any promise that MIT makes to fellows is just words, with no way to actually guarantee that they will follow through.
Some may think that including fellows in the bargaining unit is radical, but it is actually the industry standard. United Auto Workers (UAW) 4811, the grad union that represents student researchers at all the University of California (UC) schools, includes fellows in their recognition article, and recently won a settlement to clarify the inclusion of workers on internal fellowships who perform work during their lab rotations in their first year. UC fellows now have access to the same rights, benefits, and protections as other employees. This is also the standard at many other United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) local unions which represent grad workers: Dartmouth University (UE 261), Johns Hopkins University (UE 197), and New Mexico State University (UE 1598) all have Teaching and Research Fellows included in their bargaining unit. Stanford University (UE 1043) and University of Chicago (UE 1103) also include Teaching Fellows in their bargaining unit. Most recently, Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania (GETUP-UAW), which represents graduate workers at University of Pennsylvania, just secured a tentative agreement that includes research and teaching fellows. Why is it acceptable that I could access contract rights and benefits as an NSF Fellow at Dartmouth, but not at MIT? This two-tier system implemented by MIT is simply a strategy to divide graduate workers who do the same work into arbitrary categories.
We’ve seen, from the almost 2000 responses across the board on our bargaining survey, that grad workers are done with this two-tier system. We want fellows included in the bargaining unit! We’ve collected dozens of testimonials from fellows expressing that they do the same work as RAs and TAs, and therefore should be covered by our union contract.
With our second contract bargaining coming up fast, MIT has the opportunity to make this right. They can agree to grant fellows the same compensation and protections given to every other grad worker. Everyone deserves the same rights, regardless of their funding source. If you are on fellowship, sign the petition for fellows inclusion and become a union member today!
Nadia Zaragoza (they/them) is a 5th year graduate worker in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. They have been an organizer with the MIT Graduate Student Union UE 256 for four years and is currently the Vice President of Membership.