While graduate employees at Rutgers University have enjoyed the benefits of collective bargaining since 1972, the unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of Teaching and Research Assistants in the United States remain unorganized–or their unions unrecognized–in a situation that perpetuates the most perverse kinds of exploitation of graduate employees at universities across the countries.
There are places where full-time research assistants don’t get tuition waivers! There are large universities at which graduate employees are paid $5000 or less for full-time work!
At private universities, the legal status of graduate students makes collective bargaining, in most cases, essentially impossible. But even at major public universities, the myth that we work only as “apprentices” or “students”–hence not employees–persists, and state legislators turn a blind eye to the plight of thousands of underpaid and undervalued graduate workers.
But the fight continues. In Maryland, the state legislature recently commissioned a working group composed of university administrators, professors, adjuncts and union representatives, along with the Maryland Secretary of State, to consider the status of grads and adjuncts in the state university system. On Monday, at the invitation of Maryland graduate employees, I offered testimony on the experience of the graduate union at Rutgers, along with Lisa Klein (immediate past president, Rutgers AAUP-AFT) and Karen Thompson (AAUP-AFT staff and long-serving Rutgers adjunct).
The arguments from opponents of unionization–who insist grads are not “employees” and adjuncts are adequately served by faculty governance–were downright absurd. The provost from the College Park campus insists that organized grad labor would damage the “mystical” relation between students and faculty mentors. Another university president insisted, apparently because she’d read a Wikipedia article somewhere, that she simply “knows” graduate workers are “really” students.
I’m happy to say that testimony from Rutgers representatives was extremely well received! We turned heads, and by all indications we may have changed minds! We are, once again, true leaders in the faculty union movement.
For my part, I emphasized that the “gold standard” of graduate education, from the perspective of a student, has nothing to do with the (admittedly often valuable) “learning experience” of leading discussions and grading papers. No, the most ambitious among us want, if we can get them, competitive fellowships and scholarships offered by universities and a variety of government and non-government agencies.
“The rest of us,” I said, “need to work to put ourselves through school.” Assistantships are attractive because they offer, much of the time, benefits such as tuition waivers; and they keep us close to campus, close to our research and university resources. And, often enough, they do provide work experience in the kind of laboratory or teaching environment we envision for our future careers.
But, I reminded the committee, it is far from universally true that graduate employees even work in their field of study. After two years as a political science TA, I told them, I now work for the English department teaching expository writing. A friend in my department teaches for Women’s and Gender Studies. Many TAs for General Biology intend careers as research scientists who have no intention of teaching. We work in whatever department has the money to pay us, and we do it to fund our education… wherever that might happen to be.
I also had to take some shots at the smug provost from College Park, very much opposed to the possibility of unionization. First he goes on about how much effort the University is putting forth to raise TA stipends, but “the money just isn’t there!” This while they’re paying minimum salaries of $13,000/year! I explained to the committee that this is inevitably the management mantra: “No money! No money!” But our role as a union has been to point out, consistently, that the money IS there (when they’re bothered to look), and in the long run it benefits the university to offer competitive salaries to the most qualified and promising graduate students. I rattled off a list of our accomplishments in salary and benefits. They were astounded that “graduate school” is not, in fact, synonymous with “poverty.” It doesn’t have to be this way.
But he also put forth the most absurd and amateurish statistical analysis to dispute numbers offered by a UM graduate student at the last meeting. “Our 10-year graduation rate will be much higher,” he offered, “in two years… because the cohort that started 8 years ago is graduating at a very strong rate!”
Umm… GOOD FOR THEM!! But you don’t have to be a professional statistician to know that one good year does not constitute a trend! I really raked him over the coals for that one, and even his allies seemed to enjoy it.
Afterward, another provost told me, “I found your testimony very compelling.” Sometimes even the privileged and powerful can see the light.
Maryland grads and adjuncts, we hope you win by a landslide!!
SOLIDARITY!! TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER!!!
There are a lot of amazing people in the union, but every once in a while someone really stands out. Anil Yazici is one of those people.
