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NPR: Penn Grad Students Strike for Union Rights

Grad Life

By jvano
Posted Mon Mar 01, 2004 at 04:20:28 AM PDT

This past Friday (Feb 27) All Things Considered had a segment about graduate teaching assistants at the University of Pennsylvania who are striking to protest the university's refusal to allow them to unionize. The university's position is that as students the TAs do not have the right to collective bargaining because they are not employees.

Do TAs at your school have a union? Do you feel that TAs should be considered students or employees? Share your thoughts.

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< GRADUATE STUDENT SESSIONS AT THE PROVIDENCE MATHFEST | Project NExT 2004 Applications >

NPR: Penn Grad Students Strike for Union Rights | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

[new] TA Union at UW-Madison (none / 0) (#1)
by JHamblin on Tue Mar 02, 2004 at 05:03:34 AM PDT

I was a grad student at UW-Madison, and the TA's were in a union there. When I first arrived in '97, the situation for grad students was terrible. We did not have a tuition waiver, so the average monthly income was around $600 for 9 months. On top of that, summer funding was always pretty scarce, so money was a huge issue. In my second semester, the union negotiated a tuition waiver, and our pay improved dramatically to the point where it was actually enough to live on (albeit frugally). Once this happened, in my opinion, the union kind of faded in importance; they still were active in trying to improve our contract, but once the economic issues were resolved, I don't think the grad student community at-large cared all that much about other stuff.

[new] Attempts to unionize at Kentucky (none / 0) (#2)
by jkuchen on Thu Mar 04, 2004 at 02:57:28 PM PDT

While I was at the University of Kentucky, there were attempts to unionize, sometime around 1996-97 I think. As math grad students, we weren't as bad off as some of the English students--not all of them were on full support, and a half-position meant no tuition waiver, so the pay didn't even cover out-of-state tuition! There were a couple of demonstrations, but the movement died out. The other arts & science disciplines were better represented in the movement, and the engineers were nowhere to be found. I think that unfortunately many students started to think of "what's in it for me," and the disciplines with students that saw that their pay would decrease didn't participate.

Personally, I feel that TAs should be considered as employees. We were contractually obligated to teach the courses to receive our stipends--that sounds like a working relationship to me!

TAs should be considered as employees by jvano, 03/06/2004 11:24:38 PDT (none / 0)

I think that in the USA you might be right by overconvergent, 03/06/2004 13:44:15 PDT (none / 0)

NPR: Penn Grad Students Strike for Union Rights | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

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