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MIT graduate students vote to unionize

thetech.com

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Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#241

Post by whatever1 »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #227
whatever1 wrote: post #216

US Universities have enormous overhead costs. And unfortunately the PhD students / post docs are paying with their blood and sweat for these. My advisor had to spit 150k to the university to have me as a student (including a 20k fee for lab usage, despite the fact my PhD was a theoretical one). From that 150k I was taking 22k - 3k of mandatory health insurance. I could barely make it given that I had to pay > 12k per…

It's mostly caused by the explosion of lifestyle inflation at universities. Rather than just providing an education and doing research they are now expected to be mental health counselors, promote "diversity" (aka we need more of certain skin colors over other skin colors), and make "democratic" decisions. In practice this means everything is filled with bureaucracy and you need to go through 5 committees and 3 vice…

How diversity has anything to do with institutional mismanagement.

And no, US universities do not run as democracies. The appointed deans and the president run the show.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#242

Post by chrisseaton »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #164

I was a graduate student with a research assistantship position at the University of Washington in the mid 2000s, a few years after they unionized and got a contract with the UAW. By the time I was there, even though it was only a few years after the union struggle, I didn't hear much about the union, at least in my department. But what I knew it meant was: we had good health insurance, we had a guaranteed minimum st…

I was in a union as a PhD student. The union did nonsense things like running a (bad) cafe. My pay was set by my funders so the union didn’t have any say on that or any leverage on anything else at all really. Wasn’t sure what the point was. I just opted out after a while. I don’t think they added anything of value whatsoever.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#243

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

I know of one tenured professor in a pretty big East Coast college who spends his time finding graduate students about to launch a start-up, and then demands 20% equity or threatens said students for working on commercial projects on college time. Guy is easily a multi millionaire through this alone right now.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#244

Post by neltnerb »

waswaswas wrote: post #40
Bilal_io wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought graduate students were paying customers. Now this makes much sense. Thank you.

There’s a distinction in the US between fully-funded PhD graduate students (who receive a stipend contingent upon research/TA work in an employment relationship) and professional/masters students who pay tuition, even though the latter group is also referred to as graduate students.

Yes, they needed to be RAs or TAs (including hourly appointments or fellowship appointments accompanied by a partial RA/TA appointment).

https://mitgsu.org/updates/we-have-an-election-date-vote-yes...

Note that for instance if you're there with a fellowship and aren't getting a partial RA/TA assignment as well then you're not eligible. I know that some masters students pay for their tuition, so they might not be eligible either since they're not getting a stipend.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#245

Post by rossdavidh »

slibhb wrote: post #203
rossdavidh wrote: post #163

Unionization usually works when: 1) the workers in question are not easily replaced (for example, specialized skills or long training period before they become productive) 2) the workers in question are not easily able to switch employers, so they need the protection of a union (instead of just switching employers whenever they are unhappy, such that they are normally happy) There are lots of professions which either…

I think you're right. I'm usually skeptical of unionization but it may make sense in this case. Grad students have little leverage, the universities know this and use it. I also think there are too many grad students but that's a different issue.

True on both.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#246

Post by logifail »

ModernMech wrote: post #240
logifail wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this fundamentally wrong? It's the unchecked nature of the power. Politicians have upcoming elections to worry about. Tenured professors ... what do they worry about?

> Tenured professors ... what do they worry about? Class assignments and number of classes taught per semester, teaching times and locations, class sizes, advising assignments, committee assignments, TA allocations, grader allocations, internal grants, withholding or revoking consulting permission, withholding internal department funding, lack of promotion (there is still a ladder after tenure), and most of all reput…

> Tenured professors still have a job to do and they still have a boss (lots of bosses, as I said)

We are apparently talking about very different kinds of professors at very different kinds of institutions.

Unless he were to actually commit a crime, I don't think there is anything my ex-boss could have possibly done which could have ended up with him being removed from his post. He was simply too important to the institution in terms of his reputation and his ability to attract external funding.

How he treated his students was really neither here nor there, as long as the money and the citations kept rolling in.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#247

Post by omginternets »

j7ake wrote: post #69
some-human wrote: post #20

In the UK, most students are members of their universitys' branch of the National Union of Students.[1] The unions have a big presence on campus and a bar with heavily discounted drinks and organise a lot of the social clubs and events that happen outside of the study. They also negotiate with the university and faculty, fighting for students, and you can get individual advise and help too. Enrolling to the student u…

Phd student salaries in uk are probably the worst in the developed world. The student union in uk hasn’t been doing a good job to make salaries competitive with other countries at the PhD level.

I’m curious, what’s the going rate? I was a phd student in France circa 2013 and the salary was 1.3k€/month.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#250

Post by spacemanmatt »

klyrs wrote: post #181
spacemanmatt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are generally vehicles of resistance to illegal and/or oppressive actions. HTH.

Sadly, given my experience as a steward, I don't think a union could actually help in this particular situation.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Many people don't have a better choice than keep trying with unions.
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