I am a graduate student TA responding to WHUT?'s question "Why Have a Union at Tufts?" and in particular to their campus-wide e-mail of Jan. 22, 2002. My comments are not necessarily representative of the Association of Student Employees at Tufts (ASET) opinions, but they do reflect my interest in establishing a graduate student worker union at Tufts. For that reason, I am grateful to WHUT? for calling for clarification of union issues before we vote. I am also glad WHUT? gave up their "no bias" stance and clearly stated their anti-union position: "We feel unionization is not the answer." Open pro-and-con discussion of graduate student unionization facilitates an informed vote.

In that spirit, let's examine several points in WHUT?'s Jan. 22 email. WHUT? states that: "The graduate student body is a diverse group of students with many different needs. Trying to lump all graduate students together fails to recognize that there are differences from department to department and student to student." In that case, why does WHUT?'s statement lump all graduate students together when the union bargaining unit will not do so? Unionization, as projected, does not apply to all Tufts graduate students, but only to Medford campus graduate students paid by Tufts to work as TAs, RAs, and graders. This is a diverse group, certainly, but one that shares several employee concerns.

One such concern WHUT? rightly raises is "the potential negative impact [of unionization] on Faculty/Student relationships. We at WHUT? have already seen evidence of boundaries being drawn between faculty and students. Several anonymous students have contacted us who feel uncomfortable in their departments because of differences in opinions between themselves and faculty members on this issue. Is this appropriate in an academic environment?"

Leaps of logic here include assuming that asking a question states a fact, attributing a cause without evidence, and leaping to moral judgment. A faculty/student relationship that is affected adversely by union discussions was probably already suffering a power imbalance that a union presence could remedy - at least from the student's point of view. While exceptions should be taken into account, 90 percent of faculty/student relations are not adversely affected and many faculty are pro-union. Furthermore, faculty opinions of graduate student unionization are ultimately irrelevant, since the projected bargaining group works for the university, not for faculty.

Nevertheless, WHUT? is quite correct in pointing out that "stipends are currently determined by each department individually, not by the University administration. As Provost Sol Gittleman stated at the open-forum discussion on Dec.19, 2001, each department is given a lump sum of money which a department then decides how to divide up, including how much to pay TA's, RA's, etc. We believe that stipends will remain a departmental issue whether we unionize or not." True, but the administration determines how much each department gets. Departments can't disburse funds they don't have. Enabling departments to create campus-wide equity among graduate student workers is apparently not on the administrative agenda.

This is not just my observation. According to "The Report of External Panel of Graduate School Deans" of March 8-9, 2001, "At the Ph.D. level, the financial support offered to [Tufts graduate] students is simply not competitive. ... although the ability of departments to use their institutional money seems to be flexible, there is no guidance to see that offers made are truly competitive and that Tufts faculty can compete with other institutions on a level playing field for the best applicants." The review (posted on the ASET web site at http://www.tuftsgrads.org) clearly asserts that graduate programs are sorely neglected at Tufts.

WHUT? asks quite reasonably, whether a union at Tufts is the only solution to this problem. One of the "alternatives to unionization to consider is that the GSC (Graduate Student Committee), a group of 'graduate students' recognized by the faculty and administration, represent us." They already do and they already have. WHUT? itself asserts: "The GSC has worked hard to address such issues as health care." Yet it was several years before the GSC was finally "heard" on the healthcare issue. Even then, health fees were eliminated only for incoming PhD students, not Masters students, and the cost of health insurance, which remains the number one complaint among graduate student workers, remains to be addressed.

The problem is that the GSC has no official bargaining power with the administration. WHUT? observes that "President Bacow and other administrators recognize the GSC as a unified voice for grad students," but the GSC's charter with the university does not require the administration to hear and heed that voice. Quoting Article III, Section 2 of the GSC Constitution: "An official delegate of the GSC shall report problems and interests of graduate students to appropriate University officials, with recommendations for implementing changes necessary and shall report to the GSC on his/her activities and their results" (GSC homepage: www.tufts.edu/~gsc). GSC representatives recommend, petition, and even argue strenuously, but in the end, they have no "direct" power to act on recommendations because they are dependent on administration benevolence. Bargaining power is why Tufts graduate student workers need a union.

Because it assures bargaining power, a union is neither, as WHUT? categorizes it, "a third party" nor "someone else to be our voice." ASET is not a third party, since it is comprised of us, the graduate students in question. ASET is not someone else's voice, even though ASET certainly benefits from UAW experience and advice. Similarly, in our studies, we benefit from faculty experience and advice, but we don't say the faculty is "our voice." No one, including the UAW, is or will be the graduate student workers' voice. Tufts' graduate student workers have spoken on our own through ASET since this campaign began and will continue to do so.

As WHUT? movingly concludes in its Jan. 22 e-mail, "Together as graduate students, ... we can find our own solutions." Yes, I deleted the phrase "without a union" because, for all graduate students involved in this decision, the key words are "together" and "find our own solutions." That is, after all, what unionization is all about.

Published in the Viewpoints section of the Tufts Daily on 02/21/02 and has been reproduced with permission.