Grad Students Can Now Unionize
August 23, 2016 11:14 AM   Subscribe

 
Graduate students who work as teachers, or teaching assistants, can now unionize.
posted by Postroad at 11:18 AM on August 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


I hope they don't just replace them with adjuncts. Especially since it's possible for grad students to be adjuncts (I was for 6 months after my funding ran out).
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:25 AM on August 23, 2016


I hope they don't just replace them with adjuncts

Unlikely. Having grad students to mentor and teach is one of the draws for top-notch faculty at research institutions, and producing PhDs is part of what makes them top-notch research institutions. On top of that, providing a stipend is important to attracting talented students, and having students teach helps make the stipend affordable for the department.

Anyway, the adjuncts are just gonna unionize too, if you drop TAs/grad teaching and replace them with adjuncts.
posted by dis_integration at 11:30 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


This is big news. Look what happened to NYU when their graduate students unionized! They get paid EXTRA for TAing.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:35 AM on August 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


Graduate students who work as teachers, or teaching assistants, can now unionize.

Not sure what point you mean to make by saying this.
posted by clockzero at 11:36 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


I dunno, I think it's be pretty easy to transition from "grad students are teaching assistants" to "grad students can get adjunct contracts". Then, you can just switch all the contracts over to non-student adjuncts if the grad students complain about pay.

Also, I fear students will demand stipends less as increasing desperation and the growing uselessness of the bachelor's degree sends more and more people to grad school.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:40 AM on August 23, 2016


Adjuncts are excluded from this?
posted by oceanjesse at 11:40 AM on August 23, 2016


Adjuncts aren't covered by this ruling, but only because adjuncts can already unionize.
posted by peppercorn at 11:42 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


(clockzero: Many grad students in the sciences -- experimentalists in particular -- are research assistants paid out of their advisor's grants, and do no teaching, or are paid through a fellowship or other outside money. I can't really speak to the humanities, but I get the impression similar situations exist there, though of course they're much more rare.

And RAs are at substantial risk of exploitation: if the stories I here are to be believed, those labs can be bad. So this is a step, but the caveat is important.)
posted by golwengaud at 11:43 AM on August 23, 2016 [8 favorites]


(Aaand, I just read the first line of TF (NYT) A; RAs are included in the decision. Serves me right for commenting before reading.)
posted by golwengaud at 11:44 AM on August 23, 2016 [6 favorites]


Adjuncts can unionize, but they never, ever will. They're too disposable and most of them still hope to end up in real faculty and would be worried that unionizing would ruin those chances forever.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:44 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I think it's be pretty easy to transition from "grad students are teaching assistants" to "grad students can get adjunct contracts". Then, you can just switch all the contracts over to non-student adjuncts if the grad students complain about pay.

At Columbia, most PhD students are guaranteed 4-5 years of funding. There's not short term contracts. If Columbia decided to hire adjuncts instead of graduate students as TAs, then that would entail two things: either the graduate student stipend is lowered, or it isn't. If it isn't, then no biggie since thats less work that graduate students have to do. If their stipend is lowered, then that makes the quality of the students worse, since schools compete for top talent, and a stipend is just one of the ways of doing that.

Also, I fear students will demand stipends less as increasing desperation and the growing uselessness of the bachelor's degree sends more and more people to grad school.

Applying to and beating out the other 500 applicants to a PhD program isn't something people do because they can't get a job with a bachelor's degree. If they do do that, they're very likely to not finish.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:46 AM on August 23, 2016 [6 favorites]


Well, that might apply to the top 1% of students, but most of them aren't.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:48 AM on August 23, 2016


The thing is, most grad programs can only accommodate a certain number of students - even if you overload your program, each mentor can only mentor so many. PhD programs are not a viable alternative for large numbers of additional students - some, certainly, but not the vast numbers who have BAs and can't get jobs. MAs are what I'd expect to see boom.
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


PhD mentoring is much more intensive than undergrad - it's not just "sit in a classroom full of people, see your advisor twice a semester and the work is harder than undergrad".
posted by Frowner at 11:50 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm not saying there will be more positions. I'm saying that when you have a ton of candidates, you don't have to offer much to get a decent one.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:52 AM on August 23, 2016


Most grad students teaching sections, etc. are from Ph.D. programs. You don't tend to go into those because of "degree inflation," particularly because most Ph.D.s don't function as tickets to high-paying careers.

Universities differ, but most terminal-master's students aren't working as teaching assistants.
posted by praemunire at 11:52 AM on August 23, 2016


If Columbia decided to hire adjuncts instead of graduate students as TAs, then that would entail two things: either the graduate student stipend is lowered, or it isn't. If it isn't, then no biggie since thats less work that graduate students have to do. If their stipend is lowered, then that makes the quality of the students worse, since schools compete for top talent, and a stipend is just one of the ways of doing that.

Wouldn't not having to teach balance out the lower stipend?
posted by Etrigan at 11:53 AM on August 23, 2016


Would've appreciated this when I was in grad school (NYU, late 1980s). There was lots of talk along these lines even then. Things move slowly, and can be two-steps-forward-one-step-back, but: yay progress!
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:57 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


Adjuncts can unionize, but they never, ever will. They're too disposable and most of them still hope to end up in real faculty and would be worried that unionizing would ruin those chances forever.

Adjuncts are unionizing right now. What is going on in this thread?
posted by peppercorn at 11:57 AM on August 23, 2016 [23 favorites]


Universities differ, but most terminal-master's students aren't working as teaching assistants.

This does not match my experiences in Biology. There were more masters candidates than doctoral, and most students were on TAs. I wonder if it was just my university?

Also, as a terminal-masters student myself (at least so far) the recent trend to give crappy doctoral students a master's degree as a consolation price can go jump off a cliff and die.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:59 AM on August 23, 2016


The question I have is, why are they planning to join the UAW over, say, one of the teachers' unions?
posted by fifthrider at 11:59 AM on August 23, 2016


The question I have is, why are they planning to join the UAW over, say, one of the teachers' unions?

Some unions choose to affiliate with what seem to be unrelated unions based on how they operate. For instance, the National Postal Mail Handler's Union is part of the Laborer's International Union of North America.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:07 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Our graduate labor union at the University of Connecticut includes research assistants and teaching assistants. Columbia's GWC-UAW may still have to fight with the University about research assistants as members of their bargaining unit, but the GWC is CERTAINLY working right now to ensure that RAs are included in their union. RAs are members of the organizing committee.

Here are a few things that have happened since we unionized, just off the top of my head:
1) The University stopped trying to cut our children off of our health insurance, and then gave us better health insurance per our CBA,
2) We successfully defended a graduate student who was in serious danger of dropping out (or even being kicked out!) after her advisor sexually assaulted her, and won her three years of funding flat out plus a new advisor (and if you don't think that's a serious win you haven't been paying attention)
3) People who had previously been unable to take even a DAY off from their research duties now have 3 sick/personal days per semester as a right, and can request up to 21 days leave (which may be paid or unpaid)
4) Graduate employees who are parents can have a portion of their childcare costs defrayed
5) Supervisors have to provide us with a description of our duties upon instigation of a new teaching or research assistantship assignment, in writing
6) Employment offers made and accepted cannot be rescinded (ie, if the class you are TAing for doesn't make, you have to be reassigned, not just dropped)
7) We cannot be summarily dismissed from our employment; we can only be fired for cause.


As far as why the UAW -- we also organized with the UAW. They actually represent a large number of higher education workers across the country, including the very well known University of California grad union and postdoc union. They've also just got a really good plan for graduate employee unionization; they've got a few high level staffers who are really well versed in what graduate student life is like. It just made sense for us.

Grad unions are great!
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:10 PM on August 23, 2016 [58 favorites]


This does not match my experiences in Biology. There were more masters candidates than doctoral, and most students were on TAs. I wonder if it was just my university?

As another data point in biology, my department did not fund masters students at all; TAs were all PhD students.
posted by pemberkins at 12:11 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Adjuncts can unionize, but they never, ever will. They're too disposable and most of them still hope to end up in real faculty and would be worried that unionizing would ruin those chances forever.

I...don't follow? What peppercorn said.

There were more masters candidates than doctoral, and most students were on TAs. I wonder if it was just my university?

This differs from university to university, but also from program to program, especially when it comes to funding lines. A terminal MA student in a Ph.D.-granting English program is much less likely than one in STEM to have any serious access to funding, which includes TAships. Instead, the terminal MAs function as what are delicately known as cash cows.

I should note that the flip side of exploiting graduate student TAs in the humanities is not giving them any independent teaching at all, which may seem nice (hey, you're not interfering with their dissertations) but actually isn't (it's a red flag to any college or university with a 3-3 or more teaching load--i.e., most of them).

Also, as a terminal-masters student myself (at least so far) the recent trend to give crappy doctoral students a master's degree as a consolation price can go jump off a cliff and die.

No, this was what happened to doctoral candidates who failed to finish/pass their exams/etc. when my father was a graduate student back in the 60s. There's nothing recent about it.
posted by thomas j wise at 12:12 PM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


Adjuncts can unionize, but they never, ever will. They're too disposable and most of them still hope to end up in real faculty and would be worried that unionizing would ruin those chances forever.

Adjuncts are unionizing right now. What is going on in this thread?


Adjuncts are unionizing across the country. It's almost, like, a movement.
posted by dis_integration at 12:13 PM on August 23, 2016 [6 favorites]


I dunno, I think it's be pretty easy to transition from "grad students are teaching assistants" to "grad students can get adjunct contracts". Then, you can just switch all the contracts over to non-student adjuncts if the grad students complain about pay.

If you have a union, this is the kind of thing you can file an unfair labor practice over.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:14 PM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]


No, this was what happened to doctoral candidates who failed to finish/pass their exams/etc. when my father was a graduate student back in the 60s. There's nothing recent about it.

Oh. Well, it needs to end. Successful masters programs aren't the same as failed doctoral ones; I mean, I had to write a thesis and everything (I even got two papers out of it). That's not the same as failing a doctoral program and frankly the equivalence is insulting.
posted by Mitrovarr at 12:18 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


While this is probably a bit of a derail-- Mitrovarr, the decision to graduate with a Master's rather than fail out of the doctoral program is usually one that is done to acknowledge the student's work and progress to date. Typically, someone who takes a Master's rather than continuing has done the equivalent work of a Master's degree. It generally is different from flunking out or failing to finish. I'm sorry you find the equivalence insulting, but I find it rather one of the small bright spots in the academic world.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:21 PM on August 23, 2016 [15 favorites]


You seem to be operating under the belief that those who received an MA while in a PhD program received that MA because they dropped out and didn't receive the MA because they completed the requirements.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:22 PM on August 23, 2016 [8 favorites]


On research assistants, a specific item from the text of the NLRB decision:
"We further find that, under the common-law test discussed in our decision today, research assistants at Columbia are employees under the Act."

This is such a huge win. I'm so happy for folks who are going to be able to have their work recognized as WORK, and not just something that they ought to be willing to devote all their waking hours to as a labor of LOVE. I can LOVE my research and STILL want to be paid to do it.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:37 PM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


This does not match my experiences in Biology. There were more masters candidates than doctoral, and most students were on TAs. I wonder if it was just my university?

Like pemberkins, my experience in biology departments at state schools that almost all TAs are PhD students. That said, I have never been part of a biology department that really admitted terminal Masters' students; in my experience, people with masters have done several years of PhD-level work and then decided for a number of reasons that they weren't interested in continuing on.

(Sometimes this was 'your committee won't graduate you with a PhD and your time to be funded ran out, so given that you've done grad work in biology for 7 years we will give you a Master's as a consolation degree.' Sometimes it's 'my husband moved and I need to follow him, and I'm really frustrated with academia so the hell with this.' Sometimes it's 'my abusive PI sketchily failed me for no apparent reason in prelims after messing with my committee appointment, but at least I got a Masters' to show on my resume and I have a good reason to flee this dysfunctional place' or 'I got four years in and realized I fucking hate this and would rather gnaw off my own hands than stay here' or 'wow, this department was a really bad fit for me and my advisor lied to me about what I would be getting into. fuck this, I'm going to go elsewhere for my PhD proper.' I've seen students come up with a lot of reasons for mastering out. Life happens to people.)

I... would be horrified to see students who leave PhD programs not take a Masters' with them. I don't think I've ever seen a student master out before the end of their third or fourth year of hard work, and most terminal Masters programs I've seen are the result of about two years of work. If I wanted to get a master's degree, "be recruited into a PhD program and then leave early" is nooooot the easiest way I can think of to go about doing it.
posted by sciatrix at 12:46 PM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]


Quite a few Ph.D. programs routinely grant the master's at the end of two or three years of doctoral program work (e.g., after completing qualifying exams or defending a dissertation proposal), though often students don't bother to file the paperwork, etc., on time.
posted by praemunire at 12:52 PM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


I posted this because my SO is a grad student (in the humanities) at Columbia. This is huge for her, especially as Columbia was fighting this tooth and nail. She TAs almost every semester and hopefully this will mean (among other things) that her housing (through Columbia) does not increase in cost faster than her stipend (this has always struck me as ridiculous, but I suppose this is a case of the right hand not giving two shits about what the left hand is doing.)

As to the Masters for PhD dropouts- she is still in her PhD program, but earned a Masters two years ago after completing a thesis and fulfilling a set amount of classwork. She had the same requirements as the Masters students in her department. (I don't know if this applies in other departments.) She was able to complete her Thesis by taking a paper she wrote for a class and roughly quadrupling the size of it, but there was a large amount of work done, not just simply "scratch the title off the top and resubmit."

On preview: sciatrix, she got her Masters after her second year, although she was taking a rather heavy (from my point of view) course load at the time. In her department, the Masters students essentially fund most of the PhDs.
posted by Hactar at 12:53 PM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess I'm ok with it if you complete the actual requirements for a master's, including completing some kind of experiment and writing a thesis (for a MS). The stories I'd heard did not include that.

Sorry about the derail, I get a little bitter about the amount-of-work to employability ratio of my master's degree sometimes.
posted by Mitrovarr at 1:30 PM on August 23, 2016


So, this is specifically for grads at private schools, yes? At the Univ. of Florida we had a graduate union when I started 14 years ago. I remember because they successfully negotiated for us to get health care (fully subsidized, no less).
posted by oddman at 1:33 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


At U Texas, by contrast, we are still prevented from collectively bargaining (and therefore, from effectively unionizing) as a matter of state law. I'm not bitter about that at all...
posted by sciatrix at 1:55 PM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


Grad unions are great!

My graduate school was unionized under the UAW, I was even shop steward for my department at one point.

1) in my bluest of blue states, public employees, including unionized TAs and RAs are forbidden to strike. Thus, by unionizing, grad students actually lost perhaps their most effective weapon against the administration

2) UAW internal politics are pretty terrible. I don't now if they are worse than other equivalent orgs.

3) the union is most effective right after successfully gaining recognition. afterwards it is a long slow decline as membership becomes complacent

4) grad students are fundamentally temporary employees. there is little incentive to really fight contract violations and disciplinary abuses.

5) your contract is with the university but your managers are the tenured faculty. the biggest stick the institution has over grad students is informal through loss of effective career support from the faculty. I absolutely was punished for participating in a disciplinary case the union fought in my department. even though I was the shop steward, the union advised me to stay out of the dispute, which I disregarded...

6) because of 4),5) most conflicts are resolved very quietly and where little changes

7) the fundamental problem with grad student and adjunct unions is that these jobs, fundamentally, shouldn't exist. adjunct jobs exist (at this point) purely to exploit young PhDs, incremental improvements merely cement the legitimacy of replacing permanent faculty with temporary faculty. grad students are students, despite their bachelors. the conflict of interest between faculty and the grad students they exploit can never be resolved unless grad students are free to leave their "jobs" without penalty. this would make being a grad student unlike any other job in the universe.

8) all of these informal pressures are 10 times worse for international students. like, when the university threatened to dematriculate, and therefore subject to immediate deportation, the foreign grad students in university family housing who were engaged in a rent strike (totally legal under state law) over unsafe conditions (sewage, repairs, lead paint, vermin, etc.) Guess who won that dispute?

the ultimate goal of any grad or adjunct union should be to eliminate the jobs they exist to represent. there is this unchallenged belief in the left that "unions" are fundamentally good in every situation. the best thing you can say to a grad student who is being exploited is: quit! as sad is it may seem, your dreams aren't worth it. you are being used by people who will discard you when they are done with you.
posted by ennui.bz at 2:29 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh. Well, it needs to end. Successful masters programs aren't the same as failed doctoral ones; I mean, I had to write a thesis and everything (I even got two papers out of it). That's not the same as failing a doctoral program and frankly the equivalence is insulting.

I'm a PhD dropout with a Masters. I earned that Masters (and more frankly) as did every single PhD candidate in my program.

In programs where there are both terminal Masters and PhDs even in the same classes there are often very different grading curves.

Be careful that the chip on your shoulder isn't blocking your view.
posted by srboisvert at 2:38 PM on August 23, 2016 [10 favorites]


I see your point ennui.bz, now do every other job that has a union. Spoiler alert all jobs are exploitation. Unions are not the cure they are medicine that relieves some of the symptoms of the symbiotic viral infection of capitalism.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:48 PM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


sciatrix: "At U Texas, by contrast, we are still prevented from collectively bargaining (and therefore, from effectively unionizing) as a matter of state law. I'm not bitter about that at all..."

I don't know how this would work (fundamentally a union is a collect bargaining unit IMO); but would this national recognition of the right to unionize have any impact on the right to collectively bargain? I mean if I was running the NLRB I'd have a problem with a union I've mandated acceptable not being able to do the one big thing unions are organized for in the first place.
posted by Mitheral at 3:17 PM on August 23, 2016


My boyfriend has orientation for his PhD program yesterday. The dean of the graduate school was making pointed comments misleading them about signing the cards to call an election (you're not indicating a desire to unionise, you're indicating a desire to have a vote). Having lived through one (failed) graduate student unionisation push, I'm not looking forward to experiencing another by proxy. The only good thing about the experience was the email the department's director of graduate studies sent following from some dean instructing us to vote no. "Unlike dean so-and-so, I'm not going to tell you how to vote. However, I feel I must clarify some of his points" and then proceeded to take apart the lies. I shudder to think what it was like in departments where the faculty weren't assuming you were voting to unionise (and supported you doing so). There was a memo telling advisors how to lean on their students.
posted by hoyland at 3:18 PM on August 23, 2016


The rights of grad students at private universities to unionize is regulated at the federal level; that's what is happening here, in this case at Columbia. The right of grad students at public universities is regulated at the state level by state labor law, which is what fucks UT students over and causes disparity among students at public university systems. Fucking Texas legislature. It also banned the University of Texas for extending health-care to same-sex spouses for years until the federal government shut that down last summer, for context.

tl;dr: this decision does extend that right to collectively bargain, but only for the specific students the NLRB has authority over in the first place. The rest of us are still at the mercy of the Lege.
posted by sciatrix at 3:43 PM on August 23, 2016


I see your point ennui.bz, now do every other job that has a union. Spoiler alert all jobs are exploitation. Unions are not the cure they are medicine that relieves some of the symptoms of the symbiotic viral infection of capitalism.

again, being a grad student or an adjunct shouldn't be a job. some jobs shouldn't exist.

organizing grad students has all of the problems pertaining to temporary employees, but also the special relationship between students an faculty, as de facto managers. more concretely: no one would work these "jobs" without believing the carrot of future positions in academia or elsewhere. they are explicitly "management trainee" positions that have been transformed into de facto contract labor, where the contract has a fixed non-renewable expiration date. there is no way the union can address this without turning de facto contract labor into a permanent mode for grad students, but the fundamental false promise remains. again, no one would work these jobs if it was explicit that getting a PhD was not going to lead to future permanent high-level work.

and then, it's arguable whether grad students aren't more powerful negotiating as young, largely white, middle-class students rather than as workers. labor law is a huge mine-field for "direct action" if you are a legally recognized union and contract negotiations are relentless trench warfare conducted by students-union-workers who will be gone in a contract period or two.

but you can't get away from the fundamental fact that these jobs shouldn't exist and much of the structure of exploitation is not managed by the university administration but by the university faculty. grad students should be working in solidarity against their own faculty advisors as much as the university, and that relationship will never be recognized by the NLRB.
posted by ennui.bz at 3:55 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Some of us are quite happy to get paid to teach and read and write for a living and we aren't exploited.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:21 PM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


Just to reply about adjunct faculty unionizing, the adjunct faculty at the state university system, MnSCU, have been unionized for decades. You can take a look at the union site. The state system has graduate students but no serious teaching expected.

Now, there is a unionization attempt of the faculty at the University of Minnesota that may actually be pulled off since they included the adjuncts, teachings graduate students and RAs in the vote instead of just the tenured/tenure-track faculty.

There is also another union that covers professional advisors in the state university system and a that is headed by the teamsters. To be honest, I am not impressed by that union especially in consideration of what the dues levied get you as a member.
posted by jadepearl at 5:38 PM on August 23, 2016


ennui.bz: again, being a grad student or an adjunct shouldn't be a job. some jobs shouldn't exist.

You want to completely get rid of the TA/RA role? I don't know. It felt very beneficial when I was a grad student (I did both for a while). I know universities use them to avoid having to hire as much faculty, and we are admitting too many people to advanced degree programs (diluting the value of those degrees), but I think they are an essential part of the learning experience during graduate degrees. I mean, it's part of most teacher's / instructor's training to teach in a controlled environment for a while, and the TA accomplishes that. The RA basically functions as additional research experience and usually contributes to your thesis/dissertation. I think universities need to pay and treat them better, but I really don't think they're intrinsically bad ideas.

To be honest if being a grad student wasn't a job, I think they'd still expect you to do that stuff. I just don't think they'd pay you for it.

Adjuncts, too, used to be a good thing. Sometimes people with careers outside the university want to teach a class or two. In that role, adjunct positions were fine. They're just being abused right now.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:51 PM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sayre's Law, just sayin'.
posted by rhizome at 5:55 PM on August 23, 2016


WaPo: Stanford University, the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology and the entire Ivy League submitted a brief arguing that involving students in the bargaining process would disrupt operations if negotiations included the length of a class, amount of grading or what’s included in curriculum. Bringing more people to the table, they said, could lead to lengthy and expensive bargaining, potentially to the detriment of all students.

Just want to leave this here. The ivies actively fought the interest of their own students, and used a bullshit "educational mission" excuse to sit on top of their Scrooge McDuck-sized pools of money instead of paying their employees a fair wage.

The Ivies have no educational mission. They care about nothing other than their bottom line. These days, they are little more than a glorified bank account.
posted by schmod at 6:25 PM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]


One of the largest university systems in the USA (California State University, with 400K students, about 10,000 tenure-track faculty and 13,000 adjuncts) is fully unionized.

The adjuncts there are treated well, comparatively.

One supposes there might be some sort of causal mechanism?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 6:53 PM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


Bringing more people to the table, they said, could lead to lengthy and expensive bargaining, potentially to the detriment of all students.

When you realize you're being hustled.
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on August 23, 2016


I'm all for regulating TAships much more strictly, but they're no less a part of instructor training than are student teaching assignments for K-12. I didn't do any teaching at the University of Chicago when I was a grad student, other than leading two once per week discussion sections for someone else's lecture (and I had to pull strings to get the second one), because you had to be in the program for six years before they would let you teach a class and I graduated in five. Not only did that make me unemployable on my first go at the t-t job market, it also made my first teaching job as a lecturer one long litany of disasters. ("Er, sorry about that," I keep wanting to say to the students who had me inflicted upon them.) The U of C grads who had more luck on the market were also supporting themselves by...wait for it...adjuncting at local colleges. TAs ought to do less teaching, and they ought to have far more close supervision and training while teaching, but having graduate students do no teaching is not really a service to anyone.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:29 PM on August 23, 2016


This is wonderful news. It comes too late for my own cohort, but I am delighted that I at least got to sign my card in the initial organizing drive the year before last. So proud of all my friends and colleagues who've been part of this movement. I doubt the administration will voluntarily recognize GWC-UAW anytime soon, so now the next battle begins. But seeing the terrible 2004 NLRB Brown decision reversed is a huge deal.
posted by karayel at 7:50 PM on August 23, 2016


Adjuncts can unionize, but they never, ever will. They're too disposable and most of them still hope to end up in real faculty and would be worried that unionizing would ruin those chances forever.

This, plus the sizable section of adjunct faculty that already has a full time job and teaches a course on the side, with no tenure track ambitions.
posted by pwnguin at 9:08 PM on August 23, 2016


There was a unionization effort when I was in grad school (just before the Bush-era NLRB ruling, which ended that) and it was instructive how frantic the school's efforts to fight it were, including improvements to stipends and insurance, and dishonest outreach to international students hinting that their visa status might be at risk from a yes vote. I was so-so on the unionization idea until I saw the response, which pushed me firmly into the pro side of the argument.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:33 AM on August 24, 2016


I think he decision reversed was an impediment to Northwestern's football team organizing. This could be big news in college athletics too.
posted by klarck at 8:46 AM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was so-so on the unionization idea until I saw the response, which pushed me firmly into the pro side of the argument.

We always said the administration was our best organizer. Our administration took a very high-road approach before our union achieved recognition, though, staying very very carefully neutral. It was only once we started bargaining that they got nasty.

ennui.bz, if you were at the school I think you were, I can understand why you might be a little iffy about the UAW. I think that the New England region's internal politics have changed a fair bit in recent years, and they're also looking at grad unionization as kind of a long game -- get a lot of highly educated folks invested in the labor movement on a personal level, early in their career. And honestly, union internal politics are nothing new, and are probably a lot better now than they were in say, the 70s--but we felt so incredibly powerless after our health insurance got slashed and our fees got raised to 10-15% of our stipends that we decided we'd rather have an actual vote in a possibly-corrupt organization than for sure be at the mercy of one. I mean, that's horribly cynical -- and not ACTUALLY how I feel about the UAW now -- but that's exactly what I thought when we first getting started. "Shit, at least this is something I have even a tiny bit of real power over."

We were warned, early on, that if we made grad students "too expensive" that it might lead to fewer grads being admitted in each program. Most of my humanities student friends were actively in favor of that, because they strongly felt like their programs were over-enrolled compared to the job market, precisely because GAs were cheap teaching labor. Most of my engineering friends just rolled their eyes, because they *know* their advisors will find a way to keep grad students on a project to do all the low level work. And, happily enough, as the DoL's new overtime rules phase in, there's just no way that a post-doc will be cheaper than a grad student. (And if they ARE, then HIRE A POST DOC! Postdocs need jobs too! )

It really is amazing the kinds of things the administration will say about why you shouldn't have a union, and expect you to believe. Like, "this will take away the ability for people to one-on-one negotiate with the University." Sure. Because there's just all sorts of people who are sitting down with the University president and negotiating a personal raise. And, "The students don't want a union, it's just outside agitators making a stink" when we had 70% of our bargaining unit signed up on cards within 7 weeks.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 11:15 AM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


And just to corroborate Made of Star Stuff's points, Columbia sent out a "carefully neutral" email today with a link to this website: https://unionization.provost.columbia.edu

It is full of anti-union bullshit couched in the allowable "could" language -- unionization could affect your time-to-grad, unionization could prevent one-on-one bargaining, unionization could bring about the apocalypse, etc.

Also, this great quote, which I realize is standard anti-union stuff, but made me laugh:

"Every eligible person should vote because the election outcome is determined by the majority of those who vote, not by a majority of those eligible to vote. In other words, union representation is decided only by those who vote, yet the result will be binding for voters and non-voters alike."

Like...yes, that is how all votes in the history of voting have worked.
posted by Ragini at 11:07 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


Like...yes, that is how all votes in the history of voting have worked.

Absurdly, constitution amendments in Minnesota require 50% + 1 of voters casting ballots to pass, not 50% + 1 of votes on the amendment. In other words, you get (on average) 4% free if you oppose an amendment due to the abstentions.

But, yes, why universities think graduate students would be shocked and appalled that not casting a ballot means you're not expressing an opinion, I don't know. But it's one of the university anti-union standard talking points for some reason.

I also like "unionization could prevent one-on-one bargaining". When in history has a grad student even bargained? Half the reason to unionise is to actually get the university to agree on paper to any policies whatsoever. (We did not have maternity leave before trying to unionise.)
posted by hoyland at 5:06 PM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


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