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Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

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Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#121

Post by seanmcdirmid »

analog31 wrote: post #32
black_puppydog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, less than half of all college teaching is done by professors. The remainder are "adjunct" teachers, whose job focus is on teaching. An adjunct job tends to have low pay, is short term, and you sign away some of your rights under the labor laws. You have to re-apply for your job every semester. Perhaps the real difference is how Germany treats workers. The US has community colleges, that focus on teaching.…

German higher education is based in large classes with only an exam at the end of a class and no TAs, except at maybe the top institutions. They don’t need so many teachers, so they can treat them better.

It’s a system that we might want to try here in the USA, but it doesn’t coddle students.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#122

Post by DiggyJohnson »

hedora wrote: post #104
tibbon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is not how UAW works. There is an opaque set of rules that lead to UAW reps being elected, and then the UAW reps will not listen to member concerns unless the members first successfully petition to be heard at a meeting. To be counted in the petition, the people that sign it have to physically show up to the meeting, and the rules are set so that they may have to attend multiple meetings. At that point the UAW r…

What women’s health issues were cut?

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#123

Post by hitekker »

hedora wrote: post #98
ASpring wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was great for us at UC Santa Cruz. The reason I had healthcare during grad school was because the union won it right before I joined. The reason they have a housing stipend now (in the most expensive rental market in the US[1]) is because the union fought for a cost-of-living allowance. We at UCSC didn't always agree with the course of the larger UAW 2685 but they did a lot for us. I'm not sure what the system was…

When was this? Just before the pandemic, the grad students protested at UAW meetings and went on a wildcat strike after UAW ratified a contract the campus voted against. Later, Janet Nepolitano released police drones and set up barricades to try to shut down the picket lines. Eventually covid ended the drama, but only after some students were deported (I assume. The plan was to deport them, but the story stopped maki…

Do you have sources for those claims? I don't have any knowledge here; just cursory googling indicates the issue was a lot more complex than UAW being the bad guy.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#125

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#126

Post by djcapelis »

ASpring wrote: post #41
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…

It was great for us at UC Santa Cruz. The reason I had healthcare during grad school was because the union won it right before I joined. The reason they have a housing stipend now (in the most expensive rental market in the US[1]) is because the union fought for a cost-of-living allowance. We at UCSC didn't always agree with the course of the larger UAW 2685 but they did a lot for us. I'm not sure what the system was…

> The reason I had healthcare during grad school was because the union won it right before I joined.

I’m sorry if this is weird, but as someone who also went to UCSC for grad school I found this a bit confusing. So I looked it up and you started at UCSC at 2014, yeah?

UCSC grad students had GSHIP coverage for years before that time. I myself was on it when I joined starting in 2009, and there’s plenty of documentation of fights folks had over trying to get better rates and coverage on GSHIP well before both our times: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/13/18415831.php (Which personally I thought was pretty good especially after the expansion of airlift coverage which was an unfortunately common problem for UCSC’s location “over the hill” from many tier 1 emergency rooms.)

Maybe I missed something when I was there 2009-2015. But what did the union representation and bargaining bring to the table there?

From a couple years ago, it doesn’t seem to have resulted in anything close to a reasonable or even livable stipend for a researcher. It was bad when I was in grad school, but I was pretty appalled to hear during the wildcat strikes ten years later that despite the increase in costs there didn’t seem to be that much change in the stipend amounts for graduate researchers. The students who were wildcatting out of frustration seemed to have a pretty good reason IMO.

I think that meets a pretty similar pattern of unions focusing on fighting about healthcare while leaving wages to stagnate over years of price increases, which I guess also applies in many unrepresented UC roles and in dynamics elsewhere. I personally didn’t see much difference between UAW’s representation and not when I was there, but I guess I didn’t have a huge point of comparison.

I hope whatever this new swell of support is provides livable stipends for young researchers though. So I hope I’m either wrong or grad student unions are able to win more in bargaining in the future. :)

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#127

Post by vkou »

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…

Why wouldn't all the 1st and 2nd year STEM students bail for the private sector, right when a massive STEM hiring boom started across the economy?

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#128

Post by svnt »

fruffy wrote: post #30

A big part of the reason these unionization efforts are happening: https://csstipendrankings.org/ Many universities are not paying a living wage for the area they are located in.

And this is computer science. If you want to feel bad for someone, grad students in e.g. biology or anthropology are still at or below $20k annually in many places.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#129

Post by [deleted] »

tessierashpool wrote: post #116
hedora wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was this? Just before the pandemic, the grad students protested at UAW meetings and went on a wildcat strike after UAW ratified a contract the campus voted against. Later, Janet Nepolitano released police drones and set up barricades to try to shut down the picket lines. Eventually covid ended the drama, but only after some students were deported (I assume. The plan was to deport them, but the story stopped maki…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#130

Post by uoaei »

parpfish wrote: post #68
maybelsyrup wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"There's nothing a union can do to fix structural inefficiencies" seems like an obvious and irrelevant take. Unions are for securing benefits within the existing system, not for changing the system per se.
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