Dear colleagues:
As you know, since 2023 the university and the Duke Graduate Student Union have been negotiating our first collective bargaining agreement (CBA). We are writing to inform you that the CBA has been ratified and is now fully executed. We are very grateful to colleagues in the Counsel’s Office, Human Resources, The Graduate School, Student Affairs, and elsewhere who contributed to and supported our negotiations. Special thanks to Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka,who led the bargaining team.
Here’s how you can prepare during the rollout of the CBA:
- Learn the essentials. A summary and FAQs and the full CBA are available in this folder on Duke Box.
- Join an online faculty Q&A. We are hosting a live session on Monday, October 27, at 11:00 am. You may sign up using this Qualtrics form.
- Watch for additional implementation guidance. The Graduate School and university are coordinating updates to procedures and systems required by the CBA. We’ll provide targeted training and step‑by‑step guidance as those updates are available.
- Be sure to (continue to) document and share clear expectations for your students. As you know, this is a best practice in graduate education. We highly recommend that you adopt the practice of following conversations with documentation and providing students with the opportunity to confirm their understanding.
- To help schools and departments get oriented, Elizabeth has been meeting with units to provide high‑level briefings and answer questions. If your school or department would like to schedule such a session, please contact her at elizabeth.washka@duke.edu.
In the meantime, we encourage you to review the FAQs and full CBA on Box. There is no need for you to share the CBA with students, as the union will take care of this, but students may come to you with questions. While you are free to answer their questions as you feel comfortable, we recommend referring them to their union stewards.
It goes without saying that all of this is very new—for you, for us, and for our students. We thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through this process.
Mohamed Noor
Executive Vice Provost
Suzanne Barbour
Dean of The Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education
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