The Graduate Student Union at Central Michigan University had a majority ‘yes’ vote today to make the union official.

With a 152-21 vote, the union received 88 percent of the vote.

“This is a tremendous success,” said Mike Hoerger, a Midland graduate student. “We were very excited to see a lot of (graduate assistants) show up during exam week.”

Hoerger said recently, graduate assistants at Florida State University had a similar vote and only received 16 percent of their graduate assistants show up to vote, where CMU had a 40 percent turnout.

Hoerger, who has been taking the leadership position on the union, said the turnout shows a lot about the graduate assistants on campus.

“Knowing the outcome would be this lopsided, they still came out to vote to show they care about having a voice on campus,” he said.

A total of 465 graduate assistants out of 550 were able to vote Monday and today on whether the union would become recognized by the state. Those excluded were research assistants and administrative assistants who have no teaching responsibilities.

Bob Martin, associate vice provost of faculty personnel services, attended the counting of the votes along with about 20 graduate assistants.

“I’m not terribly surprised (by the outcome),” Martin said.

Martin said the next official step for the union is for the Michigan Employment Relations Commission to certify the Graduate Student Union as the exclusive bargaining agent for the graduate assistants. This should take about two weeks, he said.

Hoerger said an interim organizing team will be put together this summer and start deciding on some basics for a contract. In the fall elections will be held for board members.

The law requires both parties to agree on a reasonable time and place for negations, Martin said.

“There has been no direct conversations yet as to when (negotiations will be held),” he said.

Check cm-life.com for more updates.

E-mail the author: Sarah Schuch