4 ms·

Unions are generally vehicles of resistance to illegal and/or oppressive actions. HTH.

by spacemanmatt 5y ago

klyrs 5y ago
Sadly, given my experience as a steward, I don't think a union could actually help in this particular situation.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Many people don't have a better choice than keep trying with unions.
dehrmann 5y ago
What might be different about grad students is the weird market dynamics. They're well-educated, overworked, and underpaid. They should be able to get a decent job outside of academia from hiring managers sympathetic to not being in academia. Except for foreign students and people who really want to be in academia, there's a lot of pressure that should have made work conditions much better. If someone ready to pay you twice as much with normal hours and less drama doesn't improve conditions, I'm not sure if a union can.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Aren't graduate students there in order to get credentials that help them land all those better jobs outside of academia? I think you're imputing hiring pressure that they're pursuing, not experiencing.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    Ignoring professional degrees like MBAs, MDs, and JDs, you either go to grad school to do research and/or teach in academia or to learn very specialized skills and go into industry. For the most part, there are usually less specialized roles in industry for people with bachelor's degrees.
  - polygamous_bat 5y ago
    Not necessarily; I myself and a lot of my friends in academia are here because we really do care about the research we are doing, and believe what we are doing here is really going to impact society in 10-20 years in the future. I'm sure there are some people here who are only doing a Ph.D. to get a better job afterwards. But at least for myself I know I rejected a job that has a 5x base salary (even without counting the RSU) because I really believed in what I wanted to do. If you take the opportunity cost in account, it really doesn't make sense in 100% of the cases to get a Ph.D. first to just go into the "better jobs" in industry afterwards.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      That's absolutely fair. I really should have narrowed my (rhetorical) question to the group of students who will eventually "leave for better jobs" outside academia.
cabcalloway 5y ago
It doesn’t help, actually, because they were implicitly asking how a union will help specifically with that example. In corporations unions have the leverage of stopping work. What’s the leverage here? We’ll all stop pursuing our education…? I guess the calculation is that the tuition hit would be leverage? Like what, is a union going to force a code of conduct for professors? How is it going to be enforced when it already exists and half of these comments are about it being ignored? I don’t get the union solution here. The incentives are wrong. Particularly on the Ph.D. track, how would a union specifically help address illegal behavior to the extent that you just “HTH” it as the obvious answer?
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Stopping work. Same as other unions.
  - cabcalloway 5y ago
    And again, since you’re making me belabor the question instead of answering the obvious one, what does that look like? Isn’t that more harmful to the student than the institution? Again: what is the leverage? I’m from a three generation UAW family, married into IBEW, and I was on the line at eight years old. I’m not exactly hearing about unions for the first time here. I’m also struggling to understand how they’re the obvious answer to education problems shared in this thread, in your estimation. Think you can share 10 or, even, 20 words to help clarify?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - iudqnolq 5y ago
      Most large schools make most of their money charging undergrads tuition. A significant portion of undergrad instruction is done by grad students. If grad students stop teaching undergrads (or, as some have, keep teaching but stop issuing grades) the theory is undergrads and parents will threaten admin. This has worked in some cases.

Unions are generally vehicles of resistance to illegal and/or oppressive actions. HTH.

klyrs 5y ago

Sadly, given my experience as a steward, I don't think a union could actually help in this particular situation.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Many people don't have a better choice than keep trying with unions.

dehrmann 5y ago

What might be different about grad students is the weird market dynamics. They're well-educated, overworked, and underpaid. They should be able to get a decent job outside of academia from hiring managers sympathetic to not being in academia. Except for foreign students and people who really want to be in academia, there's a lot of pressure that should have made work conditions much better. If someone ready to pay you twice as much with normal hours and less drama doesn't improve conditions, I'm not sure if a union can.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
Aren't graduate students there in order to get credentials that help them land all those better jobs outside of academia? I think you're imputing hiring pressure that they're pursuing, not experiencing.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Ignoring professional degrees like MBAs, MDs, and JDs, you either go to grad school to do research and/or teach in academia or to learn very specialized skills and go into industry. For the most part, there are usually less specialized roles in industry for people with bachelor's degrees.
- polygamous_bat 5y ago
  Not necessarily; I myself and a lot of my friends in academia are here because we really do care about the research we are doing, and believe what we are doing here is really going to impact society in 10-20 years in the future. I'm sure there are some people here who are only doing a Ph.D. to get a better job afterwards. But at least for myself I know I rejected a job that has a 5x base salary (even without counting the RSU) because I really believed in what I wanted to do. If you take the opportunity cost in account, it really doesn't make sense in 100% of the cases to get a Ph.D. first to just go into the "better jobs" in industry afterwards.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    That's absolutely fair. I really should have narrowed my (rhetorical) question to the group of students who will eventually "leave for better jobs" outside academia.

cabcalloway 5y ago

It doesn’t help, actually, because they were implicitly asking how a union will help specifically with that example. In corporations unions have the leverage of stopping work. What’s the leverage here? We’ll all stop pursuing our education…? I guess the calculation is that the tuition hit would be leverage? Like what, is a union going to force a code of conduct for professors? How is it going to be enforced when it already exists and half of these comments are about it being ignored? I don’t get the union solution here. The incentives are wrong. Particularly on the Ph.D. track, how would a union specifically help address illegal behavior to the extent that you just “HTH” it as the obvious answer?

spacemanmatt 5y ago
Stopping work. Same as other unions.
- cabcalloway 5y ago
  And again, since you’re making me belabor the question instead of answering the obvious one, what does that look like? Isn’t that more harmful to the student than the institution? Again: what is the leverage? I’m from a three generation UAW family, married into IBEW, and I was on the line at eight years old. I’m not exactly hearing about unions for the first time here. I’m also struggling to understand how they’re the obvious answer to education problems shared in this thread, in your estimation. Think you can share 10 or, even, 20 words to help clarify?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    Most large schools make most of their money charging undergrads tuition. A significant portion of undergrad instruction is done by grad students. If grad students stop teaching undergrads (or, as some have, keep teaching but stop issuing grades) the theory is undergrads and parents will threaten admin. This has worked in some cases.