GSOC & Bargaining 101
GSOC, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, is the labor union for grad students working under United Auto Workers (UAW) Local-7902. NYU-GSOC is comprised of over 3,000 Graduate Students working at NYU.
Fun Fact: GSOC was the first Graduate Student Union to win recognition at a private university in the United States.
UAW, or the United Automobile Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an international union that provides institutions support to local-level unions across North America. Based out of Detroit, UAW is comprised of over 600 local unions and 400,000 active members having negotiated 1,750 contracts with nearly a thousand employers.
As GSOC collects dues from its members to share with UAW, the international union will continue to provide institutional, financial, and legal resources to GSOC during grievance procedures, bargaining sessions, and strikes. During a strike, dues collected by UAW may provide individual workers with financial strike assistance and interim health insurance coverage, as well as general economic assistance to the local union.
Visit uaw.org for general information regarding unions, dues, and strikes.
The union represents all Graduate Student workers currently employed by NYU as:
– Research Assistants,
– Teaching Assistants,
– Graduate & Course Assistants,
– Adjunct Instructors (before their 7th year), and
– Hourly administrative staff.
To become a member of NYU GSOC, you must sign a union Dues Authorization card for UAW Local 7902 and email the filled-out form to mail@actuaw.org or to the steward of your department. A union card should have been provided directly to individuals in GSOC-eligible positions alongside letter(s) of appointment or through the steward of your department.
While payment of dues are required for all GSOC members, the amount of dues to be paid will depend on whether you opt for Full Membership or Associate Membership. For those signing up for Full Membership, a total of 2% of your semesterly compensation will be automatically deducted from your paycheck once per semester. For Associate Membership, members may opt to pay $30 annually or $2.50 monthly.
For full members who do not currently hold a union position but have held one in any of the previous three semesters have the option to pay maintenance dues, which cost $10 a month for fully-funded PhD students and $5 a month for unfunded graduate students.
The collection of union dues are to be split between GSOC and United Auto Workers (UAW), the international union that financially and institutionally supports GSOC and other local unions across the country.
Full membership with GSOC provides a worker with access to all union benefits and rights; this includes:
– Voting on union matters in membership meetings,
– Opportunity to participate in various committees or working groups,
– Holding a representative office, such as Shop Stewardship.
– Miscellaneous benefits and rights are presented in GSOC bylaws.
Associate membership provides a worker with the same benefits and rights without the opportunities to hold a representative position (shop steward, bargaining committee, unit representative).
As part of the union’s contractual life cycle, the union and the company, New York University, enter a series of bargaining meeting sessions to debate and agree upon amendments to be made to the contract (or, the Collective Bargaining Agreement) before it expires. In that time period, the union, represented by elected members as the Bargaining Committee, will meet with NYU administrators and litigators to accept or reject presented contract-altering proposals.
As the current GSOC contract expires in August 2026, bargaining between the union and NYU will begin in January 2026. This timeline provides ample time for the university to reasonably enter good-faith negotiations toward completed contract revisions before the current agreement’s expiration.
After nearly 12 months of bargaining and three weeks of striking, GSOC secured a number of contract revisions in articles including compensation, healthcare, international student support, and family benefits, as well as various other working condition improvements. This includes, for example, hourly pay increase to $30/hr, guaranteed 6 weeks paid Parental Leave, creating a $20k Tax and Legal Services Fund for International Students, and 95% healthcare premium coverage of the Basic and Comprehensive plan for partially-funded Graduate Workers.
For a more comprehensive overview of previous contract victories, visit our Contract Proposal Explainer page.
A university’s budget is the total sum of tuition and fees collected from its student body, organizational and individual donations, and research grants given by the federal government or private groups. Additional revenue sources may come from supplement services, such as hospitals. After a portion of the collected income is reserved for financial aid, the remaining money is divided according to the university’s annually-restructured operational budget.
According to the most recent public summary from August 2024, NYU’s Total Combined Endowment Fund reached $6.7 billion. Endowments refer to the total sum of donations received by the university, sourced most commonly from its alumni network, private & individual donors, corporations, and other organizations that may have vested financial interest in the university.
As the majority of its campus community, students and workers can collectively voice their opinions and place pressure on the university to critically re-evaluate the investments it receives from companies that may be linked to apartheid, weapons manufacturing, fossil fuel production, or other social injustices. .
In 2023, calls from campus activists brought NYU to commit to divesting from, or cutting ties with, companies related to fossil fuels. In a letter to student activist group Sunrise NYU, Board of Trustees Chair William R. Berkley affirmed that the university “commits to avoid any direct investments in any company whose primary business is the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels, including all forms of coal, oil, and natural gas, and not to renew or seek out any dedicated private funds whose primary aim is to invest in the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels.”
More recent calls from the student group NYU People’s Solidarity Coalition (consisting of Students for a Democratic Society, Students for Justice in Palestine, Shut it Down NYU, and GSOC) have drawn attention to the need for NYU to divest from companies supplying resources to Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine.