GSOC (Graduate Student Organizing Committee) is the union of graduate employees at New York University. Drawing from a membership of several thousand across most of NYU’s graduate schools, we represent over 2,000 graduate workers in any given semester who are teaching assistants, adjunct instructors, social science research assistants, and graduate assistants. We are affiliated with Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers and are the first recognized union of graduate employees at a private university in the United States.

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We are about union democracy, mass participation, and social justice values. We are committed to building a union that actively encourages members to participate and lead.

The way to ensure our continued strength is through a vibrant, democratic union that maximizes the involvement and leadership of members, through both one-on-one organizing and collective actions. We draw strength from and support our campus and community allies, including NYU faculty, staff, and undergraduates.

Social justice also means democratic practices within our union. We hold regular meetings open to all members, share detailed communications and updates with membership, and grant access to meeting minutes for members.

We are building a union, a community, and a movement.

NYU graduate employees began organizing with UAW in 1998, and by 2002 had settled a groundbreaking contract (see Our History for details). In 2005, NYU refused to negotiate a second contract because of the anti-grad worker Brown decision by the George W. Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board, but we continued to organize until NYU joined us in a private agreement in 2013, agreeing to remain neutral in a December 2013 election, in which graduate employees voted Union Yes by a margin of 630-10. GSOC has continued to organize and represent NYU graduate workers ever since.

GSOC members voted to ratify our current contract in May 2021, after many months of negotiations and a successful three-week strike. We are now hard at work implementing our contract, and we welcome all members to help administer our new funds and fight to enforce our contract!