Graduate Students Resurrect Brown University Museum
(Originally for U.S. News University Directory)
Graduate teaching assistants provide a substantial amount of undergraduate instruction on many college campuses, but often do so without the benefits afforded the schools' regular employees. Recent events, however, have opened the possibility of better compensation. At the University of Oregon, an eight-day strike by graduate teaching assistants recently ended, with the university reaching a tentative deal amenable to the students, The Oregonian reports.
Union Secures Tentative Deal
The terms reached after a 22-hour negotiation include pay raises, flex time and access to a hardship fund intended to reduce the financial burden on graduate students. Pending ratification by the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, teaching assistants would receive a 5% raise for each of the next two years, bringing their pay to $20 to $24, according to The Oregonian. They would also be allowed two weeks paid family or medical leave, provided that they make up lost time over the following three to nine months.
Perhaps the biggest change comes in the form of a hardship fund available to all graduate students, regardless of their membership in the GTFF. Master's and doctorate degree students would each provide $50 for the fund under the proposed plan, which would add up to around $150,000, The Oregonian reports. Any graduate student could then apply for $1,000 grants to cover serious medical problems or $1,500 grants to cover the costs of birth, adoption or placement of a child in foster care.
Plans for the hardship fund came from the university's own bargaining team, The Associated Press reports. The move may have been intended to assuage students' concerns about medical leave, which was a sticking point in the negotiations that led to the GTFF's first strike in its 38-year history on the campus.
Final Exam Preparations
As the strike came during the school's final exam season, the university made contingency plans to cover the possibility of it leaving undergraduate students without instructors. The school suggested pushing back grading deadlines, favoring short-answer exams over essays and paying faculty members to temporarily take over the teaching assistants' duties.
Not all faculty would have been willing to step in for the graduate assistants, however. Ron Bramhall, a senior instructor at the university and vice president of United Academics, the faculty union, tells the AP that he supported the strike and would refuse to cross the picket line.
"We're going to be bargaining in the spring. We're going to have the same conversation," Bramhall says.
Not the First to Strike
Teaching assistants at the University of Oregon may have had their concerns met quickly, but graduate students at other institutions are still pressing their own administrators for changes. At a Dec. 2 rally in New York's Washington Square Park, New York University members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee announced that they expect to start a strike at the beginning of the 2015 school year, In These Times magazine reports. The rally came shortly after the University of Oregon's GTFF members announced their strike.
Union members say that university bargaining teams have failed to meet the union's demands during three negotiations in the past year. Members of the GSOC are pushing for greater health plan coverage, child care subsidies and tuition reimbursement, according to In These Times. Unlike the GTFF, New York University's GSOC has gone on strike before, most recently in 2005. The group also has a history of successfully negotiated with university officials, however. In 2002, the union achieved a new contract that gave members access to a health plan and granted them increased stipends.
Graduate teaching assistants provide a substantial amount of undergraduate instruction on many college campuses, but often do so without the benefits afforded the schools' regular employees. Recent events, however, have opened the possibility of better compensation. At the University of Oregon, an eight-day strike by graduate teaching assistants recently ended, with the university reaching a tentative deal amenable to the students, The Oregonian reports.
Union Secures Tentative Deal
The terms reached after a 22-hour negotiation include pay raises, flex time and access to a hardship fund intended to reduce the financial burden on graduate students. Pending ratification by the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, teaching assistants would receive a 5% raise for each of the next two years, bringing their pay to $20 to $24, according to The Oregonian. They would also be allowed two weeks paid family or medical leave, provided that they make up lost time over the following three to nine months.
Perhaps the biggest change comes in the form of a hardship fund available to all graduate students, regardless of their membership in the GTFF. Master's and doctorate degree students would each provide $50 for the fund under the proposed plan, which would add up to around $150,000, The Oregonian reports. Any graduate student could then apply for $1,000 grants to cover serious medical problems or $1,500 grants to cover the costs of birth, adoption or placement of a child in foster care.
Plans for the hardship fund came from the university's own bargaining team, The Associated Press reports. The move may have been intended to assuage students' concerns about medical leave, which was a sticking point in the negotiations that led to the GTFF's first strike in its 38-year history on the campus.
Final Exam Preparations
As the strike came during the school's final exam season, the university made contingency plans to cover the possibility of it leaving undergraduate students without instructors. The school suggested pushing back grading deadlines, favoring short-answer exams over essays and paying faculty members to temporarily take over the teaching assistants' duties.
Not all faculty would have been willing to step in for the graduate assistants, however. Ron Bramhall, a senior instructor at the university and vice president of United Academics, the faculty union, tells the AP that he supported the strike and would refuse to cross the picket line.
"We're going to be bargaining in the spring. We're going to have the same conversation," Bramhall says.
Not the First to Strike
Teaching assistants at the University of Oregon may have had their concerns met quickly, but graduate students at other institutions are still pressing their own administrators for changes. At a Dec. 2 rally in New York's Washington Square Park, New York University members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee announced that they expect to start a strike at the beginning of the 2015 school year, In These Times magazine reports. The rally came shortly after the University of Oregon's GTFF members announced their strike.
Union members say that university bargaining teams have failed to meet the union's demands during three negotiations in the past year. Members of the GSOC are pushing for greater health plan coverage, child care subsidies and tuition reimbursement, according to In These Times. Unlike the GTFF, New York University's GSOC has gone on strike before, most recently in 2005. The group also has a history of successfully negotiated with university officials, however. In 2002, the union achieved a new contract that gave members access to a health plan and granted them increased stipends.
