171–180 of 265 posts
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When I was working for my uni I got a W-2.
Yes, but if you were a grad student your W-2 almost certainly didn't include your tuition rebate as part of your total income. And the university sure as hell didn't pay taxes on it.
No idea how they're still around. Good marketing I guess?
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Can you point to some of those Twitter comments? I'm honestly curious of which labor laws they are violating. For example, I just did a search regarding healthcare for striking workers, and there is no federal law that prevents cancelling healthcare, to the point that some congresspeople have introduced bills in the last year to specifically outlaw that (but, to emphasize, those are just bills, they haven't been pass…
You can't retaliate against workers for taking a protected concerted action to change something about their workplace. The wrinkle is that Temple's employees are public-sector employees, who are exempt from the NLRA --- but they're not necessarily exempt from equivalent Philadelphia law. You can take health care away from employees (absent a contract) in general, but you can't do it in retaliation for striking.
That's simply not true. Many companies in the past have cancelled health insurance for workers on strike. That's the whole reason there has been a push by some legislators to change the law in this area.
https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-ca...
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So it's easier to optimize for profit, so what? How can your core mission be education but "you're optimizing for profit?" Either your core mission is education or it isn't. I feel like this is the kind of goal setting miss I see businesses make all the time. They'll be doing be doing some version of the ubiquitous value setting activity, and as ideas are pitched someone will be like "wait, isn't our most basic value…
The beauty of the free market is that the way to maximize profit is to maximize customer satisfaction.
1. Find me a free market. Otherwise we’re just going to devolve into “no true Scotsman.” The USA, for instance, is light years from a free market in basically every respect.
2. In a truly free market the way to maximize profits is to create and maintain a monopoly. Nearly every large business trends towards this or explicitly attempts it.
3. Customer satisfaction only matters if the customers have true choices, and true customer choice is antithetical to profit maximization.
How would you describe an economy in which customer satisfaction actually matters? Regulated free market? Free market with guard rails?
Or do you really think that a 100% unregulated market is at all supportive of human benefit? I believe a 100% free market would mean the removal of all worldwide government entities and the creation of a few mega-cartels that ran basically everything.
As various lawyers have commented on Twitter, this seems like an insanely blatant violation of labor laws. Just a straight up written confession of illegal retaliation. Unless they have some obscure exemption that nobody else knows about, I cannot imagine how the university's legal counsel signed off on this.
Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?
But as I said, you don't actually make a penny, so I wouldn't really call it "wages".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't retaliate against workers for taking a protected concerted action to change something about their workplace. The wrinkle is that Temple's employees are public-sector employees, who are exempt from the NLRA --- but they're not necessarily exempt from equivalent Philadelphia law. You can take health care away from employees (absent a contract) in general, but you can't do it in retaliation for striking.
> You can take health care away from employees (absent a contract) in general, but you can't do it in retaliation for striking. That's simply not true. Many companies in the past have cancelled health insurance for workers on strike. That's the whole reason there has been a push by some legislators to change the law in this area. https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-ca...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but if you were a grad student your W-2 almost certainly didn't include your tuition rebate as part of your total income. And the university sure as hell didn't pay taxes on it.
You can claim it depending on your student scholarship (NSF GRF) or postdoctoral status and what it says on your 1098.
But man oh man... I know of a lot of work colleagues who were treated like shit in grad school: - effective pay far below minimum wage - no medical or crappy medical, far below university staff benefit levels - forced 6-7 day a week schedules - verbal abuse and intimidation from professors - Advisor's holding students back from defending their thesis for years to squeeze more work out of them (this should be a crime)
I hope everyone thinking about going to Temple is watching this carefully and making other plans.
Also... under the circumstances, I find Temple's DEI statement (https://diversity.temple.edu/) to be complete bullshit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can take health care away from employees (absent a contract) in general, but you can't do it in retaliation for striking. That's simply not true. Many companies in the past have cancelled health insurance for workers on strike. That's the whole reason there has been a push by some legislators to change the law in this area. https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-ca...
That's during the period of the strike , right, not on an ongoing basis afterwards?
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That's during the period of the strike , right, not on an ongoing basis afterwards?
Yes, exactly, apologies if I misunderstood your comment. I haven't been able to find more concrete information if the University is threatening to just not pay for health insurance now, or if they said they'd cancel health care flat out.