Graduate student workers at the University of Minnesota again voted against forming a union.
About 62 percent of those who voted last week opposed the union, the state Bureau of Mediation Services reported on Monday, adding to a string of failed attempts to organize the students who teach classes and conduct research on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses.
More than two-thirds of the 4,400 workers who were eligible to cast ballots in the weeklong vote did so.
This was the state's largest public union election in years and the fourth try at unionizing the U's graduate assistants since 1990. The last two elections, in 1999 and 2005, were closer calls.
"It's a bummer," said Ilana Percher, a teaching assistant in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
Union organizers, backed by the United Auto Workers of America, argued that a union would give graduate assistants equal footing to negotiate terms of their employment and protect against arbitrary changes to pay and working conditions.
U administrators fought the union effort, telling assistants that they are better off negotiating one-on-one and warning that a union would hinder working relationships between graduate students and their faculty mentors.
"Flexibility in working with each individual student is fundamental and absolutely critical to success," U President Eric Kaler told grad students in an e-mail, urging them to vote.