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Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote
- dingosity 3y agoI don't have a twitter account, so you'll probably want to post this somewhere else.
- elashri 3y agoI think you can view tweets without account again now, at least this is what I experience. Not sure when did they reversed their decicion.
- sharemywin 3y agohere's the website: https://sgwu.us/ https://sgwu.us/
- retrocryptid 3y agoSweet. Thx. 94%. Impressive!
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230706204348/https://twitter.com/StanfordGWU/status/1677048098080845824 https://web.archive.org/web/20230706204348/https://twitter.c...
- ineedasername 3y agoTwitter rate limited me (no blue check) could someone screenshot this?
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Twitter rate limited me (no blue check) could someone screenshot this? Just open it in a private window. Twitter is no longer blocking logged-out views (at least for now).
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoDo we know if it rates limits those of us without the bird? Also interesting, it's making a call to "UserByTestId" which fails every time I refresh the page while trying to find the rate limit. My dev tools network tab is Christmas colours.
- seanp2k2 3y agoI can’t imagine many engineers or others with actual talent are still sticking around there.
- jrochkind1 3y agoI was surprised by this, so went to check. Individual posts are not blocked, but account streams are! not blocked: https://twitter.com/StanfordGWU/status/1677048098080845824 https://twitter.com/StanfordGWU/status/1677048098080845824 blocked: https://twitter.com/StanfordGWU/ https://twitter.com/StanfordGWU/ Wacky.
- pxmpxm 3y agoHow do you manage to hit 5k+ plus views a day without some sort of a script running?
- Atreiden 3y agoGood for them! Academia is a toxic and broken environment, and this seems like a great first step in fixing it. Interested to see how the dynamic plays out at Stanford, and if other American universities follow suit.
- EA-3167 3y agoThe advice I always give people (who ask) is that unless they're SO passionate about a subject that they can't imagine being happy away from it... look at industry, not academia. Maybe this sort of vote will be the beginning of the end of that sort of advice being applicable.
- archgoon 3y agoThis is not the first university where grad students have unionized. Most of the UC's have been unionized for decades.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIt will be interesting. Some federal grants seem to have pay limit maximums lower than the new minimum pay requirement. Maybe this will have the effect of sending more federal grant money to lower cost of living research institutes. That could be an interesting outcome.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoAlas, I'm not sure a union can begin to fix anything except a few cosmetic things. The biggest problem is the massive oversupply of people who want academic careers versus the number of real jobs. The individual unions at the schools can't tackle this oversupply at all because it's caused by the schools acting independently. The natural game is to protect the insiders by restricting admission like many of the other unions like the AMA that actively campaign against too many doctors. Indeed, the unions risk the bad optics of campaigning to reduce new admits in order to maintain opportunities for those already in the pipeline. In other words, slamming the door shut on people who want to learn all to restrict supply of work for the privileged. I suppose the unions might be able to help in the rare case of a real jerk of a professor who mistreats her students, but I think most professors are smart enough to play passive aggressive games instead. The schools nurture the ability to act passive aggressively. The rest of the time, the students in the union are going to waste their time arguing about something instead of working on their dissertation, the one thing that will spring them from the jail.
- teruakohatu 3y agoAre graduate students employees in the USA? I know in Europe there are universities where that is the case.
- returningfory2 3y agoThat's a surprisingly complex question. I started a PhD at NYU just as the graduate student unionization happened. IIRC, at NYU only graduate students who were actively teaching in a given semester or had a specific type of research grant were considered members of the union. First year PhDs at NYU were generally not covered, because in that case your salary was simply the generic PhD fellowship and you didn't count as a worker. The union essentially negotiated on behalf of all students, and for example won an increase in the PhD stipend that applied to everyone. But there were some benefits (family cash assistance perhaps?) that you could only get if you were in the worker category.
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agoThese days, the answer is more likely to be "Yes". At least for graduate students that do some form of teaching, in addition to taking classes and doing research. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_employee_unionization#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_employee_unio... for more information.
- Eigenstate 3y agoGenerally, no, universities classify graduate students as students, not employees. Stanford additionally classifies postdocs as students and charges their funding source a nominal tuition fee. > A Stanford postdoctoral scholar is a non-matriculated trainee, in graduate student status, in residence at Stanford University pursuing advanced studies beyond the doctoral level in preparation for an independent career. This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, which of course benefits Stanford's tax situation considerably.
- teruakohatu 3y ago> This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, Is this normal in the USA? In New Zealand postdocs are employees (usually on short or medium term contracts that align with funding grants).
- AdamH12113 3y agoContents of tweet for people with rate-limiting and other Twitter-related issues: Text: We won. [heart emoji] [fist emoji] Image: Logo of the union with text overlay. The logo is a circle containing the words "Stanford Graduate Workers Union" around the top and lightning bolts around the bottom. The center of the circle contains line art of a pair of hands holding a tree with smooth hills in the background. Large text at the top says "We won!" in a cursive font and slightly smaller text at the bottom says "94% YES" in block letters. A follow-up tweet states that there will be a victory day party tomorrow (July 7th) at 6:00pm at Manzanita Field. The party will feature drinks, music, and snacks.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CraigRo 3y agoIt was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities, and the union refused to let wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population. Scott Walker killed it, and those problems haven't come back.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigbillheck 3y ago> Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students Having been a one-time 1st or 2nd year STEM student, I think this is the proper decision.
- CraigRo 3y agoCaused huge attrition of the 1st and 2nd year stem students (i.e. quit with a masters). The union was dominated by humanities students, and they fought for what they wanted, not what the overall membership wanted. Very few STEM folks had any interest in being part of the union, but because so many voted with their feet, it was hopeless to set up a decertifiying petition.
- renewiltord 3y agoThis is an interesting story. I don't understand why it was flagkilled. Is it obviously false or something?
- jimbob45 3y agoIt's presidential election season in the US. People are going to fight hard to bury what the other side says and raise up what their own side is saying. Here's some free advice: leave until January 2025 and spend your newly free time learning a language or growing a garden.
- fruffy 3y agoA big part of the reason these unionization efforts are happening: https://csstipendrankings.org/ https://csstipendrankings.org/ Many universities are not paying a living wage for the area they are located in.
- supernova87a 3y ago[flagged]
- coeneedell 3y ago“PhD student” is a more than full time research job. In terms of the experience it’s not unlike being an analyst or a fresh lawyer.
- olliej 3y agoSo what I'm hearing is "if you are a student, you should not be able to live", is that right?
- short_throw 3y ago>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Eigenstate 3y agoBecause higher education shouldn't be something reserved for the independently wealthy?
- supernova87a 3y agoThis is perhaps the most creditable argument. But still, I doubt you would have found many grad students who were independently wealthy before unionization. Or at least, in the field where they were lobbying the hardest for unionization, is probably where the most independently wealthy students were.
- jrochkind1 3y agoYou gotta mistreat people pretty bad to get 94% yes vote.
- j_walter 3y ago...or over promise them on what a union can deliver...no laws state that the union can't lie or misrepresent what they will get them in negotiations.
- runarberg 3y agoOn the other hand there are plenty of laws which prohibit union busting and falsely fearmongering about unionization, yet corporations get away with it anyway, even when found guilty. So perhaps it is a good thing unions are allowed to over-promise, it balances the power structure, if only a tiny bit.
- uoaei 3y agoSomething tells me Stanford grad students are smart enough to see through cheap ploys like the one you suggest. If that's not the case, maybe Stanford doesn't deserve the clout it enjoys.
- quailfarmer 3y agoThis issue aside, they are not, and it does not. :)
- quailfarmer 3y agoPartly mistreatment perhaps, but moreover gross incompetence by the administration. For years they’ve been unwilling or unable to fix the most basic issue: Mail delivery, sensible health insurance options, pay that tracks the cost of liming in university-owned housing. They demonstrated that they weren’t able to make things work, so there was no choice but to escalate to a union. I won’t be surprised if heads roll in upper admin once the Board of Trustees realizes that there’s no going back from this vote. I’m sure the union will be a bureaucratic headache for everyone, it’s unfortunate it was necessary.
- supernova87a 3y agoWhen given the opportunity, few people will vote against something that gives them more money. But whether their self-interest is in the broader interest is rarely solved for by such a mechanism. What will happen is that given a finite pot of money, fewer grad students will be taken on by the university's PhD programs, so that the ones who voted for this can get paid more. I'm not sure that's the right choice.
- colechristensen 3y agoIt’s the right choice. We need academia to be a competitive choice, to attract top talent, to not just be those with enough resources or enough passion to put up with awful pay and working conditions.
- supernova87a 3y agoIf high quality grad students are lining up to apply to Stanford at non unionized salary rates, and you can also give more people the educational opportunity with slots than if you had to distribute higher salaries to fewer people, why would I choose the 2nd option?
- hitekker 3y agoYou've been spamming comments across threads on this issue. Why does it rankle you?
- pkoird 3y agoMaybe stop paying the bloated management so much and put money where mouth is.
- senel 3y agoIn the program where I did my Master’s, there was a professor who had a salary of 300K and didn’t seem to do anything exceptional compared to his peers. PhD students told me he had been the president of some unit at the university and when he stepped down, he didn’t let go of the money. This silly financial idiocy easily costs 3-4 grad student more to the university every year.
- ftxbro 3y agoI am picturing a mob of dirty peasants demanding more rights from their feudal lord and they are somehow Stanford grad students. I don't hate unions but I feel like something has changed where whatever made Stanford prestigious has gone away and now the people associated with it are coasting off its old reputation. I don't know what is the new one that will be as prestigious in the future. Maybe an institution at Shenzhen or something. It's interesting to me that the Shenzhen logo seems to be modeled on the Stanford logo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen_University and also that the Stanford logo has some English and German writing on it. Stanford University was was founded before WWI and German was the dominant language of science. Similarly the Shenzhen University logo has some Chinese and English writing on it, and at the time of its founding English was the dominant language of science.
- ftxbro 3y agoHas something structurally changed at Stanford where making a graduate student union is now a good idea and it wasn't a good idea before, or was it always a good idea and only now they are doing it?
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agoUntil recently (some time within the last few years), it wasn’t clear if graduate students at private universities could unionize.
- ars 3y agoHow does a group of diverse people "win" a vote? Did the people who voted "no" also win? The person you vote for can win, sure, and you can win if your preference is the majority, but the group can't win or lose. i.e. this title doesn't make any sense - what did they actually vote for?
- uoaei 3y agoAre you familiar with the concept of democracy? This may seem like a tongue-in-cheek response, but I believe addressing this question in good faith will lead you to the answers you seek.
- ars 3y agoYou didn't answer the question: Did the people who voted "no" also win the vote? And are they not part of the union?
- rightbyte 3y agoYe. The title makes no sense.
- uoaei 3y agoBecause the question makes no sense. Unions are not just "bunch of people" but also the set of organizational principles, processes, and social-political capital that it represents. The union won the election. I agree with the sibling comment that the title is poorly worded.
- spamizbad 3y agoThis wouldn't be happening if universities did a better job making grad students less miserable. It was tolerable back in the day when - in theory - you'd simply "pay your dues" and then slide into a tenure-track position. But that era is over and isn't coming back. The workload of grad students has also increased substantially. Not only are they conducting much of the research, but quite often they're asked to significantly contribute to grant proposals as well.
- bezout 3y agoGoing on a tangent here: I live in Europe where unions have been present for decades and it’s scary how much I give them for granted. They are not perfect - far from it - but to think of everyone who fought to establish them and keeps them running to this day… it’s inspiring. Good for Stanford.
- hayst4ck 3y agoIt will be interesting to see how the union goes. The quality of the union and happiness of it's members directly reflects the quality of Stanford's liberal arts personnel and especially the quality of their political science and history departments. If the product of our highest quality institutions can't fight for a better quality of life, what hope do the rest of us have?
- pipes 3y agoCan someone explain this to me, I'm in the UK. What's going on? I thought you paid for college in the USA, but these students are getting money from the university?
- tnecniv 3y agoPhD students are almost always funded including an annual stipend. The university charges tuition but almost none of them ever see that bill (their advisor or external fellowship does). Undergrads pay for their education mostly
- Blackstrat 3y agoI grew up in a union household as did my wife. It was not a good experience.