After more than 50 years, the Hawaiʻi Labor Relations Board on Thursday ruled unanimously that graduate assistants at the University of Hawaiʻi can now be recognized as public employees.
The ruling creates a clear pathway for graduate students to have the right to collectively bargain for benefits, such as a living wage, a grievance process, health insurance and other working conditions.
Academic Labor United, the graduate students' union, must now lobby the state Legislature to create a new bargaining unit for graduate assistants.
"It's a lot of labor and a lot of years have been spent in trying to organize graduate student workers," said ALU Chair Dianne Deauna. "I just feel very excited to take on that responsibility and kind of energize our base, energize our members of every student worker that finally we have a very solid path forward."
It's been a years-long struggle for UH graduate assistants to gain recognition as public employees with the right to unionize and bargain over pay and working conditions. The labor board in 1972 decided that graduate assistants were excluded from collective bargaining.
In 2021, ALU and three graduate assistants sued the UH Board of Regents, the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board and the state of Hawai'i, challenging the 1970s decision.
Last year, the Hawai'i Supreme Court ruled that graduate assistants were entitled to have the labor board reconsider its rulings from 1972.
House Bill 874, introduced last year, would create a collective bargaining unit for graduate assistants employed at UH. However, the measure stalled in the House Finance Committee.
Maui Attorney Lance Collins, who represented the case, said graduate assistants need to be placed in a bargaining unit at a reasonable time.
"There's not an 'if the Legislature takes no action,'" he said. "All of these graduate assistants still have to be put into a bargaining unit. But the graduate assistants want a new bargaining unit just for them."
Read the ruling below:
