After a nearly year-long negotiation, graduate students at Johns Hopkins University are working under their first union contract — which members ratified last week.
The Teachers and Researchers United group staged protests and signed strike pledges in recent months to push university leaders towards adopting their demands. Both parties reached a tentative agreement on March 29, which union members adopted last Thursday by a 99.5% vote.
“Our asks were really ambitious at the table, but we ended up achieving a contract that everybody felt really well represented by and they were just happy to vote yes for,” said Jayati Sharma, a member of the union’s bargaining committee and a PhD student in epidemiology. “We won more than we thought we could achieve.”
The union, which currently represents more than 3,200 student members, formed in 2023, and has been negotiating its first contract since last May. Johns Hopkins students join a growing wave of graduate unions popping up nationwide.
