OLD FORMULAS, NEW PLAYBOOK
Building a Striking Department
at Boston University

Lucía Vilallonga & Jacksyn Bakeberg

30 June 2025

The group of 3-adic integers and its Pontryagin dual.  
“A work-place isn’t a collection of individuals so much as a collection of informal groups. Until you
recognize that, you’re not really into utilizing the power of people in the workplace.” – Stan Weir

Many larger trends in the economy of universities find expression within mathematics departments. Huge swaths of students pass through math courses at some point in their studies, yet the discipline receives significantly less funding than most of STEM. At the same time as the academic job market is contracting, math departments increasingly depend on the reserve supply of graduate labor when they cannot find enough instructors. At Boston University (BU), PhD students in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics have a higher teaching burden than most others on campus, with a minimum expectation to TA every semester of the degree and also to lecture back-to-back intensive courses every summer. 

Department social life took a serious hit from the pandemic. In Fall 2020, BU policy required teaching assistants and fellows to be present in Boston in order to be paid, so that the university could claim to run “hybrid” instruction at a time when most others were still fully online. In practice, few students would attend in-person discussion sections that could be livestreamed from bed. We paid Boston rent to commute to an empty classroom and then return to our tiny rodent-infested apartments, as most other department functions remained virtual. As grad workers returned to campus, talk of unionization began to spread.

Despite the gap in institutional memory caused by pandemic isolation, faint glimpses remained of previous union campaigns. An older coworker smirked when asked how they felt about unionization and inquired whether we knew the department’s previous union guy, who collected authorization cards during a previous failed attempt in 2018 to organize with the UAW. During the campaign with SEIU which led to the successful 2022 recognition election, another told us they had already signed only for us to eventually figure out they were referring to UAW cards from several years earlier.

As grad workers collected cards and built a union, organizers mapped out some of the important overlapping social subdivisions in the department:

1. the research groups (number theory, geometry, dynamics, applied math, statistics);

2. the cohorts, especially those entering in Fall 2021 and after; and

3. international students, mostly from China.

Once contract negotiations got underway, organizers searched for an organic department-level issue to agitate around in preparation for a possible strike. We noticed that PhDs across all these groups had clamored for many years to receive teaching appointments in advance rather than the typical week or less before the semester started. After pay and healthcare, this issue was the most galvanizing: if we didn’t know when and where our classes would be, how could we plan research meetings and seminars? It made grads feel disrespected, one more reminder that we are on the bottom of the ladder. Moreover, it was transparent that the issue was easily resolvable: every year the responsibility of coordinating all teaching assignments was assigned to an overworked non-tenured lecturer. While it had been a common complaint for years, the appetite to do something about it only rose once we learned through BUGWU, our new grad union, how neatly and painlessly other departments handled teaching appointments, including some who managed to get it done before the previous semester had even ended.

A small group of grads first reached out to department leadership, as an olive-branch and a fact-finding mission. If possible, we wanted to work together to find solutions to the problem. This meeting resulted in a lukewarm commitment that the department would attempt to get fall teaching appointments done in August. Predictably, this promise went unfulfilled despite grads volunteering to help get the process moving. The department-level organizing committee (OC) called a meeting to draft a letter which stated firmly that the status quo was no longer tolerable and that grad workers demanded at least one month prior notification of job assignments. By the end of September a majority of the grads had signed on to the letter including almost all of the PhDs with teaching duties that semester.

After reaching this majority the signed letter was delivered to department leadership. The response was unexpectedly positive, and the next semester’s teaching appointments came several weeks in advance. 

This action could be described as a “structure test,” but it differed from the formulaic button-ups and strike ready-selfies union staff were urging grad workers to put on the “escalation calendar.” Crucially, this was not a capital-U Union action, but something workers were electing to do in lowercase-u unison. Though the idea and the plan had started within the department OC, contract negotiations were rarely mentioned in the pitches to gather signatures and some of those who were doing the pitching were not (yet) coming to OC meetings. This may have made some signatures from Union-skeptical coworkers easier to get. But it also developed a deep sense of ownership over our workplace and an instinct towards collective action in a way that sporting BUGWU buttons would not have done. Suddenly most coworkers, not just union activists, would come to the OC first with workplace issues.

Concurrently with the teaching appointments action, Math & Stats grad workers made concerted efforts to create more social opportunities in the department. In the spring following the election, a group of grads organized an informal pedagogy seminar to make up for the lack of training offered by BU. In the summer several workers formed a department intramural softball team which turned into a volleyball team in the fall. One coworker revived a weekly pub night, which happened to take place right after OC meetings. These sorts of activities, work-related or not, developed and deepened relationships which cut across the existing social groups, built trust and confidence, and created opportunities for workers to rely on each other. Sometimes the union came up as a natural topic of conversation, but it was the informal social ties that allowed organizers to bring the union to coworkers later, when we needed to strategize together around a strike and then build it.

Those who were hesitant about striking were able to talk through their fears and had a first-hand example of collective power. Workers who had only started organizing in the department with the appointments letter had more practice having tough conversations around striking for the long haul. As the stakes became serious, attendance at department meetings soared and a supermajority of Math & Stats grad workers walked out on March 25, including all three graduate instructors of record.

OC meetings were places for reflection and collective problem-solving, and once the strike began they became essentially constant. One co-worker addressed the immediate concern of financial support by  developing a mutual aid system which went on to redistribute over $90,000 to strikers throughout the next seven months and became a model for other departments. When classes were scabbed, co-workers mobilized to distribute flyers and formed a picket-line early on a cold, rainy morning. When some flyer distributors got harassed by a particularly hostile Senior Associate Dean who scabbed one of our classes, we immediately huddled in support and demanded a meeting with the faculty.

As the semester went on and management’s movement at the bargaining table ebbed and flowed, workers processed each other’s anxieties and focused attention constantly towards what could be done to adapt and hold on for longer. PhDs carry the bulk of the department’s summertime teaching load, which left the University scrambling to find adjunct scabs faster than grads could talk them out of crossing the picket line. There was little movement at the bargaining table but many were too busy playing softball to notice–now with BUGWU members from several departments. We waited out for the start of the fall semester, aiming to prove we could hold out one day more than management.

Many of the co-workers most involved in organizing report feeling transformed by the strike, but by the end of the summer the intensity had taken its toll. When management made what it called its best and final offer on August 7 after little movement at the bargaining table since May, it was vindication that our summer sacrifices had once more forced management to do something they didn’t want to do. Most felt the proposed contract left the university insufficiently punished, but there was no narrowed set of demands being organically elevated as a reason to continue the strike into the fall. A large group of strikers remained willing to continue the fight. However, they privately began to signal that they were emotionally and financially exhausted and couldn’t picture sustaining the strike until another point of leverage arose on the academic calendar.

As grad workers across campus debated how to “land the plane” and secure a safe return-to-work agreement for all workers, Math & Stats rank-and-filers were some of the most vocal in urging coworkers to continue the strike until nobody was left behind. In the final days, one coworker went office-to-office to agitate people once more, to carry on for one more week, because there remained a handful of strikers in other departments without a guaranteed job to return to. “Remember Alex? We have to fight for her,” he pleaded. “She played on our softball team.”

Above: the BU Math & Stats department softball team, Service Employees International Union Local 509.
Below: the baseball team of the United Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 445, CIO League Champions 1940.