T.A. Union Battles Heating Up Across United States

Battles between unions of graduate students and university administrators are heating up at institutions around the United States. This academic year is seeing an upwelling of union activity and an increasingly polarized debate between union activists and university administrators. Most notable among these was a highly visible protest by teaching assistants at Yale University, who refused to turn in students' fall-semester grades. ACTIVIST: U. Michigan union president Scott Dexter is a student in th department of electrical engineering and computer science. At Yale and at several of the campuses of the University of California (UC), unions are fighting for official recognition. Yale T.A.'s ended their grade strike with claims that the administration and individual faculty members had retaliated against strikers. An administration spokesman denies that there was any collective retaliation taken. At an April 14 convention in Los Angeles, union activists from five UC campuses voted to demand official recognition of their unions by April 30. If that demand is not met, union leaders intend to hold strike votes later this spring for strikes of undetermined length to be staged in the fall quarter of 1996. But even at institutions where relatively cordial union-management relations are a longtime mainstay of academic life-such as the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of Florida, Gainesville-contract negotiations have recently reached impasses over issues of money, benefits, and work rules. When contract negotiations over wages and work rules stalled in Ann Arbor earlier this month, the union staged a two-day walkout, and a state-appointed mediator entered the negotiations. In Florida, the union and the Board of Regents couldn't agree in a dispute over wage increases, and the issue must now be settled by the Florida legislature. Across the U.S., the graduate student union movement has had somewhat less effect on students in the hard sciences compared to students in the humanities and social sciences. Yale's Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) currently makes no attempt to organize in the natural sciences, although that was not always the case. SCIENTISTS VS HUMANISTS: Former Yale grad student Kevin Gardner nots the "better package" for science students. "I worked with them for a period of approximately a year [in the early 1990s] in an effort to organize other science graduate students," says Kevin Gardner, a former Yale graduate student in the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and now a postdoc at the University of Toronto. "What I came to realize is that science graduate students at Yale have a far better package of financial and other benefits available to them than do graduate students in nonscience fields." This may be generally true. Isaac Mankita, an executive board member at UC-Berkeley's Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW Local 2165, affiliated with the United Auto Workers), notes that because of the way research and teaching fellowships come from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to graduate students in the sciences, "humanities and social science students are more likely to have to teach or conduct research that is really unrelated to their own research, and there is therefore a greater propensity for these students to feel used, to feel that this is a job, and to feel that this is an oppressive job." In a recent E-mail message to the Young Scientists Network (ysn@crow-t-robot.stanford.edu), Jonathan M. Gilligan, a former Yale graduate student, noted his comfortable situation in the physics department. Gilligan, now a research assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, wrote that his teaching duties involved only 10 hours a week, including preparation and grading, for which he was paid quite well, in his estimation. "In short, the Yale graduate student union seems to me to be directing their efforts in the wrong direction," he wrote, "looking to improve their already comfortable circumstances when they might instead concentrate on fighting the very real mistreatment of the clerical and technical staff at Yale." These workers went on strike on March 27 for the seventh time since 1968. IT'S NOT A JOB: Yale associate dean Jonas Zdanys says teaching responsibilities are part of a grad student's education. Jonas Zdanys, associate dean of the graduate school at Yale, notes: "There's somewhat of a different culture on campus between the sciences on the one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other. Students in the sciences typically become affiliated with members of the faculty . . . much sooner in their academic careers. They have a greater sense of direction in terms of their own research interests. . . . Science is more of a collaborative process than the study of literature, . . . so there is more of a sense of affiliation with the institution in the sciences than in the humanities and social sciences." Another issue is differing demographics. "There's a much higher proportion of international students in the sciences here on student visas, and [they] are leery of any kind of political involvement," states UCLA's Miller. Despite all those factors, some scientists have been active in union movements. For example, Scott D. Dexter, president of the University of Michigan's Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), is a student in the department of electrical engineering and computer science, and at Michigan 65 percent of students in science departments are union members. This compares with 83 percent of students in the humanities and social sciences. And scientists do have unique problems that a union can help address. "One of the things the science members of AGSE were concerned about was health and safety issues," recalls labor historian Victor Silverman, an assistant professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. Silverman was a union activist during his graduate school days at UC-Berkeley. "We were concerned about conditions in the labs, handling of toxic materials, and insufficient training of teaching assistants and lab supervisors," he points out. For scientists as well as humanists, "the central legal issue for graduate student employees is getting the universities to recognize that T.A.'s and research assistants are actually workers, and thus have a right to join a union and be represented by a union in bargaining for contracts," explains Silverman. Such recognition has never come easy (J. Ziegler, The Scientist, Feb. 18, 1991, page 5). At both Yale and the University of California, the administration's first response when confronted with a union movement was to argue that employment as a teaching or research assistant is part of a student's academic training, and therefore cannot be the subject of collective bargaining. at Yale are admitted into the graduate school. They're not hired by the graduate school," argues Yale's Zdanys. "They receive a financial aid package on the day they're admitted. . . . Whatever teaching they do is a part of their preparation as teachers and scholars and also as part of their financial aid." 'A PRIVILEDGE': UCLA associate dean Robin Fisher notes that is is cheaper to use lecturers than graduate students for instruction. Robin Fisher, associate dean of UCLA's graduate division, agrees: "The University of California has always presented and considered involvement in instructional activities to be a privilege for graduate students, and not something we really want to have there as a way to teach more undergraduates. The honest-to-God truth is that we can hire lecturers and do it much more cheaply than through graduate students." NOT FINANCIAL AID: Former student activist Victor Silverman notes the "payment in exchange for services provided" by T.A.'s Silverman doesn't buy that argument. He recalls that during his days in UC-Berkeley's AGSE, the students' "general argument was that we relied on these for jobs. They weren't financial aid. This was payment in exchange for services provided, which wasn't necessary for our education." Mike Miller, lead organizer for UCLA's Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE/UAW, affiliated with the United Auto Workers) also maintains that teaching is not central to a graduate education. "The educational objective in a Ph.D. [program] is to learn to think in a more sophisticated way. [Learning] how to teach isn't a major educational priority for people who are here or for the administration. They spend relatively nothing on training people to be teachers." Zdanys also argues that a union would poison the university's atmosphere. "The relationship between the student and his or her faculty member is one which is principally collegial, one which . . . is based on a certain respectful exchange of ideas and information. . . . The idea of having a shop steward come with a student to discuss issues which are educational and academic in nature with the faculty or with the dean is probably neither beneficial nor useful." This is similar to an argument UC made before the state's Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in an attempt to prevent union certification. But in a decision released Oct. 20, 1995, administrative law judge James W. Tamm rejected the argument, noting that established collective-bargaining agreements at other universities "contain either explicit limitations on the authority of arbitrators regarding academic issues or express reservation of University authority regarding academic matters." Moreover, Tamm noted a number of cases in which unionized universities successfully refused to relinquish rights "when the issues at hand are fundamental to the University's exercise of academic discretion." The fight for graduate-student unionization at UC began in the early 1980s and has taken the form of an epic legal battle interspersed with several work stoppages, one of which lasted a month at UC-Berkeley. There have been several hearings before PERB resulting in decisions favorable to the unions. But the university appealed one of these decisions to the State Court of Appeals, which issued a ruling largely favorable to the university. The result so far is that the university has been obliged only to recognize and bargain with a union composed of students designated "readers," "tutors," and "acting instructors," and only at UC-Berkeley. As a result of the Court of Appeals ruling, UC continues to claim the right to refuse to bargain with similar unions at other campuses, or unions of teaching and research assistants at any campus. "We're kind of tired of playing around, spending time and money on legal cases where they can effectively outspend us by millions of dollars," complains AGSE's Mankita. "We've had enough." At Yale, GESO's six-year battle for recognition culminated in a fall semester protest in which T.A.'s in the humanities and social sciences refused to turn in grades. Administrators declined to negotiate, initiated disciplinary hearings against three union leaders, and threatened not to reappoint striking T.A.'s. The union ended its protest and its members turned in their grades on the last possible day. But they allege that Yale retaliated against participants anyway-by, for example, failing to reappoint some of them to plum positions. But Zdanys maintains that "there was no retaliation taken." He says that the students who lost their status as "part-time acting instructors" were reappointed at a slightly lower level in which they would be subject to increased faculty supervision. And he defends the right of faculty members to make individual decisions not to work with strikers. Things seem somewhat calmer at universities where the battles over union recognition are long past. The University of Michigan negotiated its first contract with GEO in 1975. "My opinion is that [a graduate student union] really is not that detrimental to the workings of the institution," says Daniel A. Gamble, associate director of academic human resources, who has been negotiating with GEO since 1980. "It certainly is a little different having graduate students also be union members, but it's not a great negative force. Michigan is a labor state. We respect unions, and we respect the relationship between management and union here in Michigan, and that certainly could be a factor between Michigan and other states." "I'm firmly convinced that the existence of the union has made day-to-day dealings between individual T.A.'s and supervising professors or department chairs a much less intimidating experience," maintains GEO president Dexter. "If you have a problem regarding your employment situation, the union has a very good grievance procedure for you to follow. And you have the protection of due process, of state labor law, of neutral, binding, third-party arbitration, and the weight of the union behind you. It provides some distance between the department as a provider of an education, and the department as employer." Nevertheless, the most recent contract negotiations have been challenging. The union's contract expired in February, and for the next two months it was operating on a series of temporary extensions. "Our positions on wages are deeply conflicting," explained Dexter during negotiations. "We have proposed a significant wage increase-which would amount to . . . $120 a month the first year, $100 a month the second, and $100 a month the third year-which would allow us to come back up to the standard of living in Ann Arbor, which we are currently below. The university has responded by saying, 'We would be happy to give you the same percentage salary increase we've given to faculty.'" Dexter calculates that the 4 percent to 5 percent increases received by the faculty in recent years would correspond to a $40 per month raise for T.A.'s. Another bone of contention was the university's requirement that international teaching assistants come to campus a month before classes start for a three-week training session. "This is training required as a condition of employment," said Dexter. "Nonetheless, they are not given any compensation. They are not given any assistance with room and board. They are not given assistance with mandatory health insurance. And of equal importance, they're not given a voice in the structure of that training." After intensive negotiations on these matters and others failed to establish an agreement, GEO staged a two-day work stoppage on April 8 and 9. On April 10, a state-appointed mediator from the Michigan Employee Relations Commission entered the negotiations.With the mediator's assistance, an agreement on a three-year contract was finally hammered out at 2:30 a.m. on April 11. The union failed to win its desired wage increase. T.A. wages will increase at the same rate as faculty wages, with the proviso that annual increases will be at least 2.5 percent. The university also agreed to give entering international T.A's $700 fellowships to attend the training session. The Florida Board of Regents (BOR) has negotiated with unions at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida in Tampa since 1980. "We have had a very good relationship," maintains Joann Campbell, the BOR's associate director of human resources. The two sides, she says, have "each given and each taken in the process, and it's been very, very healthy. We don't always agree, but at least we respect one another's position and deal with each other as professionals. "The universities' perspective is, if they don't do right by the graduate assistants, that's going to get out pretty quickly," she adds. "And if they're taking hard-line positions and making life difficult, sooner or later the word will get out: 'This institution is not the place for us to be.' We continue to grow, we continue to need good, solid graduate students, graduate assistants, and our position is the way to keep them-if we can't give you a decent salary increase, then we'll at least try to make your working conditions such that you enjoy where you are, what you're doing, and will stay with us." That salary increase is the sticking point in the current negotiations. "We're always disagreeing [over] how raises will be handed out," notes Dean Dabney, copresident of the University of Florida's Graduate Assistants United (GAU). "We want them to go across the board, and the university and the Board of Regents wants to have some discretionary funds they can work with." GAU is asking for a 3 percent across-the-board increase in wages, while the BOR wants to increase salaries 2.25 percent across the board, reserving 0.75 percent for discretionary funds. "We want to have a portion of the salary increase package available to award meritorious performance, to address counteroffers our graduate assistants might be getting from other institutions, and to address market equity considerations," explains Campbell. Of GAU's refusal to concede this point, Dabney says: "While that may not seem like an enormous amount of money, we've been taking it on the chin on this issue for some time." Since the parties can't reach agreement, the salary issue will be decided by a special committee of the Florida legislature, whose verdict will be part of an appropriations bill expected to be released in early May. Despite the turmoil that the presence of a T.A. union can bring to the academic environment, unions serve a laudable function, Dexter maintains. "Our mission as a teacher's union, I think, is the same mission as any other union, which is to give us a voice in our working conditions, and to get dignity and respect on the job. In our case, we are always aware that the working conditions for which we fight are the learning con-ditions for our students. . . . I strongly believe that teaching-assistant unions are one of the most effective tools in improving or maintaining the quality of undergraduate education Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., is online at finn@nasw.org.

T.A. Union Battles Heating Up Across United States

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