The AFT scored two major victories in higher education at the end of March, bringing in units of over 500 graduate employees at Temple University in Pennsylvania and 1,050 professional employees at the University of New Mexico. Both victories are significant for the unique challenges they presented and because they are likely to build on the momentum in other organizing efforts under way in the respective states.

In Philadelphia, the Temple University Graduate Students' Association held an election March 27-28, capping a four-year campaign. Members voted 290 to 16 against no agent. The administration had maintained throughout that the graduate employees were students. TUGSA built community support and kept unrelenting pressure on the university, but cleared the final hurdle last October when the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, relying on an NLRB decision involving interns at Boston Medical Center, ruled that the Temple graduate employees have the right to bargain. The overwhelming vote "gives us a mandate to go to the table and negotiate a strong contract for the folks who teach and conduct research here at the university," says organizer and teaching assistant Rob Callahan. The key issues for this first contract are stipends, health benefits and workload.

"This was a colossal win for us," says AFT regional director Ray Mackey, "with textbook-perfect work by national representative Rich Klimmer, great PR work from Jamie Horwitz and all-around support from Mary Smith."

The win gives a shot in the arm to the organizing campaign among graduate employees at the Pennsylvania State University, the Penn State Graduate and Fixed-Term Employees Organization, which recently affiliated with the AFT.

At the University of New Mexico, the professional employees voted March 22 on the question of representation by the United Staff-University of New Mexico. Because New Mexico has no collective bargaining law for public employees, policy dictates that 60 percent of eligible voters in a unit must turn out to vote or the ballots cannot be counted. Despite the formidable logistical challenges of more than 100 different work sites spread out over five cities (the main campus is in Albuquerque) and a barring of union staff and activists from entering any university buildings, 658 eligible voters cast ballots. The vote was 521 for US-UNM to 127 for no agent. "The labor community was terrific" in helping get the vote out, says Ona Savage, an English department academic advisor and member of the organizing committee. Pay is a big issue for these professionals, she explains. "The university has admitted that pay is 12 percent below market compared to private employers around town." Before the year is out, the New Mexico Federation of Education Employees hopes to add another unit of 700 technical employees to the UNM union fold. [Barbara McKenna]

April 2, 2001