Ratifying our constitution

After years of organizing and taking action together, graduate workers at Brown are finally starting the academic year with a fair contract! For the first time, there are enforceable provisions protecting our working hours, our wages, our health benefits, our right to respect in the workplace, to name a few. Congratulations on these huge wins!With our contract negotiated, we can now take on new projects: holding Brown accountable to the commitments made in the contract, ensuring the university community is protected from the covid-19 pandemic, reimagining safety and realizing racial justice at Brown, and so much more.Before we embark on these projects, we will need to ratify a constitution that governs the basic functions of our union and elect union leadership who will take on key responsibilities of running the organization each of us has helped to build. Members are invited to join a constitution town hall to be held Wednesday September 2nd at 6 pm, at which we will go over the basic features of this document and undertake some activities to demonstrate how we can make use of it to fight for what we need at Brown. We will also discuss a proposed budget so members can make an informed decision about how much revenue we need to collect to support our fights to make Brown a better place to work. We will circulate a draft of the constitution a few days ahead of the town hall. After the town hall, we will hold an online vote to ratify our constitution on September 3rd and 4th.Please register for Wednesday’s town hall here. Our first election will be held by U.S. Mail, so please take a moment to update your mailing address here, even if you cannot attend the town hall event.