Op-ed Submission: Why Wash. U. needs graduate workers to unionize

Carolyn Barnes & Natalia Guzman Solano | Department of Anthropology Ph.D. Candidates

Three weeks before the start of this fall semester, I—Natalia—attended what I thought would be a routine dental cleaning in New York. Earlier in the year, I had an emergency root canal in Amsterdam, where I was studying abroad, and I thought that had been that. But medical ailments seldom operate on timetables—they don’t care if you have a grant application due that week or if you just paid your rent and bought that new (used) laptop after your older one suddenly crashed. As it happens, I needed a $1,300 crown. I can’t completely express what I felt as I faced the receptionist when she explained the cost of the procedure. I did not have much of a choice. Paying $500 to buy into the dental coverage offered by Wash. U. wasn’t feasible. The plan’s maximum yearly benefits are $750, way under the cost of the crown treatment (not to mention that a crown is only covered at 50 percent cost). Also, this is August. I would soon be moving into a new place in St. Louis, buying books and generally dealing with the costs of settling back into a shared apartment after being away for eight months. In the end, I consider myself one of the fortunate ones. I have family that was able to loan me money (which I’m still scrambling to repay) in order to have the procedure.

Insufficient health coverage, however, is just one symptom of a larger structural issue at the heart of our Ph.D. trajectories. While we work toward Ph.D.s in some of the most prestigious programs in the world, we are simultaneously precarious employees whose labor is essential to undergraduate education at the University. Precarity, as a labor condition, is more often associated with temporary employment in the service industry and increasingly among adjunct faculty in higher education. So what does precarity have to do with graduate students who receive University funding to study, research and teach courses? Our labor hours are uncapped and our teaching and research assistantships are not guaranteed from one year to the next. Moreover, the unilateral decision-making that occurs with respect to our funding status and benefits translates to powerlessness even when requesting raises due to the rising cost of living near the University.

Some say there are already existing avenues through which graduate student workers can raise concerns. Indeed, we are free, and perhaps even encouraged, to voice concerns with the Graduate Student Senate, the Graduate Professional Council or the Graduate Council, among other representative bodies. Some faculty and staff are receptive and frequently advocate on our behalf. But the fact of the matter is that without a union, which legally requires the University to listen to our concerns and come to agreements with us, Wash. U. graduate workers have no real power.

This is why we are calling upon our fellow graduate workers at Wash. U. to join us in a union. Unionization would allow elected representative graduate workers, acting on behalf of union members, to negotiate labor contracts. It would mean that the school administration would be legally-bound to reach agreements with us on our collective concerns. We might even be able to secure additional benefits, such as affordable dental and vision coverage, or subsidized child care.

Last month, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate teaching assistants and paid researchers at private universities are workers under federal law, with the right to unionize. For decades, graduate workers have been able to unite to form successful unions at public universities (e.g., the California system, Michigan, Wisconsin). This long history demonstrates that although a graduate worker union is comprised of employees in diverse academic disciplines, the varied and unique concerns of its members can be successfully mediated within a union.

At the end of every spring semester, when we are exhausted from grading—along with coursework, research and university service—many of us receive a letter from the University in our campus mailboxes. In it, we are congratulated and informed that we have been awarded an assistantship or fellowship, as well as subsidized health insurance, for the following year. It’s framed as a gift instead of compensation for the pedagogical or research work we undertake for Wash. U. When we voice concerns we are often reminded that we should be grateful to get what we are offered. So, we are humbled back into our offices or laboratories, back to positions that remain vulnerable to arbitrary administrative decisions. Unless, come union elections, we choose change.

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