Recent legislation granting University of Wisconsin System research assistants collective bargaining and unionization rights has sparked contentious debate in the graduate school community.
Although both teaching assistants and project assistants gained collective bargaining rights in 1985, RAs were barred from unionizing. While the state recognizes TAs and PAs as university employees, it has viewed RAs as students and therefore did not give them the option to unionize. Starting July 2010, RAs throughout the UW System will have the opportunity to vote on whether or not to unionize.
Over the next year, unions will have the option to invite RAs to join their ranks. Any union collecting signatures from a majority of RAs gains the right to represent all RAs at UW.
Not all RAs, however, currently feel the urge to unionize.
“At this point, I don’t know of any particular benefits to joining a union,” said Nina Chaopricha, an RA in geography. “But on the side of cons, I’m not sure if there’s anything I would lose either.”
Others, like Samuel Friedman, an RA in astronomy, welcome this opportunity to standardize working conditions for graduate students.
“Eight months ago I broke my leg,” he said. “I was out for two months. As an RA, there is no sick-leave policy. There is no vacation policy.”
Some faculty members, however, worry that such measures endanger the mentor-mentee relationships they develop with their RAs.
“I have serious questions about RA bargaining,” said William Tracy, chair of the agronomy department. “There’s a level of adversarialness that’s inevitable in unions.”
An RA’s work and their own academic success are closely connected, said Judith Kornblatt, senior associate dean for graduate education
Peter Rickman, co-president of the Teaching Assistants’ Association, however, said he believes the distinction between RAs and TAs is arbitrary.
“We have people that we represent right now who may be a TA this semester, but will be an RA next semester,” he said.
Kornblatt, on the other hand, said the distinctions between TAs, PAs and RAs is not always clearly understood.
Financial discrepancies are one of the distinctions that have many involved in the debate concerned.
According to the Office of Human Resources, while TA salaries are calculated on the basis of a nine-month appointment, 87 percent of RAs are on 12-month contracts. Between 2006 and 2007, therefore, the full-time salary for an RA was about $6,000 more than that of a senior TA.
Additionally, while 97 percent of TAs and 39 percent of PAs are supported by state funds, 84 percent of RAs are funded by external grants and gifts.
With the majority of RA funding coming from outside sources, RAs like Friedman wonder whether they should be bargaining with the state at all.
“If the RAs form a union, they would be negotiating with the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “However, it is hard to see how a state employment relations board has an impact on U.S. federal grant money.”
While Rickman dismissed such fears, saying once funds enter the university, they are subject to state legislation, Kornblatt said RAs need to consider this issue.
If RAs do in fact unionize, their bargaining partner would shift from the university to the state, Kornblatt said. Since the state is responsible for negotiating multiple contracts, any concessions made to RAs will have to be made in the context of other contracts, making the process relatively lengthy.
Similar discrepancies have led some RAs to fear losing flexibility. During her five years at UW, Chaopricha has also been a TA and a PA, and said she much prefers being an RA. Besides the higher salary, she said she also prefers the independence being an RA offers.
Rickman, however, said RA unionization has been extremely successful at other universities, and helps the university attract competitive grants.
“Having graduates with more protection, better pay, benefits and fair treatment is going to mean better quality of grad students coming here, better quality of research, and more grants coming in,” he said.
