GALOL represents non-faculty teaching staff and graduate employees at the University of Maryland, College Park and aims to foster the best possible educational environment in our University. Our goals stem from our commitment to academic excellence (in both research and teaching) and the belief that a University must recognize, respect and support the labor of all its academic workers in order to excel. Academic workers are the only employees in the state specifically denied their right to be classified as such; GALOL was formed to protect these workers' rights and improve their working conditions. Our position is that a union will give all academic workers a voice in improving both their own working conditions and the University's commitment to higher education.

As a first step, GALOL has joined the efforts to pass legislation granting collective bargaining rights to all University of Maryland employees and is working to organize academic workers to use their collective power for the benefit of all University employees and students.

In the long term, GALOL will work to reverse the overall decline in the number of tenure positions, the increasing reliance on graduate and adjunct labor, and the growing bureaucratization of higher education in the US. GALOL's position is that these trends dangerously weaken the quality of public education throughout the country by directly and adversely affecting job security and working conditions for academics at all levels.

In this process, GALOL invites all of its members to take equal responsibility and participate equally in the formation and operation of the union. GALOL also welcomes and reciprocates the support of other organizations that support principles we uphold as being essential to a decent society, such as those of social justice, economic equality, affirmative action and nonviolence.

mission statement of the American Federation of Teachers:

The mission of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, is to improve the lives of our members and their families, to give voice to their legitimate professional, economic and social aspirations, to strengthen the institutions in which we work, to improve the quality of the services we provide, to bring together all members to assist and support one another and to promote democracy, human rights and freedom in our union, in our nation and throughout the world.

--From the Futures II report  adopted at the AFT Convention, July 5, 2000.