Not mentioned in the story linked here is the inspiring campaign supporting the CMU grad student’s effort: on a recent AGEL (Alliance of Graduate Employee Locals) conference call, one of the CMU grad students talked about some of their efforts before the vote, including a phone campaign where union parents called the president of CMU to say that they wouldn’t send their kids to a non-union school.
CMU grads vote to unionize:
http://media.www.cm-life.com/media/storage/paper906/news/2009/05/01/News/Graduate.Student.Union.Becomes.Official-3736922.shtml?reffeature=recentlycommentedstoriestab
Also, here are a couple of other interesting links that you all might find interesting:
Chronicle of Higher Ed article about “why professors should support grad student unions:”
http://chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-43.dir/issue-24.dir/24b00601.htm
Study of grad student unions in Canada:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/132872667.html