For the more recent history of the historic authorization card drive in 2004, see Hard Carding and Soft Funding: How to Organize Ourselves and Our Unions, by James Thompson, Ph.D.

A Brief History of Graduate Assistants United: 
Student Organization to Graduate  Employee Union

Erika Gubrium

April 24, 2001

History of Education

Graduate Assistants United (GAU) is the sole bargaining agent for graduate employees in the Florida State University system.  The category of graduate employees includes all those employees that fall under the category of Graduate Assistant or Associate (GA), including Teaching Assistants (TAs), Teaching Associates, and Research Assistants (RAs).  GAU currently represents GAs at University of Florida (UF), University of South Florida (USF) and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU).  In this paper I will focus on the history of GAU from 1972, the year that the Graduate Student Union, the predecessor organization to GAU, was formed to 1994, the final year during which the union was able to collect membership forms from GAs at a centralized location during tuition waiver dispersal.

Throughout this paper, I explore the gradual shift in focus of GAU.  I will demonstrate that from its inception as the Graduate Student Union (GSU), the union’s focus was primarily on general graduate student issues, along with national and local political issues.  After GSU gained legal recognition as the collective bargaining unit for all UF GAs the union primarily focused on graduate employee concerns.  This shift in focus was reflected by the gradual development of the organization into one with a traditional union structure.  The structure of this organization, therefore, would come to include, among other things, a bargaining committee dedicated to negotiating an improved employee contract, a stewards system for successful recruitment of potential members throughout the university, and a grievance officer and grievance protocol in order to enforce the terms of the employee contract. 

In September of 1971, a dozen graduate students formed the Graduate Student Union, which was to be a collective bargaining organization representing graduate students at UF.  The cost of living was rapidly escalating throughout the country, and at UF graduate students were faced with rapidly rising tuition costs.[1]  According to the Annual Guides to Graduate Study (1972), which surveyed 19 state schools considered peer institutions of UF, only two schools had lower minimum stipends and none had lower maximums  - there were at this time no annual stipend increases at UF and there had been a massive reduction in number of tuition scholarships in recent years  - the scholarship program was virtually defunct. 

Interest in GSU rapidly increased in 1972, with the introduction of the De La Parte bill (SB406) by Senator Louis de la Parte, Jr.  This bill proposed that students enrolled in a graduate program would be required to pay the state of Florida 50% of the total cost of the program in which they were enrolled and that payments not made would bear a penalty interest of 10% annually.[2]  Because of the havoc that increased fees would have on graduate enrollments at UF, graduate students were supported in raising concerns over the issue by members of the UF administration.  Dr. Robert Bryan, UF Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, maintained that the bill would substantially cut graduate school enrollments, because graduate students would be required to pay nearly $7000 more per year than the $705 per year cost that they had been paying.   De la Parte, however, maintained that the increased cost was not high, saying “the student is the direct recipient of the service and should pay for his education.  Doctors and lawyers become proficient on the basis of the education the state gives them.  It is only fair the student should pay the state back.”  Bryan responded by disagreeing with what he called de la Parte’s “rather narrow view of education.”[3]

The co-founders of GSU felt that the unique position of and problems faced by teacher-student-researchers required a unique collective bargaining group.  These graduate assistant co-founders formed the organization primarily in response to increased graduate student tuition fees, the fact that stipends for graduate assistants were not guaranteed, and that those stipends that graduate assistants did receive had not been increased in response to a rapidly increasing cost of living.  There had been no pay increases for graduate assistant stipends since 1968,[4] however students had experienced a 92% increase in fees, a 26% increase in housing costs, and a 200+% increase in the cost of food.  Other graduate student concerns that GSU sought to address were a lack of job security for graduate assistants and a lack of graduate student representation throughout UF.[5]  With the support of UF President Steven C. O’Connell, GSU outlined its function.   The roles of GSU included promoting the welfare of graduate students by fighting increasing tuition costs and guaranteeing the continued support of graduate students contingent only on satisfactory academic progress, opposing racial or sexual discrimination in admissions and hiring, supporting graduate student grievances, and educating people about status of graduate students at UF through lobbying of the legislature and public events on campus.  Although GSU intended to seek status as the collective bargaining unit for all graduate employees, the Board of Regents (BOR), with the approval of the Florida legislature, used Florida law to successfully wage a battle against the legal organization of such a unit in court by classifying GAs with migrant farm workers. 

In addition to forming in response to general graduate student concerns, GSU was also formed as an organization whose concern centered on campus, local, and national politics.[6]  The organization sought to act as a mouthpiece for the dissident views that many graduate students held (including voicing concerns about the Vietnam war and supporting the United Farm Workers lettuce boycott for farm laborers)[7] as well as to provide leadership to many non-student government organizations.  The recent arbitrary dismissal of a UF graduate teaching assistant also sparked an interest in campus activism.  In the fall of 1970, President Stephen C. O’Connell fired Robert Canney, a TA within the Educational Foundations department.[8]  Canney had been convicted of a felony (resisting arrest) at a St. Petersburg anti-war rally.  Canney was convicted after a brief trial in Clearwater, Florida, at which he was not allowed to present defense witnesses.  President O’Connel was aware of the unconstitutionality of the trial and knew that it was under appeal when he dismissed Canney.  Instead of waiting for the results of the appeal, O’Connell made use of the opportunity to rid the University of the civil rights and anti-war activist who eventually became president of Florida’s ACLU.  Only after the American Federation of Teachers intervened on Canney’s behalf was he allowed to receive the remainder of that quarter’s salary.  Robert Canney’s fate was well publicized and served to further mobilize the formation of an organization that would protect the rights of graduate employees. 

Once organized, GSU quickly became involved in changes to graduate school policy,[9] but was not recognized by the BOR or the State Legislature as a legal graduate student representative.  GSU leaders decided upon a four point plan.[10]  Leaders wanted to increase the duration of financial support for GAs, to introduce a grievance procedure for workload disputes, to call for cost-of-living escalation in the stipends for salaried graduate students, and to require equalization of workloads and pay scales in different departments.  Many union organizers felt that UF’s change in the spring of 1972 from the quarter to semester system allowed for concealment of significant tuition increase.  Financial assistance had, until the early-1970’s, been provided in many forms.  These included Graduate School Fellowships, Teaching Assistantships, Research Assistantships, tuition waivers (for out-of-state tuition), and National Defense Education Act (NDEA) fellowships.[11]  GSU maintained that GAs deserved equal pay for equal work performed and placed a priority on seeking uniformity for the university-wide basis in the way in which pay was granted or amount of work that the university expected in return for such financial aid.  This was especially important to the founding leaders of GSU, as they felt that inequality in pay served to prevent graduate students from uniting in a common cause.[12]

GSU was originally structured into four committees:  a grievance committee, a newsletter committee, a research committee to monitor state bills and university policies, and a membership committee to contact prospective members and collect outstanding dues.  GSU’s newsletter committee created newsletters that functioned primarily to announce the involvement of GSU in student and local political activities.[13]

One of the primary concerns for GSU at its inception was whether or not to attempt to become a recognized campus organization with official university status.[14]  Those in favor of doing so argued that as an official campus organization, GSU could receive financial support from the UF Student Senate for supplies.   In 1973, GSU members were recruited at class registration and could choose between paying annual dues of $3.00 or quarterly dues of $1.00.[15]  If GSU was not able to receive financial support from the university, the organization would need to raise money from the general membership, which would likely require members to pay greater than $3.00 annual dues.  Florida has always been a “right-to-work” or “open shop” state, meaning that state employees do not have to pay agency fees to the unions that represent them. This means that legally recognized unions must actively recruit members in order to get membership dues deducted from their paychecks.  Because GSU was not a legally recognized bargaining unit for Graduate Assistants when it was first formed, however, the organization was not allowed to earn membership dues through a centralized payroll system.  Raising additional monies to run the organization through the ‘volunteer generosity’ of struggling GAs would be difficult.  Another argument in favor of seeking status as a recognized campus organization concerned the need for access to a meeting place on campus.  Finally, many GSU members felt that the organization needed official recognition by the university in order to avoid being perceived as outside agitators.  These members felt that nonmembers might be wary of an off-campus organization interfering in graduate student issues.  

Student organizations were traditionally under the fiat of the UF administration offices at Tigert Hall, and with this came the option for administration to exercise control of organizational activities.  GSU members who opposed seeking recognition as a campus organization felt that the organization might be threatened if their views did not agree with the views of the administration.  GSU spokesmen, President Hugh Ellis and Newsletter Committee Chairman Perran Ross, hoped to establish communication between GSU, the University Administration and the state legislature.  Many GSU members felt that this type of relationship forced the need for equal footing with these groups - GSU concerns would not be met if the organization was perceived primarily as a student group.  Many of the GSU activists felt that GSU needed  to be an independent, popularly-based organization in order to maintain flexibility of action.

In the spring of 1971, the Florida Legislature had added a large tuition increase onto pre-existing student fees.  This was perceived by many graduate students to be a blow not only to low income students, but also an attack on the graduate program.  Quarterly graduate fees, already $25.00 more than undergraduate cost of tuition, were raised $65.00 to $240.00 per quarter for ‘in-state’ tuition, with ‘out-of-state’ students paying an additional $350 in quarterly fees.[16]  GSU, with the help of Dean Donald Sparkmann in the Office of Student Development, successfully increased the maximum amount of a short-term loan that graduate students could receive from $200 to $250 in December of 1972,[17] thus garnering the support for the union by graduate assistants.  GSU began to institute a $1.00 membership fee for all members to join the organization.  After a year of organizing, GSU was partially successful on the issue of GA stipends:  the BOR offered GSU a pay raise of 12% at an August 1973 meeting.  However, there had been a 15% increase in the cost-of-living for graduate students each year since 1968.[18]  GSU activists therefore maintained that the raise did not account enough for inflation.  GSU also asked that in-state and out-of-state fees be waived for all GAs.  While this objective received administrative support from interim President  E.T. York, the BOR did not support the waiving of fees, and therefore this objective was not realized.   Because GSU leaders found that goals needed to be pursued through the BOR and the state legislature, union efforts were soon after switched from a focus on the UF administration to one that focused on the other two parties.

GSU, under the guidance of the UF faculty union, began a collective bargaining campaign in order to gain legal recognition in fall of 1974.  Members collected signatures on authorization cards to signify a “show of interest,” indicating to the BOR and the newly formed Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) that GAs wanted the right to hold a collective bargaining election.  PERC was established in Florida in 1974 to act as a neutral adjudicative body that resolved public sector labor disputes, career service appeals, veterans preference appeals, drug testing cases, certain age discrimination cases, and whistle blower appeals.  One of the primary areas of the Commission’s jurisdiction covered labor cases.  Public employees in the State of Florida had the constitutional right to collectively bargain.  The Commission was to hold hearings and resolve disputes about the composition of bargaining units and alleged unfair labor practices.  The Commission had an elections unit that conducted elections when public employees expressed the desire to be represented by a union.  GSU leaders sought to get the organization officially registered as a union under PERC, which would legally qualify them to represent all UF campus graduate employees.

Along with seeking legal recognition, the union sought to implement traditional union committees.  This included the establishment of a bargaining committee, which would conduct  necessary research on costs-of-living, graduate student pay, tuition costs, and other information concerning Graduate Assistant finances at UF and at peer institutions.  GSU activists needed to collect this type of informatin in order to present a compelling case as to the need for higher pay and more job security during negotiations with the BOR.   GSU leaders also formed a grievance committee in order to address major abuses that were occurring with GA workloads.  Contracts were said to vary from department to department.  Some GAs were on a 9-month contracts and some were on quarter-to-quarter contracts.  Within the English department, TAs had not received paychecks for three weeks and when they complained, were told, in effect, that they had better quit complaining about it or they would be replaced.[19]  Many TAs were not aware of the distinction between quarter, one-third, or half –time postions.  Such workload issues were particularly egregious within the Chemistry department and representative from the Chemistry department spoke with administrators within the department in order to successfully resolve the first formal workload dispute brought by a graduate employee against the university.[20] 

As the fight for the right to legally negotiate a contract continued, GSU also rallied against tuition increases and fought for the establishment of tuition waivers for all Graduate Assistants.  There was a 28% drop in the total state budget going to education from 1972 - 1974.  In the years 1975 - 1976, the general revenue fund, from which education money was provided, represented only 40% of the total Florida State  budget.[21]  This led to a 0% salary increase for GAs in these years.  UF President O’ Connell seemingly agreed with GSU that graduate student pay had not kept pace with the cost of living or pay increases of other state employees, saying “[GAs] are the best bargain the state gets for its employment dollar”.[22]  GSU activists lobbied in Tallahassee in May of 1979, joining over 200 students from UF, FSU, and FAMU in a protest march on the State capitol steps.[23]  Joining GSU were the state president of UFF and the President of the Florida AFL-CIO.  That year, GSU-UFF formed a stewards system, which served as a two-way communications system between the union and university departments.  GSU also began to hold regular membership meetings in a local Episcopal church in order to increase student awareness about graduate employee issues.[24]  The formation of a cadre of stewards allowed GSU to resemble a traditional union in structure, thus paving the way for successful functioning should the union gain legal recognition.  In an attempt to rein in the powerful voice that GSU was rapidly gaining in university and local politics, the BOR filed a case in the Florida State courts in the fall of 1979 challenging the legal right of graduate employees to obtain collective bargaining privileges.  However, by the end of the school year in 1979, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the right of Graduate Assistants in Florida to organize, thus allowing GSU to begin a campaign to represent GAs in contract negotiations.  Reflecting the changing mission of the organization from a role as protector of general graduate student interests to an organization that sought and enforced benefits for graduate employees, the Graduate Student Union became Graduate Assistants United in the summer of 1980.[25]

That summer, GAs at UF, USF and FSU voted on representation in negotiations with the BOR.  While GAs at UF and USF voted 2:1 in favor of collective representation by GAU, FSU GAs narrowly declined representation.  Bargaining between GAU and the BOR was underway all summer.  By the end of the summer, both parties reached a tentative contract agreement.  In this agreement, UFF-GAU was recognized as an exclusive representative of GAs for collective bargaining, GAs were granted the ability to obtain employment outside their assistantships, GAs were granted leave time for illness, injury, jury duty, required military service, illness or death in immediate family, and decisions such as the hiring and firing of graduate personnel were stipulated to be based on formal graduate student evaluation files.[26]  Although GAU had gained the right to collectively bargain for the rights of GAs, they had not won the benefit of  tuition waivers for all GAs,  nor GA reappointment conditions and guarantees.[27]  These two issues would remain the top priorities for GAU for the coming years.

In 1980, GAU began to activate its established committees.  Most importantly, the stewards’ cadre was extended throughout many departments across the UF campus and was formalized into a stewards’ council.  The council was formed in order to make the union more democratic by investing policy-making power in a more representative group of employees, which, once elected, would represent the department’s GAs in GAU policies and efforts.

In 1981, Florida House rules Chairman Sam Bell and Senator George Kirkpatrick, seemingly on a whim, sought to undermine the legal recognition of GAs as state employees.  Bell and Kirkpatrick introduced SB606, a bill that exempted GAs from the collective bargaining process, which quickly became law.[28]  Florida Representative Larry Hawkins aptly voiced the concerns of many within the Florida House of Representatives as well as of UF’s graduate employees.  He had this to say about SB606:

“What we are doing now is taking apart, piecemeal, rights that are guaranteed to employees by the Constitution of the State of Florida.  If we are going to do this, we might just as well add on another amendment to exempt police, and another to exempt firemen and another to exempt teachers.”[29]

GAU brought a legal case against SB606 and in BOR vs. PERC the court determined that GAs were both employees and students.[30] 

            The goal of SB606 had been to prevent GAU from bargaining as a union, yet at the same time, it gave GAs the right to strike.  However, rather than organizing a strike, GAU began to mount a massive effort to win tuition waivers for GAs.  Legislators sympathetic to the plight of GAU over SB606 began to take notice, and in that same year, State Senator Pete Skinner filed a bill calling for tuition waivers for GAs.  In 1982, GAU members collected over 1500 signatures of GAs and faculty on a petition[31] during a tuition waiver drive.  This petition, along with phone calls, was sent to the local legislative delegation.  UFF lobbyists, the Florida Student Association and the administration at UF pledged their support.  In the spring of 1982, in the face of Ronald Reagan’s proposed budget cuts to eliminate Guaranteed Student Loans and National Direct Loans for graduate students, Senators Skinner and Kirkpatrick filed SB 648, which granted waivers of matriculation fees for GAs,[32] and the Senate Education  Committee unanimously passed the bill, thus guaranteeing tuition waivers for GAs.  The contract bargained for 1985-7 reflected this new benefit, calling for a 6.5% pay increase for GAs, subject to Legislative funding of OPS budget.[33]

In the fall of 1986, GAU was restructured into an executive committee comprised of five subcommittees:[34]  a Contract Review committee that served to suggest necessary changes or additions to the contract, a Membership committee for recruitment of new members, GAU publicity, and organization of social events, a Grievance committee with a newly streamlined grievance procedure, a Student Government Committee to evaluate what GAU had received from its financial support of Student Government, a Newsletter committee charged with making a newsletter every semester in order raise awareness among GAs of the presence and much needed role performed by GAU, and a Stewards’ Council.

GAU also sought to attract graduate employees by implementing a discount partner program with local businesses.[35]  The GAU executive committee decided that the union needed to project the image of a union in the tradition of the AFT and NEA, therefore members were to be given GAU membership cards.  These cards served to  identify GAU members as such and added the authenticity of being a true labor union to the organization.   GAU began to shift its focus to new priorities after winning tuition waivers for all GAs, including gaining health and dental benefits, negotiating salary increases, and securing tuition waiver guarantees.

Although tuition waivers had been written into the contract as a GA benefit, the waivers were contingent upon funding by the legislature, which did not provide sufficient support to cover the entire waiver in 1987.[36]  GAU therefore began a letter writing campaign to raise awareness about the lack of promised funding for full waivers.   Although funding for tuition waivers was in peril, the waivers served an important purpose for GAU.  GAs qualifying for tuition waivers had them processed and given to them on one day every January in Grinter Hall.  This centralized location allowed GAU a place to actively recruit new members every year.  GAU made sure to remind GAs that, in fact, their just-processed waivers were available thanks to the hard work of the union, therefore, filling out a membership form should have been merely a formality to many GAs.[37]  Indeed, the years spanning 1985 – 1988 saw the largest period of membership growth within the union, with an membership increasing  from 12% to 22%.[38]  In response to the lack of legislative funding for tuition waivers, GAU also added several new positions and subcommittees to its executive committee structure:  a Vice President for Political Action who served to oversee the actions of the BOR and state legislature and maintain contact with public officials, a Political Action Committee,  and a Student Government Graduate Council Committee, which was responsible for investigating GA health insurance issues.[39]  As part of the GAU’s efforts to identify more closely with a traditional union-type of organization, monthly stewards meetings were established and bargaining surveys and grievance surveys were included in the fall 1988 newsletter, under the auspices of gaining information on prospective grievance issues that GAs might be facing.[40] 

In 1990, the top objectives of GAU for bargaining  were all specifically related to the employee status of GAs and no longer included any reference to the student status of GAs.[41]  Bargaining objectives included the inclusion of all GAs to the State health insurance plan, a 10% increase in stipends, the assurance of a letter of intent (describing the specific GA duties to be performed, the work hours involved, and the pay received), language stipulating departments to outline criteria for distribution of assistantships, a clause preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual preference, the provision of traditional faculty benefits such as on campus parking and use of the faculty support center.  The goal for GAU was to have the state pay for two-thirds of the cost of a health insurance plan for GAs and to make that plan available to all graduate students. 

GAU successfully realized many of these objectives.[42]  However, departments were still not required to provide written guidelines of criteria used to select GAs for assistantships, and GAs were still prohibited from use of faculty support centers, from access to Orange parking.  Most importantly, health coverage would not be provided for GAs, due to the legislatively mandated policy that no Other Personnel Services (OPS), employees, the state employee category under which GAs were classified, were to receive health insurance benefits. 

In yet another show of its support for graduate employees, GAU organized a ‘GA Awareness’ week.[43]  Events held during this week included a program of departmental meetings, workshops on receiving grants and financial aid, discussions on life after graduate school, a tax filing workshops, a health insurance workshop in which local insurance providers presented health care packages, a question-and-answer session on GAs and budget cuts in which GAU activists and administrators answered questions, and social events at which GAU buttons were handed out.  These events provided GAU with a chance to show local press, administrators and legislators that GAU was a professional organization committed to serving all graduate employees and that GA issues were important to large group of people. 

The bargaining research committee and the information gained during the health insurance workshop equipped GAU to present a proposal for a state-supported health insurance plan to the BOR during the 1991 bargaining sessions.[44]  Amid a state and national focus on health coverage, GAU began a campaign to increase awareness of the importance of health insurance issues for graduate employees.  GAU sent out petitions to graduate students and department chairs, who were then asked to forward their petitions to college deans and to Graduate School Dean Madelyn Lockhart.  Although Lockhart responded positively to the campaign, she expressed the common rhetoric of UF administrators and the BOR in a letter, saying that “health insurance is an important issue for graduate students…however, in Florida, stumbling blocks have been raised at every turn; this is not a state that has been generous with its employees!”[45]

As the union had done with tuition waivers several years earlier, GAU began lobbying efforts in Tallahassee to address the issue of health insurance for GAs.[46]  GAU held departmental meetings to discuss the issue of health insurance.  During 1991 alone, GAU held over 60 of these meetings.  GAU also began to file work-related grievances in earnest, issuing a university-wide grievance over the 6 week delay in pay raise for which the administration refused to accept responsibility.  In an effort to garner local support for their health insurance initiatives, GAU met with Gainesville Representative Cynthia Chestnut to discuss the issue and receive suggestions on how to educate the public on GA concerns.[47]  In addition, GAU’s Political Action Committee Chair interviewed Representatives Chestnut and David Flagg about the State’s tax structure and the possibility of funding health insurance for GAs.  Chestnut suggested that GAU increase awareness of health insurance concerns with their local legislative delegation, while Flagg promised to write a letter to the BOR stating his interest in the health care issue.  In the summer of 1992, GAU sent two envoys to Tallahassee to lobby the special legislative session, however little progress was made on the issue.

GAU also worked on improving language concerning general graduate employee benefits.  Consistent with the idea that GAs were employees similar in status to university faculty members, the union sought language that guaranteed that GAs would be appointed for terms congruent with faculty semesters – i.e. nine months.[48]   The union felt the university should provide guidelines and the types of evaluation criteria that the university used to determine whether a graduate student would have continuing graduate employment.  GAU also sought a release-time position for one GA, which would allow the union a part-time organizer similar to the type of organizer that many other labor unions relied on. 

In 1994, ongoing concerns for GAU continued to be gaining health insurance for GAs, increasing job security, and raising the minimum wage.  GAU efforts focused primarily on aiming to deflect threats to GA tuition waivers.  In 1994, the UF administration announced that the Florida state legislature had not provided sufficient funds for GA waivers, appropriating only 80% of the money necessary during its legislative session in 1993.[49]  The BOR and UF administration had calculated this appropriation shortfall by figuring all SUS schools into the appropriation amount, while legally, the legislative appropriation should have reflected money that was only to go to UF and USF, the two schools represented under the collective bargaining agreement.[50]  In the spring of 1993, the BOR began a campaign, which they tied to UF’s supposed $2.5 million shortfall in tuition waiver funds, to separate State-funded GAs from those funded by contracts and grants (RAs). This would mean that the BOR would no longer be required to fund waivers for the anyone not performing TA duties.  GAU maintained that an internal UF matter such as faculty members requesting funds for RAs should not be addressed in the collective bargaining agreement.  Requesting tuition waivers through granting agencies would be both time consuming and not cost-effective for faculty members, GAU activists believed that as a result of this proposal, faculty would tend to hire post-doctoral workers or technicians instead of providing for graduate research assistants.   Such a proposal would also make RAs subject to internal university politics, as some would be granted tuition waivers, while others would not. Although the BOR was unsuccessful in instating this proposal, BOR-GAU relations reached a high level of tension.  Vice Provost Gene Hemp, representing the UF administration at the bargaining table, arbitrarily dismissed all contract negotiation requests by GAU and said that UF had the power to “do whatever it wanted.”[51]  GAU publicized such quotes as a rallying point to sign up approximately 100 new members within a few months.  Regardless of worries about tuition waivers and general  funding cuts[52] GAU was able to move forward on the health insurance issue by trying, at the very least, to secure the option of payroll deduction for GA health insurance.  GAU worked together with the UF Graduate Student Council and successfully instituted payroll deduction for health insurance as an option as part of university policy.[53]  With the rapid advancement of the computer age, the union also fought for email privacy and free access to electronic facilities for all GAs.

The arrival of the computer age, however, served to take away one of the key methods that GAU had used since the mid-1980’s to recruit new members.  The Graduate School at UF shifted from processing tuition waivers at one central location to processing by secretaries within individual departments, therefore, GAU no longer was able to recruit new members outside the waiver processing offices. GAU membership levels dropped in 1994, which likely reflected this change in waiver processing.[54]  This, more than any obstacles that the university had previously thrown at the union, served to undermine the union’s effectiveness as it forced the union to once again recruit members without the direct reminder that, without GAU, it was likely GAs would not even have received the basic benefit of a tuition waiver, and would not be likely to receive additional benefits such as health insurance in the future. 

GAU, from its inception as the Graduate Student Union (GSU), focused primarily on general graduate student issues such as rising costs of tuition, discrimination during hiring and firing, and enforcing guidelines related to degree requirements.  Over time, the work of the organization was increasingly devoted to the fight for tuition waivers, higher stipends, more job security and health insurance.  This work, solely on behalf of graduate employees, led to the transformation of GAU into a legally recognized collective bargaining unit with primarily graduate employee concerns and a traditional union structure.  With the right to collectively bargain on behalf of all graduate employees at UF, GAU gained important rights for GAs.  Significant wins included the guaranteed provision of tuition waivers, yearly stipend increases, more equitable workloads, and an end to arbitrary hirings and firings of GAs.  However, GAU was unable to gain other significant rights for GAs within the context of collective bargaining.  GAU faced the seemingly unsurpassable obstacles of a fiscally convervative (with respect to education funding) political climate within the Florida legislature, the huge task of actively recruiting members in a State with ‘right-to-work’ status, and a general lack of support within the UF administration.  In addition to this, the rapid turnover of graduate students and a short-lived institutional memory resulted in an inherent lack of graduate student awareness concerning the basic employee rights and privileges that GAU had gained for them over the years.  As a result, by the mid-90’s graduate employees were asking, “What has GAU done for me?”  GAU leaders and activists were forced to spend time reminding GAs exactly what the union had done for them[55] and at the same time, sought to recoup its lost membership.  Unfortunately, this meant that such issues as health care provisions, increased job security, a raise to the minimum wage to reflect the increasing cost-of-living, and free access to electronic facilities would remain on the backburner for the years proceeding 1994.