Graduate students lobbying hard for union bill

Graduate students - who have long complained they are underpaid, overworked and not given access to affordable housing - might soon gain more clout in pay negotiations.

The Maryland General Assembly is considering a bill that would give graduate students and adjunct professors in Maryland's colleges and universities collective bargaining power, meaning they could eventually go on strike if the university refuses to budge on important issues. Lawmakers said persistent lobbying from graduate students helped propel the issue forward in the legislative agenda.

Sen. Richard Madaleno (D-Montgomery), who co-sponsored the bill, said a graduate student from Towson University came to his office one day and refused to leave until the two could sit down and talk about graduate student issues and collective bargaining's potential impact.

Graduate students around the state have used this strategy, said Laura Moore, president of the Graduate Student Government. She said putting a face on this issue has made all the difference, adding that "the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive."

Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery), the bill's sponsor, was lobbied by students but also has a background in labor issues - he is the former chair of the State Higher Education Labor Relations Board. Raskin gathered 11 co-sponsors, indicating widespread support for the bill, Madaleno said.

Lawmakers passed a much-contested collective bargaining bill in 2001 that, as a compromise, included staff in its list of who could unionize but specifically excluded graduate students. Moore said there has been an effort to unionize graduate students since 2001, although she and other leaders across the state did not begin their lobbying efforts until last year.

Hearings on the current bill are expected to start in a few weeks in both houses.

Moore said most of the dozens of lawmakers she has spoken to reacted positively to the idea of unionizing graduate students.

But university officials have been less than receptive, she said. University President Dan Mote refused to meet with her, she claimed. She met with university Provost Nariman Farvardin last semester, but the two didn't reach any agreement.

Mote could not be reached at time of publication.

Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George's) said he strongly supports the bill and he hasn't heard any other lawmakers speak out against it yet. Rosapepe said "anti-labor zealots" might attempt to influence votes purely on principle, but he said he anticipates an easy passage for the bill.

"If College Park wants to be a world-class institution, it should have collective bargaining for graduate students," Rosapepe said, adding that "they don't have as strong a voice on campus as they ought to have."

Moore echoed his criticism.

"The university doesn't consider us employees. But if we stopped working, they'd stop paying us. That argument doesn't hold a lot of water; how is that not an employer/employee relationship?" Moore said.

Linda Clement, vice president for student affairs, said she couldn't comment on the bill because she hasn't read it. University administrators have not been following the progress of the bill, and Clement said administrators have left discussion about the bill to officials in the graduate studies department.

Officials in that department could not be reached at time of publication. Graduate school Dean Charles Caramello told The Diamondback last year that he saw no need for a union, citing a 4.5 percent wage increase given to graduate students this year.

The idea of unionizing graduate students is not unprecedented. Two of the university's peer institutions - UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan - have allowed graduate students to unionize.

Once the bill is passed, graduate students hope to better their working conditions in several ways, including:

n Compensation for working extra hours - university research shows that teaching assistants work an average of 29 hours each week even though they are only paid for 20 hours

n Better wages - graduate students spend about 98 percent of their salaries on housing alone, Moore said, leaving them struggling to afford food, cars, insurance and other essential items

n More affordable housing near the campus

Moore said the legislation would also force the university to act on easily fixed issues that officials have dragged their feet in addressing. For instance the university has no official grievance policy for graduate students, she said. If they face any workplace problems, they are supposed to report to their own department. But not all departments have procedures, so fighting to get a complaint addressed is often bureaucratic and frustrating, students say. Caramello said last year the current policy dealing with student-mentor relations are already sufficient.

The GSG asked for a university-wide policy last May, and the graduate school was supposed to draft the policy by early fall. There is still no grievance policy.

Without the ability to strike, graduate students have no recourse against the university for failing to address this issue, Moore said. Still, she called striking "a last resort."

"I think it's a huge, huge step to have our union recognized," Moore said. "Right now they hold all the cards."

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