PRGS Organizes-UAW is a graduate student union at Pardee RAND Graduate School. We work as Assistant Policy Researchers (APRs) at RAND, and we are fighting for fair pay, better working conditions, immediate tuition relief, and institutional respect.
Organizing History
APRs unionized because of unilateral changes to the program, including up-pricing then selling student housing, and defunding moving budgets, student leadership programs, and externship programs.
We banded together to help each other move, find housing, and find storage, sleeping in each other’s living rooms and driving each other’s moving trucks.
We voted to unionize in the summer of 2023 after winning a fight against RAND with the National Labor Relations Board.
RAND hired a former Board Chair’s legal firm, but its contradictory arguments that APRs are
(1) indistinguishable from other RAND researchers and
(2) not real employees were found to be “without merit.”
Since then, we’ve been bargaining in good faith with RAND, but RAND’s offers have recently become menacingly negative.