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Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

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Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#61

Post by tibbon »

CraigRo wrote: post #18

It was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities, and the union refused to let wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the si…

One thing to keep in mind is that the union is presumably made of their members, and should act in alignment with some decision making process they arrive at together. Bargaining and figuring out goals shouldn’t be something for just the Bargaining Committee to do in a vacuum. If they valued the “wrong” things, then maybe they were still right for the majority in the union.

(I’m a proud technology union member myself, and we are currently in bargaining.)

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#62

Post by ipcress_file »

CraigRo wrote: post #18

It was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities, and the union refused to let wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the si…

I can't know if this is true or false. It reads like it is politically motivated. Can you cite sources to substantiate the many claims you have made here?

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#63

Post by runarberg »

j_walter wrote: post #49
jrochkind1 wrote: post #36

You gotta mistreat people pretty bad to get 94% yes vote.

...or over promise them on what a union can deliver...no laws state that the union can't lie or misrepresent what they will get them in negotiations.

On the other hand there are plenty of laws which prohibit union busting and falsely fearmongering about unionization, yet corporations get away with it anyway, even when found guilty.

So perhaps it is a good thing unions are allowed to over-promise, it balances the power structure, if only a tiny bit.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#64

Post by supernova87a »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #58
supernova87a wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's okay to be ignorant about how weird things work, but sharing opinions about things you don't know about should be avoided. A PhD "student" isn't really a student. They're an employed researcher at a research institution, working under more senior researchers who are able to attract grant money. To use an analogy to the trades, the PhD students are the apprentices, the senior researchers / professors are the jour…

Yeah, I was a grad student in physics for 6 years, so feel free not to offer opinions on things you don't know about.

Grad students are getting an education and a big bump to their future earning potential, often at significant taxpayer expense. What entitlement do they have to have a free ride, much less make living wage on top of that?

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#65

Post by dayvid »

CraigRo wrote: post #18

It was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities, and the union refused to let wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the si…

I volunteer taught at a high school for a few months in Milwaukee when Scott Walker was in power.

A lot of poor kids were bused to this school in a nicer neighborhood and couldn't do sports or extracurriculars because Walker cut funding for extra school buses to come later.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#66

Post by fallingknife »

black_puppydog wrote: post #28
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first step, maybe, but far from enough to fix it. Toxic: That won't be fixed until they start firing tenured profs for abusing grad students. Nothing else will do. Broken: There's no route to professorship for most grad students, ever. We either need far bigger universities, or far fewer grad students.

Or permanent positions that are reasonably paid and not professors. Like teachers, researchers, ... I don't get the impression that everyone becomes a manager in software, not everyone becomes a line manager in a factory. Not every wants to become CEO eventually. Why should academia be any different? In Germany for one we used to have positions at universities that focused exclusively on teaching. That was, like, the…

This doesn't solve the problem. If schools have a ratio N students per teacher, then at most 1/N students can expect to become a teacher. This works fine for things like B-school of CS where there is heavy industry demand for the credentials and less than 1/N students are trying to be teachers. But for other departments, especially humanities, there is essentially no private sector demand for that credential at the graduate level. This means that almost all grad students are aiming to teach, and since one teacher can teach many students, the majority of them are destined to fail.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#67

Post by supernova87a »

mjhay wrote: post #55
supernova87a wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work. Most PhD students are pretty much done with classes after the first year or two. They get their PhDs through research (often writing their own grants) or the vital function of teaching. They are workers. It is disingenuous to view them as students. If PhD students were not able to make a living, very, very few people would ever be able to enter science.

> You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work.

Somehow my 6 years of PhD in physics begs to differ.

As I said in another comment, grad students are going to grad school and getting a big bump to their future earning potential, subsidized often by the state. I don't think it's an entitlement that they get to do that for free, much less claim a right to earn living wage level on top of that.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#68

Post by parpfish »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #31
xhkkffbf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I'm not sure a union can begin to fix anything except a few cosmetic things. The biggest problem is the massive oversupply of people who want academic careers versus the number of real jobs. The individual unions at the schools can't tackle this oversupply at all because it's caused by the schools acting independently. The natural game is to protect the insiders by restricting admission like many of the other u…

> a few cosmetic things Show me someone who thinks a living wage and a boss who can’t overwork you anymore are cosmetic and I’ll show you a university administrator.

Grad student unions can stop TAs from being overworked for their classes. But most of the overwork actually stems from trying to start a research career.

there’s nothing a union can do to fix research-based overwork because youre a) doing it to yourself, not because a boss is making you and b) you are competing with researchers from other institutions that aren’t in your union to build your CV.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#69

Post by mjhay »

supernova87a wrote: post #67
mjhay wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work. Most PhD students are pretty much done with classes after the first year or two. They get their PhDs through research (often writing their own grants) or the vital function of teaching. They are workers. It is disingenuous to view them as students. If PhD students were not able to make a living, very, very few people would ever be able to enter science.

> You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work . Somehow my 6 years of PhD in physics begs to differ. As I said in another comment, grad students are going to grad school and getting a big bump to their future earning potential, subsidized often by the state. I don't think it's an entitlement that they get to do that for free, much less claim a right to earn living wage level on top of that.

Maybe you were doing a CS PhD or something, but PhDs in most fields are not a good good way to maximize earning potential, especially when taking into account lost potential wages and the time value of money.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#70

Post by comex »

supernova87a wrote: post #64
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's okay to be ignorant about how weird things work, but sharing opinions about things you don't know about should be avoided. A PhD "student" isn't really a student. They're an employed researcher at a research institution, working under more senior researchers who are able to attract grant money. To use an analogy to the trades, the PhD students are the apprentices, the senior researchers / professors are the jour…

Yeah, I was a grad student in physics for 6 years, so feel free not to offer opinions on things you don't know about. Grad students are getting an education and a big bump to their future earning potential, often at significant taxpayer expense. What entitlement do they have to have a free ride, much less make living wage on top of that?

Many career paths include a steady increase in future earning potential. As for entitlement, they are entitled to a share of the value they bring to their employer. Or at least, if Stanford doesn’t think so, it can fire them.
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