[HN Gopher] Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote
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Stanford Graduate Students Won Their Union Vote
Author : xavierstein
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-07-06 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| fruffy wrote:
| A big part of the reason these unionization efforts are
| happening:
|
| https://csstipendrankings.org/
|
| Many universities are not paying a living wage for the area they
| are located in.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Who says that being a student is something that you're supposed
| to be able to make a living on?
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| Contents of tweet for people with rate-limiting and other
| Twitter-related issues:
|
| Text: We won. [heart emoji] [fist emoji]
|
| Image: Logo of the union with text overlay. The logo is a circle
| containing the words "Stanford Graduate Workers Union" around the
| top and lightning bolts around the bottom. The center of the
| circle contains line art of a pair of hands holding a tree with
| smooth hills in the background. Large text at the top says "We
| won!" in a cursive font and slightly smaller text at the bottom
| says "94% YES" in block letters.
|
| A follow-up tweet states that there will be a victory day party
| tomorrow (July 7th) at 6:00pm at Manzanita Field. The party will
| feature drinks, music, and snacks.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230706204348/https://twitter.c...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| * * *
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Are graduate students employees in the USA? I know in Europe
| there are universities where that is the case.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| These days, the answer is more likely to be "Yes". At least for
| graduate students that do some form of teaching, in addition to
| taking classes and doing research. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_employee_unio...
| for more information.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| That's a surprisingly complex question.
|
| I started a PhD at NYU just as the graduate student
| unionization happened. IIRC, at NYU only graduate students who
| were actively teaching in a given semester or had a specific
| type of research grant were considered members of the union.
| First year PhDs at NYU were generally not covered, because in
| that case your salary was simply the generic PhD fellowship and
| you didn't count as a worker.
|
| The union essentially negotiated on behalf of all students, and
| for example won an increase in the PhD stipend that applied to
| everyone. But there were some benefits (family cash assistance
| perhaps?) that you could only get if you were in the worker
| category.
| dingosity wrote:
| I don't have a twitter account, so you'll probably want to post
| this somewhere else.
| elashri wrote:
| I think you can view tweets without account again now, at least
| this is what I experience. Not sure when did they reversed
| their decicion.
| [deleted]
| CraigRo wrote:
| It was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year
| humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM
| students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected
| people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country
| among major research universities, and the union refused to let
| wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got
| private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad
| population. Scott Walker killed it, and those problems haven't
| come back.
| [deleted]
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense
| of the 1 and 2 year STEM students
|
| Having been a one-time 1st or 2nd year STEM student, I think
| this is the proper decision.
| CraigRo wrote:
| Caused huge attrition of the 1st and 2nd year stem students
| (i.e. quit with a masters). The union was dominated by
| humanities students, and they fought for what they wanted,
| not what the overall membership wanted. Very few STEM folks
| had any interest in being part of the union, but because so
| many voted with their feet, it was hopeless to set up a
| decertifiying petition.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| TBH the way you explain it sounds to me like 1st and 2nd
| year stem students were disengaged and uninterested in
| solidarity with their academic peers who have less options
| than them. I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities
| I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the
| allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is an interesting story. I don't understand why it was
| flagkilled. Is it obviously false or something?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's presidential election season in the US. People are
| going to fight hard to bury what the other side says and
| raise up what their own side is saying.
|
| Here's some free advice: leave until January 2025 and
| spend your newly free time learning a language or growing
| a garden.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Twitter rate limited me (no blue check) could someone screenshot
| this?
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Twitter rate limited me (no blue check) could someone
| screenshot this?
|
| Just open it in a private window. Twitter is no longer blocking
| logged-out views (at least for now).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Do we know if it rates limits those of us without the bird?
|
| Also interesting, it's making a call to "UserByTestId" which
| fails every time I refresh the page while trying to find the
| rate limit. My dev tools network tab is Christmas colours.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I can't imagine many engineers or others with actual talent
| are still sticking around there.
| sharemywin wrote:
| here's the website:
|
| https://sgwu.us/
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Sweet. Thx. 94%. Impressive!
| Atreiden wrote:
| Good for them! Academia is a toxic and broken environment, and
| this seems like a great first step in fixing it. Interested to
| see how the dynamic plays out at Stanford, and if other American
| universities follow suit.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| The advice I always give people (who ask) is that unless
| they're SO passionate about a subject that they can't imagine
| being happy away from it... look at industry, not academia.
| Maybe this sort of vote will be the beginning of the end of
| that sort of advice being applicable.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A first step, maybe, but far from enough to fix it.
|
| Toxic: That won't be fixed until they start firing tenured
| profs for abusing grad students. Nothing else will do.
|
| Broken: There's no route to professorship for most grad
| students, ever. We either need far bigger universities, or far
| fewer grad students.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Or permanent positions that are reasonably paid and not
| professors. Like teachers, researchers, ...
|
| I don't get the impression that everyone becomes a manager in
| software, not everyone becomes a line manager in a factory.
| Not every wants to become CEO eventually. Why should academia
| be any different?
|
| In Germany for one we used to have positions at universities
| that focused _exclusively_ on teaching. That was, like, their
| specialty. And frankly a lot of researchers shouldn 't be
| teaching, they only do it because there's nobody else left to
| do it.
| analog31 wrote:
| In the US, less than half of all college teaching is done
| by professors. The remainder are "adjunct" teachers, whose
| job focus is on teaching. An adjunct job tends to have low
| pay, is short term, and you sign away some of your rights
| under the labor laws. You have to re-apply for your job
| every semester.
|
| Perhaps the real difference is how Germany treats workers.
|
| The US has community colleges, that focus on teaching. In
| my state, the community college teachers are unionized, and
| teaching is treated more like a career.
|
| Disclosure: I was an adjunct for a semester at a Big Ten
| university, more than 25 years ago. My spouse has worked
| there as a non-faculty researcher since that time.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It will be interesting. Some federal grants seem to have pay
| limit maximums lower than the new minimum pay requirement.
|
| Maybe this will have the effect of sending more federal grant
| money to lower cost of living research institutes. That could
| be an interesting outcome.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Alas, I'm not sure a union can begin to fix anything except a
| few cosmetic things. The biggest problem is the massive
| oversupply of people who want academic careers versus the
| number of real jobs. The individual unions at the schools can't
| tackle this oversupply at all because it's caused by the
| schools acting independently. The natural game is to protect
| the insiders by restricting admission like many of the other
| unions like the AMA that actively campaign against too many
| doctors.
|
| Indeed, the unions risk the bad optics of campaigning to reduce
| new admits in order to maintain opportunities for those already
| in the pipeline. In other words, slamming the door shut on
| people who want to learn all to restrict supply of work for the
| privileged.
|
| I suppose the unions might be able to help in the rare case of
| a real jerk of a professor who mistreats her students, but I
| think most professors are smart enough to play passive
| aggressive games instead. The schools nurture the ability to
| act passive aggressively.
|
| The rest of the time, the students in the union are going to
| waste their time arguing about something instead of working on
| their dissertation, the one thing that will spring them from
| the jail.
| frantzfanon wrote:
| There is a vast oversupply of people who want academic
| careers vs. the number of currently-existing _tenure track
| jobs_. In most fields (CS is somewhat different since
| industry is so attractive, so often even teaching faculty
| receive tenure), almost all of the teaching is done by
| contract workers and adjuncts. So the need for labor is
| there, just not the funding to give everyone secure jobs.
|
| If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of
| tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would
| not be quite so bad. This is a sector-wide change that
| graduate worker unions could push for at each of their
| individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem
| with the unions representing adjuncts. Graduate workers have
| a lot of power since they can gum up the graduation pipeline
| and piss off wealthy parents and donors.
|
| Of course it is a band-aid solution since the system is
| fundamentally pyramid-shaped.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Agreed. I'm pretty cynical about academia but I don't see
| graduate student unions fixing the problems.
|
| I voted against a graduate student union at my institution
| ca. 7 years ago after a couple very frustrating conversations
| with organizers (both students and professionals from the
| SEIU) where they were doing the equivalent of promising
| everyone a free pony (scholarships for international
| students, lower tuition, etc.--things that aren't included in
| the mandatory bargaining subjects for a union). It was deeply
| manipulative and dishonest.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > a few cosmetic things
|
| Show me someone who thinks a living wage and a boss who can't
| overwork you anymore are cosmetic and I'll show you a
| university administrator.
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(page generated 2023-07-06 23:00 UTC)