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AFT offers TA guidelines for universities
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by Sundeep Malladi
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The American Federation of Teachers is calling on universities to take new approaches to dealing with teaching assistants.
The AFT released a list of guidelines Oct. 8 explaining how universities should hire teaching assistants. The AFT’s document, titled “Recognition and Respect: Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Graduate Employees,” also encourages better treatment of TAs by universities through the establishment of treatment standards.
The guidelines address issues ranging from fair salaries to union rights.
The UW Teaching Assistants’ Association is an affiliate of the AFT. The group, which has been working under an extension of its expired contract for more than a year, is currently attempting to renegotiate contracts with the state of Wisconsin to get better health care and salaries.
TAA co-president Jonathan Puthoff said the TAA is willing to continue negotiations, which have been on hold since spring.
“The fact that the state doesn’t want to do this hurts us,” Puthoff said.
However, Puthoff also said while the TAA has been unable to restart the contract negotiations, it has successfully taken care of internal business that was not handled earlier in the year. The TAA, for example, held new elections.
The Wisconsin Office of State Employee Relations, the state’s negotiating team, has stated it is willing to continue negotiations as well, The Badger Herald reported in September.
OSER director Karen Timberlake said the dynamic of this issue on campus is entirely up to the TAA, because they are the architects of all teaching assistant-related events and activity on campus.
“If the [TAA] feel they’re ready, I encourage them to get a hold of my office and set up some dates,” Timberlake said at the start of the new UW school year.
Recently the National Labor Relations Board ruled TAs cannot unionize at private universities, claiming TAs of private universities are not state employees, Puthoff said.
There are 2 million graduate students on public and private university campuses. Of the nation’s graduate students, 40 percent are enrolled at private colleges and universities, according to the Boston Globe.
Although it is a public university, Ohio State University is attempting to follow the NLRB’s actions, arguing TAs are students and their teaching and research is a part of their own educational training.
“[Ohio State TAs] are facing a real uphill battle,” Puthoff said.
Shazia Iftkhar, a TA in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, disagrees with OSU’s claims.
“Of course I’m a student first. If I weren’t committed to being a student, I wouldn’t take the kind of pay cut that comes to being a student rather than going to work,” she said. “Saying I’m a student shouldn’t actually devalue the work I do for the university.”
Since TAs are in a different economic situation than other state employees, they should be considered a “special case,” Iftkhar said.
Puthoff feels the issues TAs are dealing with are relevant to all of campus.
“This whole thing with TA salaries and benefits, it’s absolutely something that students, graduate students, and faculty should be united on,” Puthoff said.
Iftkhar remains optimistic.
“This is such a small issue in a larger perspective and it’s gotten so horrible because people weren’t thinking and weren’t communicating right,” she said. “I think it can be solved.”
Anonymous (October 13, 2004 @ 12:58pm):
The best way to solve this is simply to decertify the TAA. They exist at the pleasure of the state, and they can be dissolved at the same pleasure.
Anonymous (October 13, 2004 @ 1:40pm):
Actually, if the state tried to decertify the TAA, it would be in violation of federal labor law, despite the idiotic interpretation put forth by the NLRB about private universities, and the even more appalling attempt to apply that ruling at Ohio State. Technically, the state is already in violation of federal labor law for negotiating in bad faith.
No, the best way to solve this is to simply pay TA's a living wage. Without them, the tuition you already complain about being way to high would more than double.
Anonymous (October 13, 2004 @ 1:45pm):
Actually, if the state tried to decertify the TAA, it would be in violation of federal labor law, despite the idiotic interpretation put forth by the NLRB about private universities, and the even more appalling attempt to apply that ruling at Ohio State. Technically, the state is already in violation of federal labor law for negotiating in bad faith.
No, the best way to solve this is to simply pay TA's a living wage. Without them, the tuition you already complain about being way to high would more than double.
