4 ms·

Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?

by akavi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chrisabrams 4y ago
Students are not employees.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  These are graduate students, who generally are and that do a large part of the teaching at any university.
- thorncorona 4y ago
  When I was working for my uni I got a W-2.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    Yes, but if you were a grad student your W-2 almost certainly didn't include your tuition rebate as part of your total income. And the university sure as hell didn't pay taxes on it.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      You can claim it depending on your student scholarship (NSF GRF) or postdoctoral status and what it says on your 1098.
      - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
        I have been explicitly told by a tax accountant that I cannot. If a third party makes a payment to one of their own offices, even presuming that money exists at all to begin with, I can't claim it on my taxes as income or a credit.
        thwayunion 4y ago
        The person you're responding to is correct in very specific cases like the GRFP; certain fellowships function differently. You're correct in the case of 90+% of grad students.
        IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
        If this income is not in your W2, then this is very-murky-grey-area-danger-zone stuff. Students and Universities both could be accused of underreporting income or tax witholdings. I suspect there are armies of education lawyers that vetted this, but in any other industry, this is simply a no-go zone. You report what you get and what you pay as comp, cash and noncash.
        thwayunion 4y ago
        Grad students are Very Special in tax code. For example: guess how much grad students and their universities pay in FICA taxes for graduate stipends (can be north of $40K; typically 8% of gross for employee and 8% of gross for employer)? $0.00. Tuition remissions in particular definitely do not show up on your W-2. Now, to the question in this thread. If you choose to report tuition as income, you might be able to do that in certain cases, but it's probably because you have some strange reason for wanting to report a higher gross income. I can't even begin think of any reason why that might be. So, murky and likely to cause an audit? Maybe. But then the gov is complaining about getting extra $$$, unless your situation is really fucking weird. Mind you, this is exactly why I find situations like this so reprehensible. Universities get tons of breaks in how they treat grad student labor. For universities to turn around around and fuck grad students like this, on top of the insulting wages, is beyond the pale.
- jahewson 4y ago
  In 2016 the NLRB ruled that graduate students who teach are, in fact, employees. Note that they have the right to even form a union. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/23/are-they-students-or-are-they-employees-nlrb-rules-that-graduate-students-are-employees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/2... Edit: A slight twist on this is that Temple University is a public university and and the NLRB in theory does not have jurisdiction over other parts of the government. PA law, however, offers similar protection. This is off to court for sure.
giantg2 4y ago
My understanding is that unions pay out during a strike. That's one of the uses of union dues.
nightpool 4y ago
Yes, they're separate from wages that graduate students earn. Roughly—graduate students attend college for free, but for financial aid / regulatory / internal budgeting reasons the college can't say they attend for free, so they instead set extremely high tuition numbers and then "pay" that tuition for the students, from one hand of the college to the other hand. But also AIUI Temple took away the whole of the tuition remittance for the entire semester. Companies are allowed to stop paying wages for the time workers are on strike and not working, but taking away tens of thousands of dollars for the entire semester simply for participating in a strike action during a tiny piece of it is absolutely beyond the pale.
- giantg2 4y ago
  But it's not pay. Their stipend would be pay. The tuition would be a benefit, just as tuition assistance programs at companies are benefits. It's perfectly legal to suspend benefits and pay during a strike, but they must be reinstated when the strike is over. Right or wrong, it seems primia facie legal. Edit: why disagree? What have I said that's factually incorrect? Please, educate us all and add to the discussion in the spirit of the forum.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Right but they’re not suspending the benefit they’re cancelling it. If they pro-rated a portion of the tuition assistance as owed that would be defensible. But this is a rug-pull.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Is it pro-rated for students who dropout, or more accurately continue to study while dropping out of work-study, during the semester? Depending on how the explaination of benefits is written, it may not pro-rate. Hell, most companies require you pay back tuition assistance if you leave within 2 years after they pay.
    - secabeen 4y ago
      Where do you see that they are cancelling it? Nothing in the statement I see precludes Temple from paying the remission if the strike resolves in two weeks, well before the due date. Even if the strike goes on longer, and the tuition so due is not paid, the penalty is still relatively a minor; a fine, and inability to register for the following quarter (presumably Fall, over 7 months away).
eli_gottlieb 4y ago
Speaking from present experience: "tuition remission" is a sort of imaginary quantum payment. I call it that because first they "charge" you tuition, then they issue you a "remission". The result is that no money ever actually enters or leaves your bank account, and they write something in a database somewhere to say that you "paid tuition" and are therefore legally a "student" (eg: legal to treat as a student, put under university behavioral discipline, exempt from certain labor laws, etc). You could try to say that it really is "tuition" for "coursework", but most graduate students, most of the time, aren't actually taking any classes that use a classroom or get taught by a professor. Most of their/our "credit hours" are in things labeled stuff like "Readings" or "Dissertation Continuation" that, again, help the university maintain a bureaucratic fiction that someone who has a cubicle and a workstation and spends their time in a lab is not, in fact, working for the university but instead being done a favor by the kindness of the university. But as I said, you don't actually make a penny, so I wouldn't really call it "wages".
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  that's not correct to say. There is such a thing as noncash compensation. And that's part of total compensation. If the govt has any inkling that you are taking payments in other than cash, they want to know (and tax) it too.
  - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
    But my point is, you're not getting a payment, in any form. Most of the time, you are not taking courses. You're being charged a fee to do your job, and then having that fee "waived". Now, with the remission "withdrawn" for the strike, you have your employer demanding you pay them to be considered their employee.

Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?

by akavi 4y ago

Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

chrisabrams 4y ago

Students are not employees.

stefan_ 4y ago
These are graduate students, who generally are and that do a large part of the teaching at any university.
thorncorona 4y ago
When I was working for my uni I got a W-2.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Yes, but if you were a grad student your W-2 almost certainly didn't include your tuition rebate as part of your total income. And the university sure as hell didn't pay taxes on it.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    You can claim it depending on your student scholarship (NSF GRF) or postdoctoral status and what it says on your 1098.
    - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
      I have been explicitly told by a tax accountant that I cannot. If a third party makes a payment to one of their own offices, even presuming that money exists at all to begin with, I can't claim it on my taxes as income or a credit.
      - thwayunion 4y ago
        The person you're responding to is correct in very specific cases like the GRFP; certain fellowships function differently. You're correct in the case of 90+% of grad students.
        IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
        If this income is not in your W2, then this is very-murky-grey-area-danger-zone stuff. Students and Universities both could be accused of underreporting income or tax witholdings. I suspect there are armies of education lawyers that vetted this, but in any other industry, this is simply a no-go zone. You report what you get and what you pay as comp, cash and noncash.
        thwayunion 4y ago
        Grad students are Very Special in tax code. For example: guess how much grad students and their universities pay in FICA taxes for graduate stipends (can be north of $40K; typically 8% of gross for employee and 8% of gross for employer)? $0.00. Tuition remissions in particular definitely do not show up on your W-2. Now, to the question in this thread. If you choose to report tuition as income, you might be able to do that in certain cases, but it's probably because you have some strange reason for wanting to report a higher gross income. I can't even begin think of any reason why that might be. So, murky and likely to cause an audit? Maybe. But then the gov is complaining about getting extra $$$, unless your situation is really fucking weird. Mind you, this is exactly why I find situations like this so reprehensible. Universities get tons of breaks in how they treat grad student labor. For universities to turn around around and fuck grad students like this, on top of the insulting wages, is beyond the pale.
jahewson 4y ago
In 2016 the NLRB ruled that graduate students who teach are, in fact, employees. Note that they have the right to even form a union. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/23/are-they-students-or-are-they-employees-nlrb-rules-that-graduate-students-are-employees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/2... Edit: A slight twist on this is that Temple University is a public university and and the NLRB in theory does not have jurisdiction over other parts of the government. PA law, however, offers similar protection. This is off to court for sure.

giantg2 4y ago

My understanding is that unions pay out during a strike. That's one of the uses of union dues.

nightpool 4y ago

Yes, they're separate from wages that graduate students earn. Roughly—graduate students attend college for free, but for financial aid / regulatory / internal budgeting reasons the college can't say they attend for free, so they instead set extremely high tuition numbers and then "pay" that tuition for the students, from one hand of the college to the other hand. But also AIUI Temple took away the whole of the tuition remittance for the entire semester. Companies are allowed to stop paying wages for the time workers are on strike and not working, but taking away tens of thousands of dollars for the entire semester simply for participating in a strike action during a tiny piece of it is absolutely beyond the pale.

giantg2 4y ago
But it's not pay. Their stipend would be pay. The tuition would be a benefit, just as tuition assistance programs at companies are benefits. It's perfectly legal to suspend benefits and pay during a strike, but they must be reinstated when the strike is over. Right or wrong, it seems primia facie legal. Edit: why disagree? What have I said that's factually incorrect? Please, educate us all and add to the discussion in the spirit of the forum.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Right but they’re not suspending the benefit they’re cancelling it. If they pro-rated a portion of the tuition assistance as owed that would be defensible. But this is a rug-pull.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Is it pro-rated for students who dropout, or more accurately continue to study while dropping out of work-study, during the semester? Depending on how the explaination of benefits is written, it may not pro-rate. Hell, most companies require you pay back tuition assistance if you leave within 2 years after they pay.
  - secabeen 4y ago
    Where do you see that they are cancelling it? Nothing in the statement I see precludes Temple from paying the remission if the strike resolves in two weeks, well before the due date. Even if the strike goes on longer, and the tuition so due is not paid, the penalty is still relatively a minor; a fine, and inability to register for the following quarter (presumably Fall, over 7 months away).

eli_gottlieb 4y ago

Speaking from present experience: "tuition remission" is a sort of imaginary quantum payment. I call it that because first they "charge" you tuition, then they issue you a "remission". The result is that no money ever actually enters or leaves your bank account, and they write something in a database somewhere to say that you "paid tuition" and are therefore legally a "student" (eg: legal to treat as a student, put under university behavioral discipline, exempt from certain labor laws, etc). You could try to say that it really is "tuition" for "coursework", but most graduate students, most of the time, aren't actually taking any classes that use a classroom or get taught by a professor. Most of their/our "credit hours" are in things labeled stuff like "Readings" or "Dissertation Continuation" that, again, help the university maintain a bureaucratic fiction that someone who has a cubicle and a workstation and spends their time in a lab is not, in fact, working for the university but instead being done a favor by the kindness of the university. But as I said, you don't actually make a penny, so I wouldn't really call it "wages".

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
that's not correct to say. There is such a thing as noncash compensation. And that's part of total compensation. If the govt has any inkling that you are taking payments in other than cash, they want to know (and tax) it too.
- eli_gottlieb 4y ago
  But my point is, you're not getting a payment, in any form. Most of the time, you are not taking courses. You're being charged a fee to do your job, and then having that fee "waived". Now, with the remission "withdrawn" for the strike, you have your employer demanding you pay them to be considered their employee.