Graduate students employed as teaching and research assistants at the University of Chicago have voted overwhelmingly to unionize.

According to Inside Higher Ed, “University of Chicago graduate student workers have voted 1,696 to 155 to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board announced Thursday evening.”

This is the latest in a series of unionization initiatives at universities across the nation. Graduate assistants, adjunct instructors, and faculty members have successfully unionized in many of those institutions.

Within the State of Illinois, the graduate assistants at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign successfully unionized in 2003. Graduate assistants at many other universities have been seeking to unionize, and Northwestern University graduate students recently voted to form a union. The faculty of University of Illinois at Chicago and Northern Illinois University are unionized and have recently renegotiated their contracts.

For more information, see the article in Inside Higher Ed and the website of the UChicago Graduate Students United.