A More Perfect Union

[dr. t]

OK really how is there not a thread for this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/business/graduate-students-clear-hurdle-in-effort-to-form-union.html

In my own case, I'm both happy and nervous about this ruling. I think that the threat of unionization is an excellent bargaining chip with which one might extract concessions from our administrative overlords, but I'm less enthusiastic about actual unionization. And I suspect the local organizers are more interested in shoving the victory in my school's face (since they lost the decision this one overturned) than they are with actually doing something that benefits graduate students here.

[TakeruK]

There was mention of this in another thread and a suggestion to make one but no one got around to it!

I am also happy (and nervous). I feel like the idea of unionization is great and for the most part it gets executed well. But when I hear about unionized students at other US schools, I feel there is so many ways that unionization can screw up. In Canada, I feel like unionized students works really well and most schools have unionized students, postdocs, faculty, staff, administrators (all separately). There is typically 5+ unions on campus and the University knows how to work with unions. I feel that because unionization laws are different in the US, and because unionized academics are "newer" in the US, there is a chance that everything will blow up because it's not done correctly, and then this will be an example of why "unions fail" and then unionization will lose favour and no one will want it. That's what I'm nervous about!

Also, usually the first few years of a new union (I was on the leadership for one such union) is very rocky because the first collective agreement is often more about establishing the current good stuff in writing permanently instead of making huge gains. But the contract often means a lot more paperwork and confusion. So, the first few years is usually very frustrating for the students because there's all these new hurdles and challenges but rarely any huge positive impact, unless you were severely mistreated. Since grad student timescales are short, unfortunately, this means that almost all current students will only see the growing pains of unionization, but not reap much of the benefits.

[dr. t]

12 hours ago, TakeruK said:

In Canada, I feel like unionized students works really well

Do they? I feel like I watched the UoT absolutely master the media cycle when its graduate students went on strike the other year, for example. In fact, the UoT strike is one of my main reference points for my concerns over graduate students not really knowing how to play the game or having the institutional memory and experience to engage properly, and ending up with nothing to show for their efforts. 

[St Andrews Lynx]

I'm at a public university where the grad students have been unionised for quite some time (in addition to the part-time/adjunct lecturers as well as the tenured faculty). I think it works out well - although I see the overall effect as only being slightly beneficial to us.

In my mind also, graduate students who teach are definitely "staff", and should be treated accordingly. 

[rising_star]

I only went to grad school at state universities that don't have unions (and where we were threatened with contracts being axed or not renewed when we began to lobby as a group for better treatment) so I didn't get too excited about this ruling. I do hope it helps students. That said, I also wonder about the tax ramifications of students being labeled employees because most students currently don't pay FICA or SS but as employees, even part-time ones, it seems like you may have to. 

[maelia8]

My institution has a separate union for graduate students and it's absolutely amazing. We do a new contract negotiation every four years and have lobbied for a lot of things successfully, including input on our health insurance coverage, that have been instrumental in improving grad quality of life. The union is pretty respected here and has been around for several generations of graduate students. The biggest issue we face is that STEM students don't really care about it as much because most of them don't receive funding that's contingent on them getting a teaching position, as it is for those of us in the humanities, so our bargaining group is a bit lopsided and someone homogeneous. 

[TakeruK]

5 hours ago, telkanuru said:

Do they? I feel like I watched the UoT absolutely master the media cycle when its graduate students went on strike the other year, for example. In fact, the UoT strike is one of my main reference points for my concerns over graduate students not really knowing how to play the game or having the institutional memory and experience to engage properly, and ending up with nothing to show for their efforts. 

The sucky part about academics trying to strike is that we will rarely have public support. I think most of the public do not understand what it means for students to choose to strike, and instead, people are mostly view it as an annoyance (i.e. we don't care about teaching, we don't care about undergrads, undergrads are suffering because they pay tuition but they don't get the services etc.). I agree with you that the school fought very well and competently. I also agree with you that many students don't know how to play the game / don't have experience. When I was part of the union at my MSc school (prior to what happened in Toronto), one of the complaints about the union from my colleagues was that why are we paying union dues to the national union, why do we have pay for a negotiator, etc. etc. The reason is that we are teaching assistants, not labour experts so we need to outsource this work, not try to do it ourselves. I think Toronto example can be used now as an argument about why we should not try to keep it "in house" so to speak.

I'm not 100% sure that there's "nothing to show". I think the deal they got in the end wasn't very good, but maybe it will open the way to future changes. Or maybe the University knows that it can force the students to end the strike without a very good deal at all. 

Finally, when I said it worked better, I was comparing how the unions I was used to work vs. the horror stories I heard about at other US schools (e.g. union leadership ignoring actual membership desires etc.)

2 hours ago, St Andrews Lynx said:

I'm at a public university where the grad students have been unionised for quite some time (in addition to the part-time/adjunct lecturers as well as the tenured faculty). I think it works out well - although I see the overall effect as only being slightly beneficial to us.

In my mind also, graduate students who teach are definitely "staff", and should be treated accordingly. 

I think it works a lot better when there is more than one union on campus. One of the big concerns about students unionizing is that faculty will think we're being petty or just whiny when we raise an issue. Or that we're trying to "band against them". However, if the faculty are also unionized themselves, then they will generally have better understanding of the process.

1 hour ago, rising_star said:

I only went to grad school at state universities that don't have unions (and where we were threatened with contracts being axed or not renewed when we began to lobby as a group for better treatment) so I didn't get too excited about this ruling. I do hope it helps students. That said, I also wonder about the tax ramifications of students being labeled employees because most students currently don't pay FICA or SS but as employees, even part-time ones, it seems like you may have to. 

I don't think 100% of our income will necessarily become FICA and SS taxable. In my mind, the shift would be a split in how we are paid to mirror our roles. In Canada, money earned from fellowships or other student statuses are considered student income (not taxable in Canada, no payroll taxes in United States). Money earned from research assistantships and teaching assistantships were fully taxed. I do think tax and union status can be different. For example, at my MSc school, only the TAs were unionized (no RA union) but we still paid taxes as employees on both RA and TA income. 

So, if simply being treated as employees means we pay FICA or SS taxes, then this should happen whether or not unionization actually happens. But my reading of the ruling is that graduate students are a type of worker that qualifies for union status, not necessarily that we have to be employees (but maybe I read it wrong?)

But I think this is also a difference in fields (see below). At my MSc school, most of my income came from departmental fellowship rather than employment work (as it is for many STEM students). So, the amount taxable income we had was very low, generally below any exemptions so we paid no taxes at all. In other fields, all of the income was from employment work so those students had to pay more taxes.

1 hour ago, maelia8 said:

My institution has a separate union for graduate students and it's absolutely amazing. We do a new contract negotiation every four years and have lobbied for a lot of things successfully, including input on our health insurance coverage, that have been instrumental in improving grad quality of life. The union is pretty respected here and has been around for several generations of graduate students. The biggest issue we face is that STEM students don't really care about it as much because most of them don't receive funding that's contingent on them getting a teaching position, as it is for those of us in the humanities, so our bargaining group is a bit lopsided and someone homogeneous. 

Yes, the union at my MSc school was driven by those outside of STEM fields because their conditions was a lot worse. The executive board was all from the Humanities and 1/3 of them were from the English department (where things were the worst apparently). There was a lot of distrust of the executive from the STEM students, thinking that unionization can only hurt the STEM fields. And it's true that the first contract didn't really give anything significant to STEM fields, but it did raise all the other departments to the same level (except for the fact that STEM students are less dependent on TA income, but that's a different scope). However, I think the effect was still net positive in the long term for STEM students. It means more paperwork and bureaucracy right now, but things like sick leave and a proper protocol for awarding TAships were now in writing instead of being granted at the pleasure of the department. When things are going well and you don't need these things, it's hard to place value in these aspects. I think of unionization for STEM students as an "insurance policy" of sorts.