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Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

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Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#171

Post by tibbon »

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…

Do you know why they choose the UAW? It seems a really strange fit.

The choice of what union to affiliate with, and selecting their rules is something that should have been done carefully, and with the needs of the membership in mind.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#172

Post by parpfish »

labcomputer wrote: post #156
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.

TAs aren't overworked, even without union representation. You'll never be asked to do more than an average of 20hrs/week, ever. You can always just refuse to sign the end-of-semester certification. RAs are overworked, but unions can't do anything to help that. As a grad student, you need to publish papers, which means you need the cooperation of your advisor. If you bring a grievance or work to rule, there are a mill…

in my experience, the overwork of the RAs wasn't being pushed by a ruthless taskmaster advisor. it was that students understood the hypercompetitive academic job market and knew that they had to build out their CV if they wanted to be lucky enough to get a postdoc once they defended.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#173

Post by autoexec »

supertrope wrote: post #117
throwawaylinux wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a weird concept, I could never understand it. Why not spend effort making their local neighborhoods and schools better? Everybody grew up with richer and "better" schools and areas, I would have hated being sent out to those.

Before a child sets foot in kindergarten many inputs have already been happened. Did their mother abuse alcohol or drugs during the pregnancy? Does their household have domestic violence? Did their parents read to them on a regular basis? Did their parents teach them how to interact with other kids? Were their parents able to pass along the English language? A school is not just faculty and a building. While public s…

> Before a child sets foot in kindergarten many inputs have already been happened.

That can also include environmental harms and lack of access to good food or medical care. Investing in neighborhoods that have been neglected and exploited can fix a lot of things and improve them for everyone in the area. Not being an easy fix doesn't mean it wouldn't be worthwhile. Clean up the neighborhoods, lift the the desperation and despair, and the drug dealers won't stick around anymore than they do anywhere else.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#174

Post by theGnuMe »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #15
Atreiden wrote: post #7

Good for them! Academia is a toxic and broken environment, and this seems like a great first step in fixing it. Interested to see how the dynamic plays out at Stanford, and if other American universities follow suit.

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 PhD is a path to citizenship which isn't a bad thing in theory but the side effect is it reduces graduate student real wages and lengthens the time to graduate as demand is so high. I'm surprised economists haven't studied it (or maybe they have) and figured a way out of this fundamental trap.

Also University administrations are basically corrupt in the way they nickel and dime grad students across the board. The whole student/employee/apprentice thing really needs a systematic reevaluation since it can be exploitative.

Maybe they need to pay incentives to professors to graduate PhD students. In general the market for PhDs is expanding and high paying jobs are available at least in STEM fields which is a good thing as new technologies find wide applications.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#175

Post by theGnuMe »

whakim wrote: post #99
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…

Graduate student unions aren't aiming to tackle this, and I don't know of any that are. At Stanford, the unionization campaign centered around Stanford's stipends (which have not kept up with inflation and put students in the "extremely low income" category per the county) and Stanford's status as both employer and landlord for many students.

It's pretty much the same at all Universities in HCOL areas.. UCLA is the same. UCLA actually had to build graduate student housing to offset the market and it is still overpriced. Talk about levitown.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#176

Post by theGnuMe »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #112
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.

The numbers for the MIT living wage calculator are completely wrong for most PhD students. For one, they include thing like social security taxes, which students do not pay. They overestimate medical costs, because most PhD students are young and will not have health complications that drive costs. The rent estimate is based on single-occupancy units, which doesn't make sense because most live with roommates ( https:…

Students pay taxes, Reagan did that.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#177

Post by _aavaa_ »

autoexec wrote: post #169
labcomputer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TAs aren't overworked, even without union representation. You'll never be asked to do more than an average of 20hrs/week, ever. You can always just refuse to sign the end-of-semester certification. RAs are overworked, but unions can't do anything to help that. As a grad student, you need to publish papers, which means you need the cooperation of your advisor. If you bring a grievance or work to rule, there are a mill…

> If you bring a grievance or work to rule, there are a million innovative ways your advisor can sabotage you as retaliation. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing a union could address. > I wasn't represented by a union in grad school, but all the commenters here who were have pointed out that their unions didn't fight for higher wages. It's possible that they were fighting for other things considered by most m…

> > They can let you pursue ideas that they know are not novel (and the papers will be rejected). Or suggest you try something they know won't pan out.

> That sounds like exactly the kind of thing a union could address.

Short of having a group of union members becoming your defacto supervisor and doing the guidance your supervisor should be doing, I don't see how they could help in this situation.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#178

Post by lordloki »

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.

If you include tuition at the rate undergrads pay it as part of the compensation then they are paid much more than the median wage. Average annual tuition alone for many research universities is higher than the median annual wage.

Re: Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote

#179

Post by extasia »

rnk wrote: post #111
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…

Female problems? Are you serious, that is a pretty negative way to describe health issues that might apply only to women. Why would you put it that way, it's just kind of dismissive.

How would you have put it, rnk?
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