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Graduate students at the University of Southern California have won a union
- advisedwang 4y ago> No. of Eligible Voters:2861 > Total Ballots Counted:1721 > Votes for Labor Union:1599 > Votes Against:122 93% for, with 60% turnout. Wow! https://www.nlrb.gov/case/31-RC-308858 https://www.nlrb.gov/case/31-RC-308858
- solarmist 4y agoExcellent. I can't wait to see what changes this brings.
- nickff 4y agoWell, I'd interpret those numbers as: ~56% for, ~4% opposed, and ~40% unknown.
- citizenkeen 4y agoThat's not how voting works.
- desmond373 4y agoJust because that's not how this form of voting works, doesn't mean it not an interesting stat to look at.
- kbelder 4y agoUnknown and presumably mostly ambivalent?
- autoexec 4y agoRather than look at it as "I don't care enough to vote" I tend to look at it as "unwilling or unable to vote" although hopefully the number of people "unable" would be small.
- shkkmo 4y agoWhich means that even if all 40% of the non-voters had voted against the union, it still would have passed. That's an extremely strong result.
- advisedwang 4y agoAn absolute majority is frankly pretty impressive. By the same calculation the last US presidential election was 37% unknown, 32% Biden, 29% Trump, 2% 3rd party. 81,283,501 for Biden, 74,223,975 for Trump, 158,429,631 total votes, 252,274,000 as best proxy for eligeble voters (18+ us pop) per [1] [1] https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2020.pdf https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...
- zozin 4y agoGood for them, but the cynic in me is telling me that tuition will continue to significantly outpace inflation, in part bc of this. $100K/year to attend a prestigious college isn’t far off imo.
- mistrial9 4y agoit is in fact "good for them" .. that is the entire point of it. The context is partially understood and scant.
- drewda 4y agoMany grad students are employed as research assistants in labs. It's federal agencies like NIH and NSF that are supporting those labs with grants. For grad students who are serving as teaching assistants or as full "instructors of record," they are still being paid less and given substantially fewer benefits than tenured faculty. There are many factors driving the increase in the "list price" for undergraduate tuition — I doubt that the take-home pay of grad students and their health insurance are significant factors.
- Swizec 4y agoWe have a student union in Slovenia. It's fully self-funded from a tax on student work. One of the things the union provides is the ability for students to get "student jobs" that are more geared towards entry-level work and easier to get. Almost everyone has these jobs at least over the summer, often also part-time during the school year. Another big thing the union provides are food coupons so you can get discounted meals at participating restaurants. Fully funded from said tax on student work. Every once in a while the union organizes protests against tuitions and such. The biggest outcome is that people choose to be students, at least on paper, until 26 when you age out of benefits. Because the tuition is free and the benefits are amazing. https://www.studentska-org.si/predstavitev/english/ https://www.studentska-org.si/predstavitev/english/
- rr888 4y agoTuition paid by grad workers are likely to go up to pay for their own wages.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> SARA WEXLER Will the union make any demands in the contract or bargaining process about USC and its relationship to the Los Angeles community at large — concerning rents, inequality, gentrification? > YONI HIRSHBERG I think those types of things fall outside of the scope of labor negotiations. So the contract will include things like our wages and working conditions. I think this is the way forward if we want widespread unionization. Unions have to focus on making the lives of their members better. Wading into culture wars, even if you think you are doing good, will in the long run cause division and weaken the unionization effort.
- frostburg 4y agoYes, also I don't see what a grad student union and an university can do about inequality in the LA community at large. It would be a recipe for failure.
- vlovich123 4y agoIf you organize well, then you have a voting block you can influence. Historically, union leaders have been extremely powerful because of this because they made sure to strengthen union ties (hosting social events, disability benefits/aid could come from the labor union instead of your employer, etc). The strengthening of social ties within the union gives you a pulpit from which to influence (e.g. if you know your union leader and you like your union leader and they're making sure you get treated well and taking care of you, you might set aside any personal beliefs / things you hear on the news and vote the way your friend is asking you to). In fact, the largest union leaders were as powerful as being a leader of a religious organization (think Jimmy Hoffa). Think about how much leverage cop unions and the Fraternal Order of Police seem to wield about public policy regarding policing as an example of the ways in which unions can organize to be a bulwark against more popular policies. So what a grad student union can do about inequality in the LA community at large is to organize their members to vote as a single block that politicians will want to court. And if they're too small on their own, they partner with other union leaders who share similar belief to recommend their members vote as one big block on specific issues. That's what community organizing means - organizing a block of votes for a shared purpose.
- endisneigh 4y agoOn one hand, given the inherent scarcity of "good schools" any concession will likely be paid for by students at large in the form of tuition increases. On the other hand, tuition increases were going to happen anyway, so you might as well get something from it. In any case, it's good to see people standing up for themselves. Your move, USC.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> On one hand, given the inherent scarcity of "good schools" any concession will likely be paid for by students at large in the form of tuition increases. > On the other hand, tuition increases were going to happen anyway, so you might as well get something from it. Your second point completely nullifies your first point. If this causes tuition to rise to the same level it was going to reach anyway, students are paying nothing for this.
- diffeomorphism 4y agoNo, both points are perfectly fine. It is just your addition of "same level" that is unreasonable and completely nullifies your post.
- endisneigh 4y agoI did not say anything about the rate of the increase, only an increase existing in general, so no.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoIn that case, your followup completely nullifies your second point.
- endisneigh 4y agono, because we are talking about two different parties. the people in the union do not pay tuition, so it is irrelevant to them. most graduate students who are working do it in lieu of paying tuition the entire dispute, hence the article, is that they are not paid enough and the value of their work is basically dwindling in comparison to the tuition that they would otherwise be paying and comparable work. there are two options - either lower their tuition, which is not helpful since they do not pay, or raise their wages. USC did not comply, and thus they had to unionize and force the issue. the other pro-union argument is that those who are working who are not graduate students will benefit as the wage that's being paid will also need to reflect the non-union wage since there are non-graduate students, like lab techs, who often do the exact same job as someone in grad school in a lab.
- abdullahkhalids 4y agoThe University of Calgary has a graduate student union, and it worked pretty well. Our minimum salary for teaching assistantship was pretty good. Health benefits were good. We were told quite clearly by the union that if we were asked to work more, to just tell them, and they would take care of it. So the department never gave us more work than the maximum allowed by the agreement between the union and the university - in fact, usually they put 10-15 hours of leeway every semester, because they didn't want to be in breach of the contract.
- IncRnd 4y agoCould those who wanted to work longer for additional pay do so, when asked, or was that restricted by the agreement? I don't have experience with these to know how they work.
- hewlett 4y agoTAs are paid based on how many hours they are expected to work and don't receive additional pay if they work longer. At my uni TAs are paid as if they worked 12 hours a week, but often have to work 14-16 to get through the assigned work
- IncRnd 4y agoThanks!
- abdullahkhalids 4y agoYes, the contract could be extended for additional work. In fact, I taught a 5 week module in an undergrad course one semester, and I found that our pre-agreed time was far too little for me to adequately prepare for the classes (and do office hours etc). So I reached out to my department, and we moved to a different contract, where I tracked my exact hours and I was paid for those hours. However, this was pretty exceptional. In most cases, we got either a 102 hour/semeter contract or a 204 hour/semester contract, with only 90-95% of those hours actually worked (in the Physics dept at least).
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- fallingknife 4y agoI don't really understand what leverage they have here. The school controls the issuance of their degree and if they strike they will just be delaying that. A strike would be a headache for the university, but from what I understand about grad school, pissing off the professor you work for is a near death sentence. Good to see them pushing back but I guess I don't see the system as fixable without a complete overhaul.
- citizenkeen 4y agoThe schools can't operate without grad students. The entire system is built on the assumption they teach and run labs. Accreditation requires hours of class per term. Striking for two weeks would cancel an entire term of undergrad. The damage to the school's budget and reputation would be enormous, while delaying their grad degrees a term. Their leverage is significant.
- elashri 4y ago> Striking for two weeks would cancel an entire term of undergrad That's an interesting point, but can you provide a source of that? (Just curious as a fellow graduate student)
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- citizenkeen 4y agoDepends on the school, but look up your school's accreditation requirements for hours in class requirements.
- mjhay 4y agoGrad students do the heavy lifting of teaching and research. Universities would fall apart without them. That's plenty of leverage.
- l33t233372 4y agoThe UC graduate students recently went on strike and got more money.
- jehb 4y agoI don't think I understood how poor graduate student wages were until years after I was employed as one. I had worked at a natural foods co-op for a few years between undergrad and grad school, and although my marketing role paid more than some floor jobs, I was blown away when I started as a teaching assistant and made essentially the same wage. I could make the same money grading papers as I had in the real world? No way! Then I entered the private sector again where my starting wage was twice what I made in academia. And I thought I was rich. Until a few years later when I was making multiples of my former hourly rate. Lots of folks in these roles have no idea what their time is worth. I kick myself for being so naïve at the time.
- bongoman37 4y agoYea, me too. Slaved away in academia for peanuts for 6 years. Then the first job I was offered outside academia paid 8x what I was making and 3x of of the best academic positions I was being offered at the time. Never looked back.
- parker_mountain 4y agotech jobs start at $110k now. if you have two years into a degree, you can get $80k in private industry if you shop around. you have been warned.
- kuhewa 4y agoI was doing manual labour starting at 4 am on the weekends to make ends meet during my PhD fellowship. I'd invent creative reasons for one off consulting type projects to random faculty in the department to try and get a couple hours of casual pay because that would make the difference in bills. Seems ridiculous in hindsight now that I'm making every level pay and I'm not in a particularly lucrative field.
- musicale 4y agoAcademic research productivity per dollar is greatly boosted by low wages for the people who actually do the work. Academic labs are basically indenture shops that universities and the government use to avoid paying the market price for labor. And of course the greatest profits accrue to commercial companies that apply the work that was paid for by the government and performed by underpaid grad students. Grad school may be interesting and even fun, but it can also have very high opportunity cost, making it something of a sucker's game for many, at least financially. The only thing worse would be trying to stay in academia and being trapped in a purgatory of postdoc and adjunct positions, never making it to the top of the pyramid scheme.
- LatteLazy 4y agoThe terrible employment conditions put me off post-grad. I was considered a rising star in my field and published in undergrad. I had offers of PhD places. But I just looked at the career path and thought "I don't want to be poor long into my 40s in the vague hope I will eventually be able to get a job with actual pay and have nice things". People act like there is a nobility to this. But there isn't. It's just a way of reserving certain professions for people with wealthy parents. And it means instead of having the most motivated, the brightest etc, you just get well-off kids who can't be bothered to make the jump to other careers. Not that I am bitter... :) You see something similar in Medicine here in the UK: terrible pay and crazy hours for the first 10 years, then you get a pay-off. That's great if mum and dad will cover your rent until you're ~34, but otherwise you can kiss goodbye to being a doctor and having a family.
- bumby 4y agoI think this assumes a singular templated track to get a PhD. In my current and last job, most of the PhDs got their degree while working in industry. It doesn’t require being from a wealthy family, but it does sometimes require thinking differently.
- RickJWagner 4y agoThat's what grad programs need, a healthy dose of bureaucracy! One of my first thoughts was about how 'tenure' works. I once had a horrible professor that provided next to zero value for his classes. (He would literally just sit at the head of the class and repeat "Read your books! What you need is in there!" With nothing else added, ever.) Yet he remained on the payroll, thanks to his tenure. I fear a union will bring similar inefficiencies here.
- lapcat 4y agoThe reason isn't tenure. The reason is that research universities value research much more highly than teaching. This is evident in faculty hiring practices, even the hiring of junior professors who don't yet have tenure. And this is also why underpaid graduate students and non-tenure-track postdocs are doing a lot of the teaching work at universities.