UMass Lowell Connector Logo

Graduate students at UMass Lowell protest for fair stipend and rally for a livable wage

(Photo courtesy UML Connector) As a union, the GEO negotiates legally binding contracts with the University over working conditions and can file grievances on behalf of individual employees.
Alex Decato-Roed
Connector Staff

“I wear glasses and I have contacts and they’re not cheap because I don’t have vision care. I paid 100 percent of pocket and that’s the same thing for dental care. I just pay for my teeth cleanings, out of pocket, and I don’t get X-rays and I don’t get any extra stuff because I cannot afford that,” said Sabrina Rapisarda, a union officer in the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO).

Rapisarda’s story is typical among graduate student employees at UMass Lowell. A GEO survey found that 70 percent of their members forego dental care and 40 percent forgo vision care because of its cost. “A lot of our members have written testimonies about the negative impacts that they’ve experienced as a consequence of not having dental care or vision.” Said Rapisarda.

Although it varies by program, graduate students work in an assortment of apprenticeship style roles for the university and achieve their degree through coursework, administrative work, teaching and research. Graduate student employees are currently given a nine-month stipend of $15,000 for 18 hours of work a week and receive 80 percent health insurance coverage.

On average, graduate students at UMass Lowell spend 57 percent of their income on rent. Most graduate student workers have prior debt from bachelor’s and master’s degrees. International students are the most affected by this pay rate since they cannot obtain a second job due to immigration visa rules.

“I can tell you that unfortunately UMass Lowell… even though we’re an R2 institution research wise, we’re making on the bottom end of that R2,” said Rapisarda, “An argument could be made if you just paid us an actual living wage people could allocate some of that money to those health services that they need.”

“Graduate students at UMass Lowell serve a diverse and important role in advancing the institution’s teaching and research missions,” said UMass Lowell spokesman Jon Strunk.

The current contract with the Graduate Employee Organization, which includes an agreement to reopen wage negotiations for fiscal years 2021 and 2022, extends through June 30, 2023.

Strunk seems hopeful about the prospects for negotiations with the GEO stating, “While the university is focusing our negotiation efforts and communications on our formal bargaining sessions, we continue to bargain in good faith with the GEO and are confident in achieving a resolution agreeable to all parties.”

Razvan Stanescu, president of GEO, said, “The whole time that we were bargaining [in March], the university was saying, look, we don’t have money, we’re trying to deal with this situation. And we understood that.”

The GEO signed their first contract in over a decade with the university on March 5, 2020, and it included an eight point five percent raise with the option to reopen wage negotiations in Fall 2021.

“We knew that the tuition stopped coming in, we agreed to a small raise, that was not at all compensatory for the 10 plus years of lack of contract, which in that time, inflation rose by over 25 percent,” said Stanescu.

Yet, as students return to campus and life begins to resemble a sense of normalcy, Stanescu continues to get the same response from the university, “All that they can say is that we are not ready to allocate more money for this right now.”

The GEO has been bargaining with the university since May 2021 but have yet to reach an agreement.

“They’ve gotten millions of dollars of help from the government and millions from the state government. we see on campus things like solar powered umbrellas that power USB chargers, and we see decorative lawn seating that was just added, we see that Coburn Hall, a massive hall on campus was beautifully redecorated for I think $50 million. we see all this spending happening,” said Stanescu.

A major problem that faces the union is that graduate students leave the university in four years or less and GEO leadership rotates every so often.

  “We don’t want this perception that unions are just these angry groups of people that don’t represent a broader base, and they’re just greedy and trying to get this and that. We’re just trying to listen to our members and trying to reach a conclusion to our bargain as quickly as possible, so that people can suffer less.” said Stanescu.

Related posts