Unions are generally vehicles of resistance to illegal and/or oppressive actions. HTH.

It doesn’t help, actually, because they were implicitly asking how a union will help specifically with that example. In corporations unions have the leverage of stopping work. What’s the leverage here? We’ll all stop pursuing our education…?

I guess the calculation is that the tuition hit would be leverage? Like what, is a union going to force a code of conduct for professors? How is it going to be enforced when it already exists and half of these comments are about it being ignored?

I don’t get the union solution here. The incentives are wrong. Particularly on the Ph.D. track, how would a union specifically help address illegal behavior to the extent that you just “HTH” it as the obvious answer?

There's a few things a union can do in this situation. What they can't do is prevent blowback from the professor -- not even the university has leverage there.

The resources a union have typically amount to (a) a grievance process, (b) work stoppage, and (c) a pittance of a legal fund. Work stoppages don't occur because one professor mistreats one student -- there's no rule against that, but unions are democratic and that motion would simply never pass unless the harm was particularly egregious and the victim was especially charismatic. Politics be. A grievance could "succeed" but ultimately they're pretty toothless -- the university has little leverage over a prof, the union has less. So we're left with a pitiful legal fund -- know how everybody hates dues? Unions are weak as a result. The student could potentially sue their prof through the ordinary legal system. They could be awarded monetary damages, but they would not be awarded a degree.

The professor is the judge, jury, and executioner for the doctoral thesis. Other professors in the department will be working alongside the offending professor for the rest of their lives so whatever politics be in the union, they're way more intense in a department of professors. And even if you do find a sympathetic ear with another professor in the same department, they're probably not in your specialty, because when there are two profs with the same specialty in a single department, one hired the other and they're bosom buds. And this is the real reason that individual grad students don't speak out, file grievances, etc. against professors, and known rapists carry on for decades: to act is to throw away your degree, and with it, your entire career.

These sorts of abuse work on the implicit threat of retaliation if you don't agree to the abuse. A union provides a roughly equivalent counter-threat, which acts as an incentive to not be so abusive.

Would we love to not operate on threats and counter-threats? Sure, but that would require the mutual consent of both parties, and the ones in power have rejected that outright.

Stopping work. Same as other unions.

And again, since you’re making me belabor the question instead of answering the obvious one, what does that look like? Isn’t that more harmful to the student than the institution? Again: what is the leverage?

I’m from a three generation UAW family, married into IBEW, and I was on the line at eight years old. I’m not exactly hearing about unions for the first time here. I’m also struggling to understand how they’re the obvious answer to education problems shared in this thread, in your estimation. Think you can share 10 or, even, 20 words to help clarify?

Most large schools make most of their money charging undergrads tuition. A significant portion of undergrad instruction is done by grad students. If grad students stop teaching undergrads (or, as some have, keep teaching but stop issuing grades) the theory is undergrads and parents will threaten admin. This has worked in some cases.

That’s relevant to grad student/university relations. It has no bearing on “This one specific professor is a total power hungry asshole and the university loves them because they’re very research productive. You, on the other hand, are one more fungible grade student.”

That's the theory, anyway. If you want to take a crack at steel-manning this particular case, I've replied upthread with a fuller breakdown of the politics of why the union almost certainly won't do a lick of good

What might be different about grad students is the weird market dynamics. They're well-educated, overworked, and underpaid. They should be able to get a decent job outside of academia from hiring managers sympathetic to not being in academia. Except for foreign students and people who really want to be in academia, there's a lot of pressure that should have made work conditions much better.

If someone ready to pay you twice as much with normal hours and less drama doesn't improve conditions, I'm not sure if a union can.

Aren't graduate students there in order to get credentials that help them land all those better jobs outside of academia? I think you're imputing hiring pressure that they're pursuing, not experiencing.

Not necessarily; I myself and a lot of my friends in academia are here because we really do care about the research we are doing, and believe what we are doing here is really going to impact society in 10-20 years in the future. I'm sure there are some people here who are only doing a Ph.D. to get a better job afterwards. But at least for myself I know I rejected a job that has a 5x base salary (even without counting the RSU) because I really believed in what I wanted to do. If you take the opportunity cost in account, it really doesn't make sense in 100% of the cases to get a Ph.D. first to just go into the "better jobs" in industry afterwards.

That's absolutely fair. I really should have narrowed my (rhetorical) question to the group of students who will eventually "leave for better jobs" outside academia.

Ignoring professional degrees like MBAs, MDs, and JDs, you either go to grad school to do research and/or teach in academia or to learn very specialized skills and go into industry. For the most part, there are usually less specialized roles in industry for people with bachelor's degrees.

Sadly, given my experience as a steward, I don't think a union could actually help in this particular situation.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Many people don't have a better choice than keep trying with unions.