The Alliance of Graduate Employee Locals (AGEL) was founded in 1995 to embody and extend AFT's experience and leadership in graduate employee unionism. AGEL provides an effective structure within the AFT through which graduate employees who are actively participating in existing AFT unions or in active campaigns can offer one another regular support and guidance. In addition, AGEL provides a mechanism for the graduate employee unions to form positions to forward to the AFT higher education program and policy council, on which AGEL holds a seat.

AGEL, like AFT locals, operates with great autonomy. It sets its own agenda, and the graduate employee leaders who represent their unions on AGEL determine the structure of the alliance, its agenda, and how it communicates with the national union. This helps to ensure that graduate employees have a unique and identified voice in AFT.

In addition to the regular support AGEL members provide one another, AGEL holds two meetings a year, with financial and logistical support from the AFT. One meeting is dedicated to leadership and brings the AGEL leaders together, while the second meeting is dedicated to organizing and brings together new activists as well as AGEL leaders. Below is a copy of the AGEL mission statement developed by the founding group of AFT graduate employee leaders and staff.

AGEL-AFT OUR MISSION

AGEL-AFT is an alliance composed of all of the graduate employee locals in the American Federation of Teachers and participating non-affiliated organizations dedicated to unionizing graduate employees. In 1995, this alliance formed with the mission of advancing the rights and unionization efforts of graduate employees at colleges and universities nationwide. As an organization, we have decided that the resources and activities of this organization will be directed towards the following ongoing goals:

1. Representation of all graduate employees:
   1. We hold that persons employed by universities as teaching assistants, research assistants, and graduate assistants should be represented by unions of their choosing to negotiate terms of their employment with the administration.
   2. Employee representation is a fundamental right of employment and should not be denied in the university setting due to loosely defined and selectively applied notions of collegiality.
   3. This right to representation should extend to all matters directly relating to graduate student life in all cases because of the diverse and varied nature of graduate student populations.
   4. The graduate students employed as teachers and assistants greatly benefit universities through subsidizing the costs of undergraduate education while providing committed and caring attention to classroom education.
   5. As a coalition of AFT-affiliated graduate employee unions, we pledge to assist in graduate employee efforts to organize themselves into unions, and to support existing graduate employee unions to the best and furthest extent of our abilities. We pledge to actively participate in the creation of a national movement to organize graduate employees, which will hopefully result in many new unionization efforts. Toward this end, we pledge to work with other Internationals, maintain our commitment to the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, and continue our efforts to build solidarity among graduate employee unions of any affiliation.
       
2. Collective Action:
   Recognizing that our strength lies not in the power of individual positions, but in our solidarity with one another, not in financial resources, but in the resources of our membership as well as the wider labor movement, AGEL-AFT believes the needs of graduate employees can only be met if we act in concert and advocate unionization as the best means for graduate employees to gain control over working conditions and social circumstances.
    
3. Quality higher education:
   1. We assert the unique role that graduate students play within any major university as hard working teachers and employees, instrumental research assistants, dedicated students, and crucial liaisons between the faculty and undergraduate populations.
   2. As teachers and assistants with a great deal invested in the success of both undergraduate teaching and the academic research, we are dedicated to constant improvement of these relationships within the university
   3. We believe that representation of graduate employees will stabilize many loosely defined conditions which can distract from the goal of education in the university setting.
       
4. Participatory democracy:
   AGEL-AFT acknowledges the historic imbalance of power between union leaders and rank-and-file members. We also acknowledge that empowering our members to achieve AGEL-AFT's other goals requires broad involvement of our membership in decision making. Therefore, we dedicate ourselves to continually critiquing our decision-making mechanisms, and to developing improved mechanisms which ideally incorporate participation by all union members in an efficient decision-making process.
    
5. Emphasis on graduate students' integral role in the academic community:
   1. By focusing attention on the invaluable teaching and research contributions of graduate employees, AGEL-AFT hopes to render this vital community visible to the larger academic community.
   2. We believe that collegiality is not possible without equality; we thus believe that it is only through collectively asserting our rights as workers and our value as educators that we can achieve truly collegial relationships with faculty and administrations.
       
6. Emphasis on our status as workers:
   Because defining us as students allows university administrations to conveniently elide workers' issues, AGEL-AFT believes that the graduate employee's status as worker must be established with the larger community. Establishing ourselves as workers will entitle us to pursue rights and benefits similar to those of the faculty and staff at our respective institutions.
    
7. A diverse, and truly representative organization
   AGEL-AFT is committed to a diverse coalition. Specifically, we believe in proactively recruiting and developing a coalition reflective of the diverse makeup of our bargaining unit. To this end, we will actively reach out to minority, gay and lesbian, and international graduate students on campus and we will consistently monitor the gender dynamics of our respective unions. As our membership grows, we must continually work to achieve balance/equity among the diverse membership groups. Furthermore, we believe that working for equality and against discrimination is integral to our efforts to organize.
    
8. A progressive labor movement now and in the future:
   1. As graduate employee unions affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers we strive to carry out the historic missions of the labor movement to represent all working people, and to advocate for more democratic and inclusive social and political policies.
   2. While intellectual workers have often viewed themselves as distinct from other workers, we stand in solidarity with all other working people in their struggle for representation and fair working terms and conditions. Furthermore, we recognize the commonality of interests among all workers, and we strive to improve not only the lot of graduate employees, but of all those who work for a living.
   3. We believe that all workers -- including public employees -- are entitled to the right to organize, the right to unionize, and the right to withhold their work if their concerns are not rapidly addressed.
       
9. Community building:
   Working collectively towards a common end not only improves our position in the workplace; it has also given rise to a community which we recognize as an invaluable part of the organizing process. AGEL-AFT is committed to fostering this community through both its internal manifestations and through its solidarity with the wider labor movement. We recognize that the line between the political and the social is thinly drawn, and seek to maintain an organization which meets our membership's needs in both areas.
    
10. Working from within the American Federation of Teachers:
    Over the past decades, the American Federation of Teachers has demonstrated an increasing commitment to graduate employee organization. Realizing that we, as "temporary" workers and as professionals, are emblematic of the labor movement's future direction, the AFT has proven its willingness to set aside old organizing models and provide necessary resources and support for graduate employees to organize themselves. AGEL-AFT commends the American Federation of Teachers for its commitment to organizing graduate employees, and we are committed to working from within the organization on that mission.