The 1,500 teaching assistants and graduate assistants on MSU’s campus have been organizing the Graduate Employees Union for a while now, and with two-thirds membership they recently filed an election petition.

It’s important that we encourage our TAs to vote for the union because the opposition to the Graduate Employees Union will grow as the election approaches. The administration will try to create confusion and conflict between the TAs and the faculty, and provide general misinformation to discourage the union.

The graduate employees need this union because their health care and pay is less than adequate and they are too often overworked. We should realize that in a university this size, we depend on our TAs to provide us with a good education. We need to show our support by encouraging them to unionize to make our university administration give them the respect they deserve.

Melissa Hornaday
interdisciplinary studies in social science freshman