MU graduate workers fight for right to unionize in court

More than a year after the Coalition of Graduate Workers sued the UM Board of Curators over unionization, lawyers for both the plaintiffs and the defendants laid out their arguments Friday in Boone County court.

The Coalition of Graduate Workers voted in favor of unionization back in 2016, but the University of Missouri has yet to formally recognize the union. At issue is the question of whether graduate students qualify as “employees” under state law, which could give them the right to unionize and collectively bargain.

Lawyers for the CGW said Friday that the university is preventing graduate workers from exercising their rights. They argued that graduate workers are employees under the dictionary definition and said the Missouri constitution says employees have the right to bargain.

“The students workers perform work. They are paid by the university and they are essential to the university. The university couldn’t run without graduate workers and the work that they do,” Natalie Teague, an attorney for the CGW, said. “They are employees that deserve to be able to organize and bargain and have a right to do that under the Missouri constittution.”

Michael Kaemmerer, lawyer for the UM Board of Curators, said the “fact of the matter is that [graduate workers] are students.” He said they don’t have a boss, they have a mentor and argued that they are students first and employees second.

“The University of Missouri maintains its original position,” the university said in a statement after the hearing. “The parties have agreed to ask the Court to decide whether graduate students have a legal right to unionize and this hearing is part of the process of that issue working its way through the court system.”

Judge Jeff Harris said he doesn’t have a timeframe for making a decision.