Graduate workers at the University of Pittsburgh announced Friday that they voted overwhelmingly to form a union almost a year after making their efforts public.
More than 97% of the votes cast in the election that took place over several days this week came back in favor of unionization, meaning the university’s roughly 2,100 graduate workers will join the ranks of the United Steelworkers.
“It’s been a long time coming; it was a moment of pure joy when the ballots were counted,” Connor Chapman, a Pitt grad worker and member of the organizing committee, said in a phone call from Trace Brewing in Bloomfield, where grad workers celebrated their victory Friday evening. “We felt very good going into the election based on the organizing that we had done, but seeing the final counts, it was overwhelming. I just felt so full of pride, not just in myself, but in my organizing committee and all my co-workers who helped make this happen.”…