The 3 Reasons Why I Want a Graduate Union
Over the last year I’ve often found myself explaining why I am walking into a random office, attending a meeting, or leaving my office carrying signs. The short answer has always remained the same: because I believe there should be a graduate union at Penn State. The long answer, although it has perhaps become more specific, has also rarely changed. In the end, my belief in a graduate union is based on three simple needs: stability, true participation, and respect.
Life as a graduate worker and student is far from stable. Our positions can change every 4 months, we feel looming pressure of “attrition,” and we never are quite certain who is judging us and when that judgement matters. As graduate workers, we also are given short, yearly contracts that only serve to increase this sense of instability. Right now, in September, I have no assurance of what my stipend might be next year; I hope that it will go up, but I don’t know. Our stipends for this year were only officially approved a bit over a month ago. At the same time, thanks to the market pressures of a college town, I will sign the lease for the 2017–2018 school year in January.
I want a union because I know that it would provide an anchor in the storm of graduate school. With a union contract we will be able to have expectations that stretch out beyond the current school year. Many unionized schools have contracts the last for 3, 4, or even 5 years. Beyond assurances of stipend levels, I would be able to count on other auxiliary benefits while planning for the future. For example, Penn State recently began a program allowing graduate students to purchase monthly bus passes. Although this is great, every year since its implementation the terms and conditions have evolved, often changing at a point where it is too late to change housing decisions based on this new information. These at-will benefits that Penn State grants us are often hard to enjoy as we can never be certain when they might decide to revoke them without any consultation about what it means for graduate workers. Which brings me to my next point.
Graduate workers are the last ones consulted. Although graduate workers form an important part of the Penn State ecosystem — teaching classes, publishing research, and mentoring undergraduates — we have little voice in the rules and policies that effect us. For academic concerns there is one representative from the Graduate and Professional Student Association in the Faculty Senate. This individual is charged with representing the concerns of a diverse group of graduate and professional students. In contrast, the Faculty Senate includes an undergraduate representative from each of Penn State’s colleges as well as undergraduate representatives from several of the Penn State campuses. In professional concerns, there is an array of committees and task forces where graduate representative varies as well. Many of these committees and task forces are charged mainly with making recommendations and the diffuse and overlapping nature can make it difficult for even a concerned graduate worker to know where to start.
A union provides a central place for graduate workers to not only come to present their concerns but also make those concerns heard. Through a negotiation process we can participate in a real conversation making the most urgent concerns known. Importantly, a union as a democratic body would be able to give voice to a range of concerns. Other graduate unions have taken on issues of childcare, harassment, and diversity. This sort of democratic voice will create both shared rights and shared responsibility, and will work to improve not only the lives of graduates workers, but the whole Penn State community.
Finally, our labor, as graduate workers, is often undervalued. As the movement for a graduate union at Penn State grew, the university responded with an FAQ. The second paragraph starts with:
In considering the context for this FAQ, the University considers Penn State’s graduate assistants, like all graduate students, to be students first and foremost, who come to Penn State as an educational institution to seek advanced degrees
Yes, as a graduate student I have taken classes, been mentored by some great faculty, and learned a lot. But, as a graduate worker, I have TA-ed for a 300 person class, collaborated on research projects with the hopes of publication, trained undergraduate students with basic research skills, and conducted and presented my own research. According to Penn State’s understanding of me, as a student first and foremost, none of this other work matters. Yet, the faculty I admire devote their times in similar ways, working to publish, disseminate knowledge, and mentor. If this is the core of their work, why does it not count as work for me? Many graduate workers in my particular program will publish papers before they leave graduate school. They will work to retain and get new grants. For some reason though this is not viewed as providing benefits to Penn State, even though these are the metrics by which our advisors are often judged.
In the end the issue is not really about our work being different; it is about Penn State believing that they can take advantage of this work. By veiling what we do as “training” they are able to convince us that we are not providing any added benefit to the University, but instead are only taking from it. This is a trap that many graduate workers themselves fall into, a belief that we are in a privileged position: “we are paid to learn!” But there is a hidden schizophrenia to this mindset, as the same graduate workers will joke about how tenured professors publish papers that they never read and graduate “students” wrote. What we need is a clear definition of our role here, not as students first and foremost but as students and workers, and a graduate union will ensure that.
