Grad students renew union efforts

GSG President Laura Moore once again cited her plan to unionize graduate students as her top priority, she said in her inaugural speech Friday.

If accomplished, the union could lead to more feasible workloads and higher stipends for graduate students, Moore said. But under Maryland state law, universities are not required to acknowledge concerns brought by such unions and so far university administrators have not taken a stand on the issue.

A graduate student labor union could be costly to the university, leaving less room to negotiate stipends and other benefits.

The Graduate Student Government unanimously passed a resolution in February proposing that the state allow graduate students collective bargaining rights, Moore said. The next step is continuing to garner as much support as possible from students and local politicians, she said.

Though graduate stipends rose 4.55 percent this semester, some graduate students saw a nine percent rent increase leading Moore to pursue additional stipend increases, she said.

"Some [teaching assistants] are getting paid for 20 hours a week, but working 40," she said. "This is an ethical issue, and it's bad for the teachingand research we do and, therefore, it adversely affects the university."

In the past, cries for unionization at universities nationwide have been met with concerns that the entire graduate student body would be able to influence specific departmental issues. University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Professor Donald Ringe addressed this in a 2004 letter to graduate students.

"We do not want a decision that will have a major impact on our program to be made by non-linguists," he wrote. "We can't do anything about the fact that voting graduate students in some other programs are much more numerous - that's just the breaks."

But James Douglass, an Ohio State University graduate student, disagreed. He argued that unions give students more control rather than allowing power to fall into the wrong hands.

"Yes, it's one collective voice, but there's delegation across the entire campus, so it's a really democratic process," said Douglass, who is also a student organizer and treasurer of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization.

The University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Rutgers University all fall in the ranks of public universities with recognized graduate student unions.

Standard workload for Rutgers graduate students is 15 hours per week, and the union recently negotiated stronger workload protection in a new contract with the university, said Scott Bruton, a graduate student leader of Rutgers' union since 2003. Stipends also increased 10 percent in 2004, and have risen 8 percent annually since then, he said.

"Management always wants to have 'flexibility,' a code word for being able to do anything they please," he said. "Unions are about collective bargaining and recognizing that management has more power."

Moore said a similar arrangement at this university would make the school more attractive to potential graduate students. She added that she does not expect support from university administrators, who have not taken a stance on the issue so far.

"Management never wants a union," Moore said. "They lose some power and control even though in the long run - and even in the short run - it's good for the university. You have multiple entities fighting for limited resources, and they can always take a little bit away from grad students because there's not a whole lot we can do about it."

kalterdbk@gmail.com