The cultural landscape of graduate employee life in the research university faces significant change. Ten years ago just a handful of recognized graduate employee unions existed. Today, more than two dozen campuses have recognized unions and another two dozen or so are in the process of organizing graduate student employees. The extant literature on graduate employee unionization allows only minimal understanding of key barriers to graduate student unionizing efforts, including barriers to the successful implementation of a negotiated agreement. Empirically-based understandings of the process of graduate employee unionization are needed. This article offers a theoretical framework for examining cultural barriers to graduate employee unionization. The basic research questions guiding this study are stated as follows: What are the organizational barriers to graduate student unionization? How might these barriers be understood from a cultural perspective? Two additional questions helped galvanize the study: What are the benefits to examining graduate student unionization from a cultural perspective? What kind of guidance might a cultural approach to organizations suggest in terms of understanding graduate employee unionization and administrative response? The findings reveal several cultural barriers to unionization, each analyzed at the levels of artifacts, underlying assumptions, and values, and within the domains of graduate student, faculty, and administrative subcultures. This study has both practical and scholarly implications. Identifying barriers to graduate student unionization offers insight for better preparing and/or responding to unionization efforts. The findings also demonstrate how unionization barriers may be understood as culturally embedded and woven throughout subcultures within the larger organizational context.