Graduate students support national right to unionize

Graduate students enrolled in private universities won the right to be recognized as employees under the National Labor Relations Board last week. Graduate students will now be able to unionize according to the court ruling.

The sheer size of USC’s graduate student population may mean that this ruling could have a significant impact on the University’s dynamic.

The ruling comes as a reversal of a previous case involving graduate students at Brown University in 2004. The petitioning students were deemed not to be employees since they “are primarily students and have a primarily educational, not economic, relationship with their university,” the ruling stated. Conversely, public universities in certain states allow their student employees to make use of collective bargaining laws, which makes unionization feasible. The Columbia University students who began the petition will be joining the United Automobile Workers union, according to The New York Times.

USC was home to more than 24,591 graduate and professional students during the 2015-2016 year, almost 6,000 more students than were enrolled in the undergraduate program. In 2015, USC awarded more Master’s degrees than any other type of degree.

Yet, in a faculty report from USC’s Office of Budget and Planning, teaching assistants and research assistants are not accounted for in the faculty count nor the student worker count. On a national level, these educational assistants are not considered full-time instructional faculty by American Association of University Professors in its annual Faculty Compensation Survey.

Full-time faculty status excludes “undergraduate or graduate students who assist in the instruction of courses, but have titles such as teaching assistant, teaching fellow, and the like,” the statement reads.

Graduate Student Government is planning to discuss their stance on the matter during their first Senate meeting on Sept. 12. Vice Provost for Graduate Programs Sarah Pratt was optimistic about a forthcoming discussion with graduate student groups, such as GSG and the Graduate School Advisory Council. Pratt is responsible for all of the University’s Ph.D. programs, and she oversees specific master’s programs, according to the USC website.

“Our graduate students have shown that they are smart and take active and constructive approaches to problems,” Pratt said. “I really treasure the working relationship we have established … We get a lot done because we sort things out together.”

A graduate student and teaching assistant at one of USC’s schools, who asked that their identity remain confidential, feels strongly about the need for a unionization effort. They believe that the school administration has taken advantage of the formerly-ambiguous employee status of graduate students.

“My problem has been [that] I’m treated as an employee when it’s convenient and a student when that’s convenient. I’m an employee for tax reasons and a student when it comes to working these hours without a retirement plan,” the graduate student said.

One of the more dire issues that graduate students face is the lack of benefits and retirement plans that full-time faculty have a right to. Also, the graduate students no longer have access to benefits for dependents, which were available several years ago, according to the graduate student.

“On paper, I looked so much like an employee that I got an email from USC benefits services asking if I wanted to apply for 401(k) plan,” the graduate student said. “I said ‘sign me up!’ I got all the way to the appointment, at which point it was understood that I was a graduate student. Then they said that I wasn’t eligible.”

Ruth Kelly, a second-year graduate student in Annenberg, spoke about the allegedly stagnant stipend rates for graduate students, which have not taken inflation rates or the increased minimum wage into account.

“We are getting a stipend that has not been adjusted for inflation or cost [of] living for the past 10 years, from what I can tell,” Kelly said. “When I came in two years ago, I asked a fifth-year student if  [the salary] had been $30,000 a year as long as he was there, [and] it had. The purchasing power of our stipend is decreasing each year.”

For Kelly, this means struggling to find a way to pay the rent while working as a teaching assistant.

“I ended up moving up in with friends who had been living in one area for 10 years — it’s a rent-controlled area,” Kelly said. “I live in Brea. The first semester I commuted from San Diego, [but] I can’t do that now because I’m a TA.”