Posted on 04/20/2016 2:56:35 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
The Coalition of Graduate Workers claimed an overwhelming victory Tuesday when 84 percent of graduate assistant ballots supported forming a union at the University of Missouri.
About 30 percent of the nearly 2,600 eligible graduate students who hold assistantships voted Monday and Tuesday, coalition Co-chairman Connor Lewis said. The next step is to organize union officials and formally ask the university to engage in collective bargaining, he said.
“It meets all the requirements by federal and state standards,” he said. “It was an impressive turnout given that there were last-minute attempts at voter intimidation.”
Lewis said he was referring to an email interim Chancellor Hank Foley sent to the campus April 8 that expressed surprise at the decision to hold the vote and questioned its legality and the legality of a graduate assistant union. In that email, Foley wrote that the university would actively discourage unionization.
“Should graduate student leaders decide to proceed with such a vote at this time despite the lack of consultation with MU administration, and should such a vote indicate that graduate students would like to pursue a union, university leadership will begin an educational campaign to ensure that all graduate students impacted by this decision will be knowledgeable about what this means,” Foley wrote.
MU spokesman Christian Basi wrote in an email Tuesday that the university would not comment on the election result.
Ballots were counted after polls closed at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The League of Women Voters oversaw the election. The coalition will now organize as a local union affiliated with the Missouri National Education Association.
Both the university and the coalition expect to go to court over the employment status of graduate assistants. Joe Moore, spokesman for the coalition’s unionizing effort, said the creation of a governing structure for the local and the formal request for collective bargaining would come before any legal action.
Foley on Friday referred to the balloting as a “mock election” and a “straw poll.” Foley’s comment that he “doesn’t want to go to war with these kids” spurred turnout, said Zach Rubin, in charge of getting graduate assistants to the polls.
Skelly Skelton, a master’s student in religious studies, said he voted because of Foley’s comments. Previously, he said, he was indifferent to the election.
“It sounded very much like a parent who won’t let their child go to be a productive citizen,” Skelton said.
Graduate assistants began organizing to air their grievances after MU officials announced in August that IRS regulations meant the university could no longer fully subsidize health insurance. That decision was reversed, and the IRS has since announced it will allow the arrangement where the university funds individual plans for the assistants for one more year.
Graduate assistants receive a stipend and a tuition waiver in addition to health insurance for their work teaching and conducting research for the university. Foley also announced in November that minimum graduate stipends for doctoral students with 20-hour assistantships would increase to $15,000 in August and $18,000 in 2017.
Those increases will cost the university an extra $3 million in the coming year and likely another $3 million in 2017, Basi wrote in an email. Increased costs along with an anticipated loss in tuition revenue are the reasons MU divisions have been ordered to cut $32 million, including a pay freeze, for the coming year.
Tenured faculty members will not resent graduate assistants costing more while they absorb cuts, Rubin said.
“The faculty I know of are overwhelmingly supportive,” he said.
Coalition of Graduate Workers Co-chairman Eric Scott said a union will be able to consolidate the gains made and will help maintain graduate assistants’ position in coming years.
“It feels like a real vindication to see that we won with such a powerful majority,” Scott said.
So 655 votes for unionization out of a possible total 2600 and they call it “overwhelming”...
I wonder if they still have the same football cheer that I heard in the late 60’s when my father was getting his Doctorate:
“Rip ‘em up
‘Tear ‘em up
‘Give ‘em Hell, Tigers!”
Looking back on my grad school days, we pretty much kept a lot of the department’s classes going and got almost nothing in return.
Some of the professors made huge salaries.
If government is so good and morally superior to all other evil enterprises, why do government employees (in this case a state supported university) need a union???
I am curious about the fact that the League of Women Voters
conducted the election. Usually such election are run either by a representative of the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB or the state equivalent. The League of Women Voters is hardly an unbiased group and has moved steadily to the left over the years.
It’s like a medical internship or residency. Many hospitals couldn’t function without interns and residents, who make very little money compared to the board-certified physicians on staff. In any case, at most universities, the rewards to the faculty depend on research productivity rather than teaching prowess. I doubt you were publishing a lot of research while in grad school.
Now it’s:
Zip it up (no free speech)
Tear it up (microagressions)
And give it up (safe spaces)
Puddytats
Tenured faculty members will not resent graduate assistants costing more while they absorb cuts, Rubin said.
Public unions should be outlawed.
The result will be fewer teaching and researcher assistantships. Those who don’t make the cut will have to pay the full freight for tuition. The most politically correct candidates will be favored.
Ma, get the stump and the axe, I’ve caught the golden goose.
Psychosis rarely cures itself....
LOL. These idiots don’t realize all of the cuts in grad assistant jobs that this will cause.
I got four peer reviewed papers published, two in very prestigious journals, and wrote/brought in three major grants while I was in grad school. Also filled in to teach classes, and wrote a couple of textbook chapters. I would say this is not so uncommon in top ten science programs, where expectations and graduation requirements are high, all For a measly $13k stipend (late 90s).
OK; my nine-month stipend in grad school (early/mid-1970s) was $2700 plus tuition. I also moonlighted on an ONR grant in another department to pick up some extra cash. I was thrilled to get summer money of $800 to TA or teach an independent section. I, too, published several articles while in grad school and these undoubtedly helped me get my first academic position. I don’t complain about the low pay and long hours I endured en route to my degree. I signed onto that deal with full knowledge, and recognized at the time that I was investing in my future. It paid off for me and, presumably, for you as well.
I don’t complain about pay or long hours either. I do complain that the deal I signed up for was modified. The requirement for awarding of the degree when I interviewed was completion of 2.5 years of course work, one peer reviewed publication and thesis— this took 6 years on average for doctoral candidates (this was a very competitive nationally ranked top 5 department). I completed all these in under three years, a record at the time. They claimed they did not get sufficient time out of me, so they changed the rules to two publications and a revised dissertation to accommodate the new work. When I got the second paper published in eight months, they changed the rules again; just for me, other students who had done their seven years with one publication graduated. I still am peeved about their communist philosophy; they actually admitted that because they felt I was exceptional they held me to a different standard than the other students, that each persons graduation requirements were based on their abilities not a standard (sounds like affirmative action). But yeah, a decade later I was making nice six figure income so it was worth it, sort of. (I could have done the same with a B.S. and got my employer to cover my graduate education expenses)
Yep, in my day the graduate assistants taught all the freshman and sophomore classes at the university and didn’t even get a tuition waiver. Initially, we were paid a small salary, <$300 per month and then finally a stipend so we didn’t have to pay taxes. I ate a lot of mac & cheese, tuna and hot dogs.
So when I see $15k a year and tuition waivers, I have to wonder what are they complaining about?
It sounds like you got screwed. I know this kind of thing happens more often in the sciences, where exceptionally talented lab and research assistants are scarce. Your major professor should have intervened on your behalf unless, of course, he/she was behind the scam to move the goalposts.
Any graduate student who is not getting a full-ride plus stipend needs to think seriously about another career.
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