In what’s considered a victory for University of New Mexico graduate students fighting for the right to unionize, the state’s Public Employee Labor Relations Board gave its blessing for negotiations.

KUNM reported that the labor board had certified a card count – a process that took six hours – revealing a majority of the school’s 1,547 graduate workers support collective bargaining, which allows the United Graduate Workers of UNM to start talks with the institution.

It’s a goal of the UGW-UNM to secure higher wages, lower workloads, and more robust benefits.

When asked to define better conditions for graduate student workers, political Science doctoral candidate Samantha Cooney told the UNM-owned NPR affiliate, “[They include]  better pay, better health insurance. We’re hoping to get dental and vision insurance – for the parts of our bodies that are not covered right now.”

Earlier this month, more than two dozen graduate workers occupied a hallway inside Scholes Hall, UNM’s administration building, to demand the school grant them the right to form a union.

According to Source NM, they performed their teaching and research work near the president’s office on Dec. 7 to demonstrate the importance of their labor. The act took approximately 12 hours.

“The university continues to embarrass itself by challenging the state labor board rulings and denying our value as workers as human beings,” Hally Bert, one of the group who occupied Sholes, told Source NM.

Negotiations are just a steppingstone.

Source NM reported that while the state labor board sided with the graduate workers, UNM hasn’t certified the union.