Re:University of Chicago Graduate Students Vote to Unionize
by Fomite on Friday October 20, 2017 @02:37AM
(#15513909)
"...and helping students deal with abusive advisers."
This is one thing I hope the unionization movement will genuinely change. There's not much room to move the needle on pay, but having students have a means of addressing abuse besides "Throw myself on the mercy of the department and hope they don't shred my career" would be a huge step.
Interestingly, one of the grad student union's arguments in a place I was at was, essentially, "You're flooding the university with cheap adjuncts, and it's devaluing our career path", which I thought was, at the very least, an interesting take.
Re:University of Chicago Graduate Students Vote to Unionize
by newen on Friday October 20, 2017 @09:30AM
(#15515568)
There's actually a lot of room to move the needle on pay even. I know a CS department that is giving it's grad student a >$5000 yearly raise from $25K because it's grad student union (unofficial) found out that CS students are getting much worse pay compared to the other engineering grad students. 5000 is a lot of money for grad students.
Really more than students unionizing its adjunct faculty that are being severely exploited. Whereas PhDs at least get a degree for their troubles, adjuncts just get straight up robbed, and too many of them are living on public assistance and non-guaranteed contracts.