ANN ARBOR, MI - JULY 30: The University Of Michigan North Campus signage at the University Of ... [+]
Will colleges across the country bend to increasing strikes and union demands?
Despite increasing demands for pay increases amongst both undergraduate and graduate student unions, colleges remain resistant to calls for reform. However, recent victories for unions across the country have indicated that strikers are prepared to successfully take on institutions of higher education.
At the end of March, graduate student workers at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor became the latest group to initiate a strike, demanding a significant pay increase and additional healthcare benefits (particularly for transgender students), among other improvements in working conditions. Organized by the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), strikers are demanding a more than 50% increase in graduate students’ teaching stipends, from $24,000 to $38,500. On the organization’s website, the group notes that the discrepancy between graduate student wages and the cost of living has tripled within the last three years.
As the strike approaches its one-month mark, the university has shown little indication that they will cooperate with the union’s demands. Instead, the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs released a statement claiming that the university intends to appoint “alternate faculty” to complete the semester-end grading requirements on behalf of the striking graduate teaching assistants, placing the burden on department chairs to find these alternates. According to Inside Higher Ed, history department faculty publicly dissented to this solution, denouncing administrative efforts to “punish faculty, staff, and department chairs who refuse to assign grades for work that they have not personally assessed.”
The GEO website acknowledges the risks of striking, while also expressing a strategic initiative to put pressure on the university: “UM is a public university, and it is unlawful for public sector employees to strike in Michigan [...] Striking would therefore be a breach of contract and the University could legally discipline or fire us. This was also the situation in our 2020 strike. The question is whether the University would retaliate against workers and the union rather than pay us a living wage.”
The current conflict between striking graduate students and administrators mirrors similar clashes at institutions across the country, where students and faculty have also demanded better working conditions. Most notably, the University of California system saw the largest strike in the history of higher education come to an end in December of 2022. Lasting six weeks in total, the strike similarly concerned compensation for graduate and postdoctoral workers. That month also heralded the end of the largest adjunct faculty strike in U.S. history, occurring at The New School. In both cases, strikes persisted despite retaliatory action from university administrators. These and other strikes in higher education within the last year have resulted in significant wins for faculty and students alike, including pay increases and better health benefits.
Unionization efforts have also trickled down to the undergraduate level, as student workers across the nation have been spurred on by graduate student union victories. According to William Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and Professions at Hunter College: “This is all stemming from an explosion of post-pandemic labor activism, particularly by a new generation who understands that representation has strong advantages.”
This week, undergraduate student workers at Penn were among the almost 2,000 student workers petitioning to form a union. The effort has gained traction after a similar effort led by graduate students fell flat in 2018. Just down the road in Philadelphia, Temple University undergraduate and graduate student workers have similarly come together to lobby for an undergraduate student union. Committee organizer Ignacio Vasconsellos conveyed to the university news outlet that the national momentum around labor reform—particularly amongst fellow undergraduate students—has helped their movement to take shape.
“The fact that undergraduate workers are uniting across the country, it made it seem possible and made it seem like we could do it,” Vasconsellos told The Temple News.
Though strikes and unionization efforts have come at a great cost to students and faculty, national efforts to reshape labor in higher education promise to only continue gaining steam. Whether universities will alter their policies or put up a fight remains to be seen.
