Our History

A Brief Summary:

Graduate Students across departments at UAF began organizing around shared issues and concerns in 2020 and researching the idea of unionization. Over the next two years they sought feedback from as many graduate students as they could reach, including at UAA and UAS. As it became clear there was widespread support for the idea of unionization, the Alaska Graduate Workers Association (AGWA) was formed to lead the campaign! After consideration and outreach to multiple large unions, we chose to affiliate with the UAW due to the large number of academic employees they already represented (especially on the west coast) and their responsiveness to our outreach.

We ran our unionization campaign starting in September 2022 with our Authorization Card drive, and our union was finally certified after a 96% YES vote in December 2023!

We bargained our first contract between January 21 and May 1 of 2024, managing to send our ratified CBA to the Alaska Legislature just in time for their vote before the end of the legislative session.

Our first contract went into effect July 1 2024 and will expire December 31, 2026.