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MIT graduate students vote to unionize

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Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#301

Post by thylacine222 »

asf9b8hqw4n wrote: post #277
_huayra_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Students cannot already file grievances. Grievance procedures are part of a contract, and many, if not all, non-unionized grad workers work without a contract, and if they do have a grievance procedure, they are often only through university-run venues where they do not receive independent representation.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#302

Post by milofeynman »

I want to see PICU attendings at academic universities unionize. Some of their schedules should be illegal. 14-16 7-day shifts a year, one of those Fri, Sat, Sun shifts they work from 7am through their shift the next day which means Fri and Sat are approximately 7am-4pm the next day with NO guaranteed sleep. They also have other random night shifts throughout the year for a total of 35 or so overnight shifts, but those start at 4pm.

Those ~33 hour shifts should be illegal

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#303

Post by lumost »

ipaddr wrote: post #286
lumost wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An advisor is your gateway into your field of interest. To graduate, a student must publish a notable work in the field. If you lose your advisor, then you will likely need to start over with someone else - delaying your graduation by 2-6 years depending on the field. Even if the university offered a new advisor, it would be unlikely to help the student.

Would a death or a retirement have the same effect?

Professors are "supposed" to help avoid the retirement effect by not accepting new grad students, in some cases where this is not viable they can continue with an emeritus title and provide the entry point that their students need. Similarly, a professor leaving for another institution will likely make right by their students.

In the case that none of the above is possible the institution will probably try to do right by the student, but it's a bit of a crap shoot. Even if the institution confers the PhD, the student is still beholden to the publish or perish culture of academia - and their (former) advisor would have helped navigate them to a thesis which their former advisors peers would accept. If the latter doesn't occur in a big way; then the student won't have a good career ahead.

I've known 1-2 people who for various reasons decided that the grad student life was the optimal career station for themselves as it provided the benefits of an academic career without the overhead of grant applications etc.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#304

Post by einpoklum »

Unionization, especially academic workers' unionization, and double-especially junior, untenured researcher unionization is ultra-important.

The recent couple of centuries, especially the last one, have brought an increased application of commercial-corporation-type relations into academia, with graduate researchers and teachers being the object of degradation of both material welfare and intra-academic status. I wrote about this when I was involved in unionizing grads in my own university - not in the US, but still:

https://app.box.com/s/osnf6xfqgqgvmnat6ldq

(or in Hebrew: https://app.box.com/shared/l3iypqd2yi )

I wish the MIT grads all the best in their struggle. However, when looking at their "Path to unionization" page: https://mitgsu.org/roadmap , I am worried they are too timid of an endeavor. They write:

> The real goal of the campaign is to secure a union contract

A contract is never the goal. Just like signing an employment contract as an individual is not the goal - the employment conditions, and the relations and standing in the workplace - are the goal. A contract is at best a means to reach the goal, and at worst - a fetish. I've seen many a unionization drive fixate on negotiations and a contract, not on building "shop-floor" power, on the individual and collective level. When grads walk around knowing that mistreatment by administration or supervisors will result in harsh collective action by their peers - from public shaming of those involved to work disruption if necessary, contract or no contract - that's when things have changed. But if what you get is a link to a piece of paper saying that in theory you can seek some arbitration somehow, but in practice your daily life remains the same, then you haven't gained much.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#305

Post by MaxBarraclough »

frankharv wrote: post #226
Tao331 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "advising" in the same sense that you pay a gangster for "protection". Nice career trajectory you got here, but in a field like this one... shame if something bad happened to it...

That sounds like a reasonable parallel. In the field of Machining most of our new folks come from one particular Community College that offers a Machine Shop with a few CNC machines. The sole instructor was a friend and would give me heads up on excellent machinists. Stanly retires and new instructor brought in. Fast forward a year and a competing companies CEO now sits on board of college. He gets all the heads ups…

Is there no grading system to refer to?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#306

Post by solidsnack9000 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #127
hedora wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had an unusually positive experience with UAW. They own the UC system contract, and negotiated pay caps, lowering grad student pay on some campuses. They also negotiated to discontine coverage for various women's health issues. Just before COVID, UC Santa Cruz went on a wildcat strike because the union negotiated pay for that campus below the cost of living. A bunch of foreign students lost their visas as a resul…

It is amazing that unions get a legal monopoly in this manner, and it is not surprising that, with such rights, they fail their constituents, preferring to amass money and power for a corrupt leadership. Imagine a world with two or three unions per employer and you could actually pick which one you were under. They’d actually have incentives to deliver! But we’ll never have that because it means less lobbying money a…

In recent years, some decisions from the NLRB are leaning in the direction of multiple unions: https://laborblog.vorys.com/2014/07/articles/nlrb/how-many-u...

The idea is that different kinds of workers could be in different unions. A department store might have, for example, cosmetics specialists, tailors, accounting staff and so on; and these groups are distinct enough, from the NLRB's perspective, to have their own unions.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#307

Post by solidsnack9000 »

wadefletch wrote: post #265
fennecfoxen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing that unions get a legal monopoly in this manner, and it is not surprising that, with such rights, they fail their constituents, preferring to amass money and power for a corrupt leadership. Imagine a world with two or three unions per employer and you could actually pick which one you were under. They’d actually have incentives to deliver! But we’ll never have that because it means less lobbying money a…

Aren't a bunch of little unions equivalent to independent employees advocating their own interests?

Maybe not, because (a) each union can still aggregate the interests of hundreds or thousands of workers and (b) it's much easier for a few unions to collaborate with each other than for hundreds or thousands of individual workers to do so.

This depends, of course, on how exactly the new unions are allowed to form. It seems unlikely that the NLRB would implement policy in a way that allows dozens of unions, each with a handful of workers; but I guess if that happened, it would end up just like what you're saying.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#308

Post by einpoklum »

asf9b8hqw4n wrote: post #277
_huayra_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> I don't even think the union has jurisdiction over "academic" matters like graduation.

The union has jurisdiction, or perhaps we should say influence, over those matters it is strong enough to act collectively to force acceptance of its influence or jurisdiction. Naturally if tries to get full jurisdiction over handing out Ph.Ds, that will be a misguided attempt which will be met with extreme resistance and fail. But if it insists on its right to intervene when advisers inappropriately block their advisees from graduating - that is a realistic (though not easy) objective.

> This is definitely abusive, but it's not clear how a union would go about solving this?

It's very clear. Let's assume the student has not yet accepted a work offer here or there. A group of union reps from the department go talk to that Professor. They tell him/her that this is an informal chat; that they have heard about his threat. They demand that he perform the following:

1. Informally affirm, to them, that s/he will not penalize or impede the advisee in any way, regardless of their choice of employment.

2. Ditto but to the advisee, within X time.

and that if these demands are not met, they will make the affair public: The department will be plastered with posters attacking him for extortion and mistreatment; press releases will be sent out; and ethical charges will be filed directly (if grads can do so), or external legal action may be initiated.

... that is, assuming the Professor does not deny the claim, which of course can also happen, and then things get more delicate and beyond the scope of this comment, but still actionable.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#309

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kergonath wrote: post #267
ModernMech wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what they really feel ripped off on is the lack of academic freedom that was promised as part of this training Where would this idea be originating? I think that would be one of the first things I would tackle, because anyone making a claim of academic freedom for grad students to just research whatever they want is spinning a tale. Students with this perception are being lied to, so we should first address the fol…

This is probably very context-dependent. I have supervised PhD students at a top British university and 2 European research institutes, and usually the students had some freedom within the bounds of the project they chose initially. That’s how it should be: you want students to develop some initiative and they are not here just to follow instructions. Now, sure it is not absolute freedom because it is supervised and…

Maybe it was somewhat unique, but when I received my offer to become a PhD student at EMBL in 1986, I wrote my own PhD proposal that was completely unrelated to any work that my supervisor was doing, and only very loosely connected to the work that anyone else was doing at EMBL at that time.

However, the funding of EMBL works fairly differently from most universities, and quite a few other research institutes.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#310

Post by musicale »

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…

> Individually graduate students have little recourse when they are wronged

Changing supervisors without 1) losing your funding and/or 2) having to start over on your dissertation is extremely difficult at many universities.

As a result, academic supervisors wield excessive power over their graduate students.

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