MIT graduate students vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#131

Post by jancsika » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

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…

> I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia.

My friend, today you get to actually experience what sci-fi writer Frank Herbert called "Traveling without Moving:"

The year is 2022.

A virus wreaks havoc on the nations of the world.

A lone free software warrior named gorhill roams the internet to fight for justice, protect the underdog[1], and block ads[2].

At UC Davis (and possibly other schools) the grad students have been unionized now for at least two decades.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_(1972_TV_series)#Plot

2: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

3: https://uaw2865.org/about-our-union/

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#132

Post by nharada » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

I was in a grad student union at University of Michigan and it was awesome. Compared to my colleagues at other institutions I got better pay (especially taking cost of living into account) and insanely good healthcare. When our stipend contracts were up for re-negotiation I never had to worry someone didn't have my back, which is great cause as a grad student I was far too busy to worry about that myself.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#133

Post by SantalBlush » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

g_p wrote: post #45

For anyone not familiar with the world of academia, grad students actually have a good bit more power available to them by organising sensibly than you might think. The same is also true for early career postdoctoral research staff. This is because most of the work that actually matters is being done by these individuals, in a very pyramidical structure, but the money stops rolling in without the work that the base o…

I just went through this with a small grant. My only colleague in our dept. quit just before COVID started, so I was doing both full-time jobs on the grant. The university froze hiring and raises in 2020. I wrote all reports, wrote the new grant, handled all of the budgeting and admin. In late 2021, our PI retired and we finally filled the vacant admin position, so I had to train the new hire and the new PI about how the grant worked.

During that time, I received zero merit raises, and as a thanks from the university, they took more money from the grant so we could no longer afford a research assistant. My new colleague with zero years of experience was hired at the same rate as me; she almost immediately started venting to me how she doesn't get paid enough. She wants to earn a big promotion, so she is making her own changes to our reports that end up taking a lot more time. I put my notice in last week. I need to recharge for a month or two before I get back out there.

Basically, most of the value I created went to the university and our PI, and I was expected to be thankful for the opportunity. In spite of that, I think I left the dept. in better shape than it was in when I arrived.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#134

Post by polygamous_bat » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

ipsin wrote: post #64

_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 sounds very much like extortion, and I'm curious how any school with a purported honor code or sense of academic standards could allow it. Even if the student didn't have proof of threats, the situation itself should be enough to get the student a new advisor or oversight with the existing one. I mean "should" in an ideal sense. I think this kind of shit is common.

As a current graduate student, the sunk cost can sometimes be too high just to up and move advisors. In small places, you will simply not have someone else whose interest align with yours, and even at a place like MIT, the advisors have their own specialty, and especially after your second year at Ph.D. moving or changing advisor can be quite difficult and basically "reset" all your progress. So, a lot of time, the choice becomes moving and voiding all your work you've done so far, or gritting your teeth and carrying on for "just a couple more years until I graduate."

Source: was an undergraduate and Masters student at MIT, then left to do a Ph.D somewhere else with a much better/less toxic advisor.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#135

Post by xhkkffbf » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

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…

Even though I think many senior academics are often terrible jerks and sometimes capable of behavior that borders on criminal, I don't see unions as being much of a help at all.

I've been soured recently by one big event that happened at a place where I sometimes work. One guy was accused of doing something unwoke in his time off the job. Normally, this guy was a big union booster and even a union rep in some negotiations. It turns out, though, that didn't matter because the other union reps wanted his promotion. He had zero relationship with the management because he was frequently aggitating for this union cause or that union cause. So when push came to shove, the management hated him and they were able to cite the lack of support of his so-called union buddies as proof that he was bad.

I think students think that the union will bring them some kind of lightweight version of tenure. It could help in a few negotiations or some extreme cases, but I think that all too often it will just be another layer of self-interested semi-managers who are just as corruptable as the regular managers.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#136

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

g_p wrote: post #45

For anyone not familiar with the world of academia, grad students actually have a good bit more power available to them by organising sensibly than you might think. The same is also true for early career postdoctoral research staff. This is because most of the work that actually matters is being done by these individuals, in a very pyramidical structure, but the money stops rolling in without the work that the base o…

You write like the professors are just sitting around raking in the glory, but not doing anything while they let everyone else does the work. The reality is that professors tend to work just as hard as their grad students. I completely agree that academia is very disfunctional, but it actually affects all levels. I am familiar with many academics that work >60h a week every week, in fact I believe the most outrageous examples of overworking grad students comes from academics who work crazy hours and expect everyone else to do the same.

What many don't see is that the way academic financing works is that academics spend probably >30% of their time on writing grants and evaluating others grants and then they have to report on the grants as well. Then there is all sort of other buerocratic work that they have to do, and the view by most of the admin staff that surround them is that academic time is not counted, which means most reporting systems are made so it's easy for the administrators but not the academics.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#137

Post by lolinder » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

hervature wrote: post #51

As someone who just finished their PhD, I fear these unionization efforts will have the exact opposite effect that the students are aiming for. In particular, many universities provide subsidized housing in some of the most expensive places in the US. Housing is not a bargainable. The direct consequence is that universities will kick graduate students out of the housing, replace them with undergrad students to pay fo…

> Again, as someone who went through this very recently, the problem is the power imbalance between the institution and the students. They have complete control over your supply of labor.

I'm pretty sure people were saying the same things during the early labor movements. "They'll just replace you, they have all the control, you'll just screw up your life." The thing is, they were probably right. For a while it really sucked. But the result in the long run was that the generations that followed ended up starting with a much less lopsided power imbalance.

You acknowledge that there are problems and have ideas for where you'd like things to go. What you don't have is a proposal for bringing about the cultural shift you desire. How do you propose to get schools to allow part-time work or to change any other bad practice if not through organizing the workers?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#138

Post by caddemon » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #116

_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…

The dynamics of academia really surprise me sometimes. When I think of "work", I think of two things: "work" (the actual day to day things you do) and "workplace" (the place your work at). In a traditional workplace, were always taught to value "workplace" over "work" and to never stay at a "workplace" for the "work". That is, if you have a crappy boss and toxic culture, working on a shiny greenfield project isn't go…

Yeah this is related to the reason I'm not sure how much a traditional union can really help here - "school" and "work" become blurred beyond distinction for many grad students. Anyone with funding from an RAship is both getting paid and making degree progress because of their work in the lab. Some items will be very clearly a lab duty and some will be very clearly for personal development, but a lot of time is also spent on tasks that fit into both "work I'm doing in exchange for my funding" and "research training that is counting towards my degree requirements".

I'm not sure how much impact a union can have on anything that isn't purely on the "work for funding" side. I'm all for TAs to unionize with a national org because it doesn't run into this issue and there is also less overall job heterogeneity there. But how do you negotiate highly personalized degree requirements as part of a labor union? There could be some high level policy changes that would help future students, but I don't think we know exactly what would work best. And will these national orgs even choose to prioritize that kind of improvement?

The UAW unions that have formed at a few other places over the last 5 years have helped raise salary/benefits a bit, but there has barely been discussion of fundamental changes that could help fix academic training. It's pretty focused on basic labor rights.

Maybe it is just my department but most people I know wanted to do a PhD knowing the terrible salary, and what they really feel ripped off on is the lack of academic freedom that was promised as part of this training. People want a union because they feel ripped off, I get it, but the union leaders are working towards a pretty different type of resolution from everything I can tell. Maybe this is just the first step in the process, but I'm skeptical.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#139

Post by Tao331 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

ipsin wrote: post #64

_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 sounds very much like extortion, and I'm curious how any school with a purported honor code or sense of academic standards could allow it. Even if the student didn't have proof of threats, the situation itself should be enough to get the student a new advisor or oversight with the existing one. I mean "should" in an ideal sense. I think this kind of shit is common.

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...

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#140

Post by lokar » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #55

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…

Half the reason I'm ambivalent about unionization is that I was involved with the graduate student union when I was in school. The nominal reason for it was to improve working conditions and pay for grad students. In practice, it improved very little, and added a modest amount of overhead, in the form of a union apparatus which fed itself by taking a little bite out of those paychecks every month. To be clear, the ne…

As a UAW steward I represented (with lawyers provided by the UAW) students in arbitration who were being treated unfairly by the UC (breaking their own rules). It was a positive experience.