Graduate students campaign to unionize
By Melissa Maynard
Stateline
February 29, 2012
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=635334

Pulling all-nighters in research labs and subsisting on
little more than ramen noodles has long been a rite of
passage for graduate students.

But some are now looking to unions for help setting
limits on the austere lifestyle and extreme working
conditions that pursuing an advanced degree often
requires. They argue that state universities have made
a habit of plugging budget holes by asking them to
shoulder more of the teaching and research work in the
place of regular, full-time faculty and staff -- making
it difficult for them to complete their degrees on
time. Working as a research or teaching assistant, they
say, is a form of employment that should entitle them
to collective bargaining representation with their
universities over pay, benefits and working conditions
just like other public employees.

Teaching and research assistant programs usually offer
students tuition reimbursement and a stipend in
exchange for work they conduct under the close
supervision of a faculty advisor. Often this work is
tightly woven into their degree programs, with the
faculty advisor also holding tremendous power over the
student's academic future.

"You don't want to say no to your [advisor] because
they might be on your academic committee," says Todd
Reynolds, a field staff representative for the American
Federation of Teachers-Maryland, which is pushing a
bill in the Maryland legislature that would allow
research and teaching assistants to unionize. Reynolds
says the arrangement leads to power dynamics that are
ripe for abuse, with faculty advisors sometimes asking
their assistants to spend hours making photocopies,
walking their dogs or completing other chores unrelated
to their area of study.

Teaching vs. research

Graduate student unionization is getting a big push
this year in Hawaii, Maryland and Michigan, but the
issue has actually been around for quite a while. Some
14 states -- including California, Illinois, Florida and
Pennsylvania -- already allow collective bargaining for
some graduate student employees, according to the
Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions. But research
assistants, as opposed to teaching assistants, are
sometimes ineligible for union membership even in the
states that offer it. In Hawaii, a bill that has been
approved by the House Committee on Higher Education
would add both teaching and research assistants to the
list of public employees eligible for collective
bargaining rights under state law. University of Hawaii
graduate assistants and researchers say they haven't
had a raise since 2004 and are paid far less than their
counterparts at other major research universities,
especially when the high cost of living in Hawaii is
factored into the equation. In a budget-cutting
environment, they argue, they can be targets for
exploitation, without access to a grievance process or
other recourse.

"The university has not acted on our behalf at all to
raise the salaries," says Ahnate Lin, a Ph.D. student
in cognitive psychology. "It's kind of up to us at this
time." Lin says that in Hawaii buying simple
necessities like milk is prohibitively expensive ($5 to
$6 a gallon) and rental costs are comparable to those
in New York City. He says the only housing he can
afford with his $17,000 annual stipend is a room in a
boarding house that is dirty, needs major repairs and
lacks a proper kitchen. "It's not uncommon to feel
helpless," he says.

Unintended consequences?

The University of Hawaii is opposing the legislation on
the grounds that the work graduate assistants do is an
integral part of their education. "Our goal is to train
and mentor these graduate assistants so that we can get
them to the point where they can function as
professionals and begin their careers," says Linda
Johnsrud, the university's executive vice president for
academic affairs.

Johnsrud told a legislative hearing that unionization
could have unintended consequences for the students
because everything from tuition waivers to health
insurance would suddenly become negotiable. Other
university employees have seen their salaries cut as a
result of budget reductions, while student assistants
have been shielded from such hardship, she said. At the
University of Michigan, where unions exist and stipends
are more generous, the debate has centered on who
qualifies for membership. Teaching and staff assistants
have long been unionized as part of the Graduate
Employees Organization (GEO), an arm of the American
Federation of Teachers, and research assistants were
briefly included when the union formed in 1975. But
research assistants were placed outside the definition
of public employees in a 1981 decision by the state's
Employment Relations Commission.  GEO is now pushing
for a vote that would enable graduate research
assistants to choose whether they would like to join a
union.

The university's governing Board of Regents has voted
to allow research assistants to take a vote on
unionization, while President Mary Sue Coleman and a
key faculty committee oppose such a move on the grounds
that dissertation research is an integrated part of
graduate student education. Those efforts have prompted
the Michigan Employment Relations Commission and a
state administrative law judge to review the 1981
decision to determine whether there have been material
changes to the relationship that the university has
with its graduate research assistants.

Proponents of unionization argue that the university
now leans more heavily on graduate assistants to
fulfill its research-focused mission. The Michigan
Senate passed a bill last week that would render that
argument moot by explicitly excluding research
assistants from the state's collective bargaining law
for public employees.

Professors affronted The debate has exposed large fault
lines dividing students and faculty on the question of
who is a "student" and who is an "employee," and who
needs protection from whom. "As professors and graduate
program administrators, we view it as a serious affront
when our students are treated like employees," Victor
DiRita, a professor and associate dean at the
University of Michigan Medical School, said at a
January Regents meeting. "These young trainees are not
our employees: We do not think of them in that way, and
we do not want them to think of themselves that way.
Throughout the training of each student, we have our
sensitivities attuned to any indication that the
student is being treated as the employee of a thesis
advisor."

A group calling itself Students Against Graduate
Student Research Assistant Unionization is working with
the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation on a legal
strategy and public relations campaign opposing
unionization. The group argues that the benefits of
unions are dubious and the costs are high -- a mandatory
1.53 percent paycheck deduction even for those who
don't choose to join. "We feel like the university has
our best interest in mind more than the union does,"
says Stephen Raiman, the group's founder and a Ph.D.
student in nuclear engineering. "This is not a
profit-driven corporation that's trying to get as much
work out of us for as little wages as they can. It's an
educational institution."

In a video that makes the case against unionization,
research assistant Melinda Day worries about how
inserting a third party into the supervision of her
research might be harmful as she pursues a Ph.D. in
biology. "It would hinder our ability to do science,"
Day says. "Cells don't know that work hours are 9 to 5.
Cells don't know when it's the weekend. I recently
completed an experiment that involved taking samples
every eight hours. I wouldn't have been able to do that
under the strict work-hour regulations the GEO wants."

--Contact Melissa Maynard at [log in to unmask]

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