Dental and vision coverage remain unresolved as UNM graduate workers prepare for spring contract talks. More than 100 students rallied outside Scholes Hall on Thursday; police turned some away when they tried to enter the building that houses the university’s central administration, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The bargaining unit includes 1,500 graduate assistants and fellows who work up to 20 hours a week teaching or conducting research, according to the Albuquerque Journal. UNM has said it is the only public university in New Mexico that provides health insurance to its graduate student workers. Students currently have to purchase dental and vision coverage themselves.
UNM’s published student health plan says the university pays the health-plan premium each semester for eligible graduate assistants and fellows, while dental and vision are optional benefits students may purchase on their own. That difference underlies the union’s demand as both sides prepare for another round of bargaining.
Who qualifies for the student health plan?
The University of New Mexico Human Resources office lists graduate students with teaching or graduate assistantships, fellowships, research assistantships, or qualifying project assistantships as eligible for the Student Health Plan. The verified information here does not establish a dollar amount for optional dental or vision coverage.
Graduate Workers Describe Delaying Care They Can't Afford
Lexi Kenis, an earth and planetary sciences PhD student who started at UNM in 2021, told the Journal she delayed dental care after beginning graduate school. She now needs an implant and a new crown, which she said would cost thousands of dollars against her $2,600-a-month salary.
Sociology doctoral student Rachel Johnston is awaiting a liver transplant after years of complications from ulcerative colitis, the Journal reported. She needs a dental exam to show she is free of oral infections to remain on the transplant list, and said dental and vision coverage would ease concerns about her eligibility.
Union Says UNM Already Promised Action
United Graduate Workers of UNM President Zach Strasberg said the university should fund workers’ dental and vision care rather than leave students to buy coverage themselves. Union leaders told the Albuquerque Journal that UNM officials had promised the previous year to begin the process for the coverage but delayed submitting a request for proposal, a process that typically takes around six months. Union leaders said the delay means the insurance process will not be complete before spring bargaining. Strasberg said the group planned a peaceful confrontation with administrators at Thursday’s demonstration.
UNM spokesperson Steve Carr told the Journal that benefits negotiations with the union formally begin during the spring semester and that the university intends to negotiate in good faith. The cost estimates offered by each side diverge: UNM has projected that dental and vision coverage for the 1,500-member bargaining unit would cost the university around $625,000, a figure it is less than the new UNM president's salary by $225,000, according to the estimate provided to the union. The United Graduate Workers of UNM, however, has put its own proposal's cost at $575,000 — a gap the two sides have not publicly reconciled.
A Recurring Fight Over Benefits
Thursday's rally is the latest in a string of actions UGW has staged since renegotiating its collective bargaining agreement, a process the union says it initiated in March 2025 before meeting with administrators the following month. KUNM reported that the current round of UNM contract talks began in April 2025, and about 200 graduate workers and supporters picketed on campus that October seeking higher pay along with dental and vision insurance. At a bargaining session that July, UNM denied the union's requests for dental and vision coverage, according to a union statement reported by the Daily Lobo.
The push for comprehensive benefits is not new. A 2024 UGW membership survey found workers ranked higher wages as their top priority, followed by comprehensive vision and dental benefits, dependent healthcare coverage and international worker protections, the union reported to UE. Separate polling has underscored the financial strain graduate workers describe: the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that 45% of respondents in a union poll said they had ignored or delayed treatment due to costs, while a UGW handout cited by the Daily Lobo put a similar figure at 43%. UE Local 1466 previously ratified a second contract after seven months of negotiations that secured six percent raises to minimum pay rates and across the bargaining unit, according to UE's own reporting.
Graduate worker protests at UNM have periodically escalated beyond rallies. In November 2022, around 200 graduate workers and supporters blocked the intersection of Yale and Lomas for an hour while protesting for better pay and lower insurance premiums, KUNM reported at the time. Thursday's demonstration outside Scholes Hall did not reach that scale, but it signaled that dental and vision coverage remains unresolved heading into the spring bargaining session both UNM and the union have now confirmed is coming.
