Dartmouth College’s unionized graduate students marked International Workers’ Day by going on strike, leaving classrooms vacant of teaching assistants and research stations empty.

“We’re going to be out here all day, every day until what?” organizer Rendi Rogers, a doctoral student at the Geisel School of Medicine, asked a crowd of about 50 at the picket line on the Dartmouth Green.

“A contract!” they shouted back. The Graduate Organized Laborers at Dartmouth, or GOLD-UE — with about 800 members — are withholding their labor in an effort to advance negotiations with the college. Talks began in August and the union characterizes them as stalled.

The strike commence May 1 at 7:30 a.m. “After eight months of bargaining, the Dartmouth administration has continued to reject proposals that would offer graduate workers a living wage, dental coverage, affordable child care, retirement benefits and short-term disability leave,” a news release from the union stated.

A particular sticking point has been the college’s refusal to meet the union’s demand for a cost-of-living adjustment based on rent, known as a COLA. The union is demanding a $53,000 work stipend in the first year of the contract.

Dartmouth, however, contends that it’s the union that has been unresponsive.

Under the current agreement with the college, the graduate workers are paid roughly $40,000 a year — up from around $35,000 after a walkout in 2022 — and qualify for coverage under the Dartmouth student health care plan. They’re offered limited vision insurance, and don’t receive dental insurance, dependent health care or a retirement plan.

In the current negotiations, Dartmouth has offered a $47,000 stipend in year one of the contract.

Provost David Kotz took negotiations public in a Wednesday morning missive to campus that said Dartmouth also “proposed a new benefit for GOLD-UE members where Dartmouth would pay 25% of dependent health insurance premiums (with no limit on number of dependents). In response, GOLD-UE refused to offer a new counter.”

He added that the college also “explored potential areas where it could demonstrate flexibility to attain a mutually beneficial agreement with the hope that GOLD-UE would do the same. GOLD-UE clarified their core positions, but made no offers, proposals or counter proposals that could move bargaining forward.

Substantive discussion on articles did not occur nor did we reach a tentative agreement.”

As of midday May 1, the union had heard reports of canceled classes and lab sections, said Rogers. “We will be withholding our teaching and research labor, employed as teaching assistants and researchers. We won’t be leading lab courses, lectures, holding office hours, grading, gathering and sharing new data, submitting papers or grants.”

The college’s position hasn’t changed substantially since the start of negotiations, said Logan Mann, a doctoral student in the engineering department and a member of the union’s bargaining committee.

Conversation about striking began in earnest in early April at a general governing body meeting, and two weeks ago, the union voted to authorize a strike, he said.

When an April 30 negotiating session did not yield the results they were after, members decided to act on that authorization.

With Wednesday’s strike announcement, Dartmouth graduate students have joined their counterparts at Boston University, who have been on strike since late March.

In July 2022, the GOLD-UE voted to affiliate with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which has organized 25,000 graduate workers across the United States. Dartmouth has since been among the Ivy League schools that are home to graduate student unions, including Harvard and Columbia — the latter of which saw a series of monthslong strikes in 2021 and 2022.

The Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, formed in 2022 as undergraduate student-workers demanded hazard pay increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, walked off jobs May 1 in solidarity with the graduate student workers. The move capitalizes on a clause in their contract with the college that allows them to honor the strikes of other groups, and largely halts operations at most cafés and snack bars across campus.

The graduate student-worker strike is the “first strike at Dartmouth in decades,” said Kaya Colakoglu, a member of the undergraduate union.

The Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, one of the first of its kind, “fought” for a clause in their contract that affirmed their right to honor other picket lines, Colakoglu said. It’s “part of an insurgent highered labor movement we’re seeing in a lot of other unions.”

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The union is demanding a $53,000 work stipend in the first year of the contract. Dartmouth has offered a $47,000 stipend in current negotiations.