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MIT graduate students vote to unionize

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Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#271

Post by [deleted] »

cabcalloway wrote: post #258
spacemanmatt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stopping work. Same as other unions.

And again, since you’re making me belabor the question instead of answering the obvious one, what does that look like? Isn’t that more harmful to the student than the institution? Again: what is the leverage? I’m from a three generation UAW family, married into IBEW, and I was on the line at eight years old. I’m not exactly hearing about unions for the first time here. I’m also struggling to understand how they’re th…

[deleted]

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#272

Post by klyrs »

cabcalloway wrote: post #253
spacemanmatt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn’t help, actually, because they were implicitly asking how a union will help specifically with that example. In corporations unions have the leverage of stopping work. What’s the leverage here? We’ll all stop pursuing our education…? I guess the calculation is that the tuition hit would be leverage? Like what, is a union going to force a code of conduct for professors? How is it going to be enforced when it a…

There's a few things a union can do in this situation. What they can't do is prevent blowback from the professor -- not even the university has leverage there.

The resources a union have typically amount to (a) a grievance process, (b) work stoppage, and (c) a pittance of a legal fund. Work stoppages don't occur because one professor mistreats one student -- there's no rule against that, but unions are democratic and that motion would simply never pass unless the harm was particularly egregious and the victim was especially charismatic. Politics be. A grievance could "succeed" but ultimately they're pretty toothless -- the university has little leverage over a prof, the union has less. So we're left with a pitiful legal fund -- know how everybody hates dues? Unions are weak as a result. The student could potentially sue their prof through the ordinary legal system. They could be awarded monetary damages, but they would not be awarded a degree.

The professor is the judge, jury, and executioner for the doctoral thesis. Other professors in the department will be working alongside the offending professor for the rest of their lives so whatever politics be in the union, they're way more intense in a department of professors. And even if you do find a sympathetic ear with another professor in the same department, they're probably not in your specialty, because when there are two profs with the same specialty in a single department, one hired the other and they're bosom buds. And this is the real reason that individual grad students don't speak out, file grievances, etc. against professors, and known rapists carry on for decades: to act is to throw away your degree, and with it, your entire career.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#273

Post by hervature »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #223
hervature wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is going to TA deep reinforcement learning Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. > Also, seems like you are completely ignoring the actual "labor" But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). That is "studying" which I keep pointing out is the whole issue. Which feeds back to your point about highly-specific knowledge TAs. The implicit agreement is that the universi…

> Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. Not particularly, I gave that example because I was TAing that class last semester. Incidentally, it seems we have more in common than I thought! > But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). This may be a difference in experience and expectation, but in my experience I've always seen graduate student salaries paid out to Ph.D. stu…

> Ph.D. students employed by the university as an RA or a TA.

The vast majority of students are paid through TA (which you have admitted that you were last semester). This means all your other "duties" was your "study". I agree with everything you say, but there is literally nothing a union can do about these things because it these things are not your job. I know it feels like a job. Writing code, SSHing into the cluster, analyzing results. All things that I continued to due in my industry job after graduation. But, this is the key part students don't seem to understand, you are not employed by the university to do this. It does not matter if it is part of a course. This is the sole reason international students are able to come on F1/J1. Legally and practically, you are doing this under the guidance of your advisor. Others have commented in this thread as well, RA becomes very difficult to separate what an RA tasks are and what your PhD student tasks are, but this is the crux of the issue. Your union might be able to fight for increase RA pay, but your advisor/department/university can just forego your RA and accept your student work.

> If you are neither of those, then you do have to pay tuition to the university.

Then you are not an employee and cannot unionize. At least, not in a trade union.

> Which is another problem with not having a union -- the university unilaterally sets these price stickers without anyone challenging them, and then "waives" it and appearing generous...

This is the problem with these unions. They make it appear to the students that they can solve these problems, but they legally cannot. A union cannot bargain for these things. Just like a union cannot bargain with Ford on the price of a F150, a grad student union cannot tell the university how to run its programs. At least at my institution, some students thought that, if we unionized, they could negotiate for fewer teaching requirements. The very thing that makes them employees and eligible to be in the union.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#274

Post by Ar-Curunir »

ModernMech wrote: post #126
mumblemumble wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decent labor standards would be a start. Universities are rather analogous to sweatshops in how they operate and the economic reasons for doing so. And I suspect that, in much the same way, this state of affairs represents a sort of Nash equilibrium that cannot be significantly altered except by an outside force changing the rules of the game.

In grad school we definitely had decent labor standards though. I mean, I was worked really hard, but I can't say I was worked any harder than I was in private industry. And the pay wasn't great, but it was more than enough to support myself, and the understanding has always been that you get free tuition as part of the deal, which is pretty great, so that makes up for a lot of the pay deficit. I could see better pay…

As I’m sure you know, Most PhD students stop taking classes by the end of the 2nd year, and focus entirely on research and teaching thereafter, which means that the “free tuition part” is just a sham to avoid classifying PhD students as workers, and to hence avoid paying them for their labour.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#275

Post by robwwilliams »

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

Tenure does not provide much protection in biomedical research—only funding. In fact at top tier institutions tenure is almost meaningless often with I think the abuses of seniority are much less than in the past—both wrt extraneous labor (hey, help me paint my house) to sexual pressures.

Re unionization—-its complex and a function of teaching load as a TA versus, class work as a student, versus your own research with mentors.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#276

Post by iudqnolq »

cabcalloway wrote: post #258
spacemanmatt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stopping work. Same as other unions.

And again, since you’re making me belabor the question instead of answering the obvious one, what does that look like? Isn’t that more harmful to the student than the institution? Again: what is the leverage? I’m from a three generation UAW family, married into IBEW, and I was on the line at eight years old. I’m not exactly hearing about unions for the first time here. I’m also struggling to understand how they’re th…

Most large schools make most of their money charging undergrads tuition. A significant portion of undergrad instruction is done by grad students. If grad students stop teaching undergrads (or, as some have, keep teaching but stop issuing grades) the theory is undergrads and parents will threaten admin. This has worked in some cases.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#277

Post by asf9b8hqw4n »

_huayra_ wrote: post #54
bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

We were discussing a potential hire at work a few days ago who suddenly turned down the company's offer for another company despite our team being his "dream place to work" and promising to not make a sudden decision without talking with us first. Turns out he was basically forced to go to this other company by his advisor, who had a lot of funding from this other company, or his advisor would "make graduating very d…

This is definitely abusive, but it's not clear how a union would go about solving this? The CBA could prohibit it (but it's already against policy) or the union could file a grievance (students could already do this), but nothing really prevents this from happening with a union.

I don't even think the union has jurisdiction over "academic" matters like graduation. The Harvard CBA explicitly points out that academic matters cannot be arbitrated like other grievances: https://studentunionization.harvard.edu/files/hgsu/files/202...

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#279

Post by [deleted] »

nautilius wrote: post #194
aidenn0 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you made tolls on a toll road optional, the road owners would not be able to keep up with maintenance, yet I think most drivers value the road...

So what's this 'road' in your analogy that was installed by the union, that wasn't there before, and that introduced a lot of utility, comparable to a road?

[deleted]

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#280

Post by derbOac »

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

FWIW, speaking as someone who has had tenure, the problems don't end there. The whole thing is broken all the way through.

There are good places and good people, but the system is dysfunctional and too many critically problematic behaviors and dynamics are incentivized.

Society at large isn't helpful either, as outside influences tend to be politicized badly on both ends of the spectrum in multiple ways, even when the other side is trying to improve things in good faith.

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