JIMMY Hoffa for a TA? Talk about an education. This isn't a likely story, but the National Labor Relations Board recently ruled to allow graduate students who work as teaching assistants to join the UAW International Union.
New York University is the first private school where such a decision has been made. This has also occurred at some state schools, including the University of California, University of Massachusetts and University of Washington. The ruling may have serious implications for TA rights all across the country and the movement highlights many of the injustices of the TA system. The fact remains that graduate students, as well as the University community on the whole, are affected adversely by the current system.
This complicated situation involves conflicting values about the status of TAs. Most administrators and professors feel that the work is hard and offers little pay because it is a unique learning experience. The TAs themselves feel that the "apprentice" role that traditionally characterizes the job has been diluted and exploited over time. TAs often are expected to do much of the work and effort of a full-time professor to allow professors to devote more time to lucrative research or writing. As a result, many TAs want the rights of workers.
For example, a TA in a foreign language department at the University can expect to earn anywhere from $8,000-$12,000 per year for full-time work, according to officials in these departments. Job description: to teach any class from the 101-202 level independently. Is this exploitation or a unique learning experience?
To enhance the learning environment of any University, particularly one as image-conscious as U.Va., it would seem unarguable that we desire high-caliber faculty and teachers. Unfortunately, it is difficult to attract outstanding graduate students when they face such bleak prospects for work and pay.
Granted, no one should expect to come by a windfall when his primary activity is to earn an advanced degree. Everyone is aware of the burden of student loans that many shoulder in order to pursue higher education. But the degree process takes many years and graduate students typically have no other opportunities to earn money to support themselves.
At the University of Maryland, for instance, an average TA in the English department earns about $9,800 a year after taxes. Maryland's own financial aid office states that graduate students need about $12,375 to live adequately in the metropolitan area for about nine months. This illustrates a whole different kind of "living wage" concern.
Among the other key concerns that graduate students have are medical benefits and improved working conditions. The current health-care situation for graduate students at the University involving QualChoice is deplorable. The 63-percent premium hike they face is another clear example of the system's injustices.
The traditional apprenticeship TA system hardly characterizes the current situation. Instead, modern universities, including our own, are more like an efficiency-minded factory that seeks to exploit low-wage labor. In many departments, the funding for TAs is diminishing. Where there are positions available, graduate students face an unfair workload laden with responsibilities that they should not be shouldering.
Increasingly, many graduate students feel that their options are limited. They believe that they should have the right to unionize in order to "improve their lives by achieving a say in what they are paid, as well as what their benefits and their work conditions are," in the view of one UAW organizer, Lisa Jessup (http://uaw.org/pub lications/releases/2000/nlrbrule.html).
But unionizing should not be the solution to this problem. It only interferes with the academic purpose of an institution of higher learning. TAs' needs should be considered without the unnecessary legalistic complications of a labor organization. Therefore, administrators and faculty should take a look at how the system is failing their own students and change their ways. Basic issues such as disproportionate wages paid per course, declining health benefits, rising tuition and enrollment fees and the lack of sufficient office space and teaching facilities are among the concerns that need to be addressed.
We all rely on the aid and instruction of TAs. The work they do is invaluable. The impact on teaching and research will only be negative if the situation is not addressed soon.
(Katherine Martini is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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