Graduate Workers at a crossroads
Graduate workers at U.S. universities face a critical choice.
Their course of action in the present moment will reverberate throughout their future careers. These difficulties do not end upon graduation. Those choosing to pursue an academic career will face a job market shaped by universities’ preferences for hiring contingent, adjunct faculty. Many of them will find themselves with no benefits, job security, or prospects for advancement. The fortunate ones who obtain tenure-track positions can look forward to forty years of budget cuts, department closures, administrative attacks on tenure, and political attacks on research. The private sector offers no refuge, either. Technology companies and the Federal bureaucracy are no longer absorbing the surplus of graduate workers exiting academia.
Furthermore, the paring down of government expenditures is causing the private and nonprofit research industry to contract, which will lead to increased job market competition and job instability for researchers.
“Historically, except for a brief period during Reconstruction, the American south has served as the stronghold of the ruling elite. Today, it is the laboratory in which the elite tests its plan to strip U.S. universities from their humanistic components and reconstitute them exclusively as centers for the reproduction of an apolitical, or even reactionary, workforce.”
At Indiana University, graduate workers with UE won an effective raise of $8,500 over the course of four years in a hostile state for public sector unions. At other universities, graduate workers have won even larger raises. Nowadays 38% of graduate workers nationwide are represented by a union. However, their movement is aimed toward an even bigger conquest: Recreating U.S. universities into democratic, dignified workplaces that produce knowledge for the public good.
Graduate workers, especially in the South, face an urgent choice. They can resign themselves to an increasingly unstable and insecure career in the crosshair of hostile politicians, or join together to remake higher education. Historically, except for a brief period during Reconstruction, the American south has served as the stronghold of the ruling elite. Today, it is the laboratory in which the elite tests its plan to strip U.S. universities from their humanistic components and reconstitute them exclusively as centers for the reproduction of an apolitical, or even reactionary, workforce. One with the technical knowledge to maximize production but not societal contribution. The UNC System teaming up with other southern universities to create a new college accreditation agency is the latest major effort to achieve this.
For decades, each consecutive cohort of new graduate workers experiences a more precarious existence than the last. As inflation degrades their meager stipends year-by-year, graduate workers are denied the ability to save for retirement, to seek recourse against bad managers, and to access many other benefits typically afforded to other white-collar workers. In their workplace, ever-increasing output expectations, measured in publications, diminish their ability to enjoy their work, produce quality scholarship, and find work-life balance.
However, graduate workers across the nation increasingly recognize this reality and are taking action to demand a dignified life as workers that contribute meaningfully to the educational and scientific missions of their employers. Tens of thousands of graduate workers across the country have formed labor unions and won raises, benefits and job security protection.
