Links

Email Archive

Top 10 Reasons
Not to Unionize

Contact Us

Support WHUT?

Who Supports
WHUT?

Stipend Info

Grad Union
Related Articles

2. Lengthy contract negotiations
With a union in place, explicit contracts must be negotiated. This process can be a long drawn-out process.  During the negotiations the university is not legally allowed to increase or supplement graduate student salaries.  The union at the University of California Berkeley took 7 years to negotiate their first contract.  As a result, RAs and TAs did not receive any salary increases during this process.  A similar incident occurred at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where it took 2 years to negotiate their first contract.

3. The university does not have to meet union demands
The university is required by law to bargain in good faith, but it is not required to agree to any terms proposed by the union. The law "does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession" according to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Section 8(d).  "The right to union representation under the NLRA does not imply the right to a better deal."  (NLRB v. Tomco Communications, U.S. Court of Appeals).  Since everything has to be negotiated into a contract, salaries and benefits could potentially be reduced.  Bargaining is never one sided.  We would most likely have to give something up to gain something else. 

4. Strikes
If a successful vote to strike is achieved, then anyone who is a member of the union is required to strike.  Failure to comply with a union authorized strike can result in fines and reprimands by the union.   Partial strikes such as withholding grades is not legal and not protected under the NLRA.  The university can legally take action against anyone who participates in an illegal strike, which can result in the loss of TA/RA appointments, or possible expulsion from your graduate program. A "grade strike" was held at Yale University and was deemed a partial strike and therefore not covered under the NLRA.

5. Reduce the number of TA/RA positions
Increases in TA/RA salaries and benefits will not come without a cost --the money has to come from somewhere.  If the budget allocates a certain amount of money for TA/RA salaries, fewer students would be able to be funded at a higher rate.  Therefore, we would have better paid graduate students but fewer of them.  One realistic solution to maintain the number of graduate student positions is to increase tuition and fees.  Since there are many graduate students who pay tuition, this would do us more harm than good.

6. Eliminates individual voice
Unionization creates a collective bargaining unit and negotiates a contract for you.  Legally, you would no longer be able to address certain issues directly with faculty or other administration as an individual.  Unionization will inherently affect the faculty/student relationship.  We would no longer be working with mentors, but under "supervisors".

7. New administration
We have a new president with a vision for Tufts.  In his short time here, he has already shown his interest in the graduate school by establishing the Committee on Graduate Education which will be chaired by Professor David Walt.  Although the position of the Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies will not continue, the new Dean of Arts and Sciences, Susan Ernst, is looking for someone who will be committed to the graduate students and perform many of the tasks that belonged to Dean Hollister.  It is prudent to give this new administration a chance to prove that they have graduate student issues at heart before there is any attempt to unionize.

8. The UAW should not represent graduate students
The UAW stands to gain financially by convincing graduate students to unionize, especially since union enrollment has been declining.  The union has been "aggressively recruiting graduate students" according to the Detroit Free Press.  Despite the UAW's stance that they have graduate student issues in mind, there have been cases where it is apparent that the UAW does not hold the same interests as the students they supposedly represent.  All members of the graduate student bargaining committee at UC-Santa Barbara resigned when a disagreement with the UAW could not be resolved.  In a letter to student employees at UCSB, the committee said of the UAW, "The display of antagonism and the continued use of heavy-handed tactics leaves us no choice but to withdraw our participation in protest." At UMASS Amherst, the UAW put the local under administratorship, and amalgamated the graduate student union with other non-student workers in western Massachusetts.

9. We are students, not employees
We as graduate students applied to Tufts to further our education. We chose to attend this institution with the knowledge of what it had to offer academically and financially.  Graduate school is a temporary situation designed to prepare you for your future career.  It is not your career.  The TA and RA positions are benefits that enable us to get through graduate school with less debt than many other advanced degree programs.  We are at Tufts to learn, not to earn a living.  TA positions are not intended to support us, but to help us finance graduate school. 

10. Unionization creates more bureaucracy
The UAW will be just another party involved in the negotiations, which will further complicate the process.  A union cannot sustain itself, but requires money, time, and energy from already busy graduate students to stay alive.  More bureaucracy will not help any of us, especially if the UAW does not have graduate student issues at heart.