On April 11, UE Local 197-Teachers and Researchers United signed an agreement with Johns Hopkins University to guarantee sixth-year funding to the next two cohorts of graduate workers in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This represents a significant win for Local 197 in our ongoing struggle to ensure that all JHU graduate workers have the funding to complete their degrees.
Humanities and Social Science departments at JHU mainly receive their funding from the central administration, as opposed to grants or outside fellowships. While all programs in these departments received a guaranteed five years of full funding in our contract, Johns Hopkins’s own statistics show that these programs take on average close to seven years to complete. When a worker in these departments runs out of their guaranteed funding years, they are expected to find their own sources of funding, whether through outside grants or departmental teaching opportunities, when they are available. This need to source one’s own funding — while at the same time as writing a dissertation and applying for jobs — placed a burden on workers, especially as JHU had room in their budget to cover these additional funding years quite easily.
The Sixth Year Funding Committee was created in our collective bargaining agreement to address this issue. After organizing a successful picket to demand a settlement to guarantee sixth-year funding for all Humanities and Social Science workers for academic year 2024-25, the committee began meeting with the administration in the fall of 2024, with the goal of expanding funding opportunities for future graduate worker cohorts. Their efforts included inviting affected workers to deliver testimonials to the administration, targeting Requests for Information (RFIs) to establish past practice regarding departments offering funding, and flyering campaigns highlighting JHU’s budget and ability to fund every worker fully until they achieve their degree.
Alongside these efforts, stewards filed grievances to successfully ensure that workers beyond their sixth year who were on teaching fellowships were paid the full union rate, rather than the 75 percent that JHU administration initially offered. Together, we showed Johns Hopkins that we would not back down from the fight for fair compensation for all Johns Hopkins graduate workers for the duration of our degrees. After a semester of ongoing meetings, JHU administration approached the union early this semester with an offer to cover the next two years of sixth-year funding, for academic years 2025-26 and 2026-27. This funding lasts until our contract expires in 2027, at which point we will bargain with the administration again regarding funding guarantees.
The offer ensures that all of our next two cohorts of sixth-year members in Humanities and Social Sciences departments will receive guaranteed compensation in their sixth year. Workers who do not receive an external fellowship or alternate source of funding will be offered an appointment by their department — either a full teaching or research appointment, or a partial appointment with no teaching work.
Upon receiving the offer, the members of the committee proceeded to discuss it one-on-one with every member of the affected cohorts — just over 100 people. These one-on-one meetings led to a packed meeting of the committee with the administration to demonstrate our membership’s commitment to this issue. Once language of the agreement had been finalized, affected members expressed overwhelming support for the proposal and the committee agreed to the terms with JHU. The agreement will be implemented beginning July 1, ensuring no gaps in funding for those currently in their fifth year.
After meeting with members in the Humanities and Social Sciences division, members of the committee also assisted other departments in similar fights. After the School of Public Health (SPH) was hit with cuts in federal grants, organizers from Humanities and Social Sciences lent important experience and knowledge to assist organizers in SPH to coordinate one-on-one meetings with their members to discuss these issues, highlighting the importance of cross-divisional organizing in our local.
This guaranteed sixth-year funding agreement marks another victory for the rights and security of our membership! It shows us that Johns Hopkins does, in fact, have the means to support and protect its workers — despite their claims otherwise. Now, as our local shifts focus to members who have been affected by federal attacks on international workers and research funding, we will build upon the security afforded by this agreement to demand further protections from JHU administration.