Students Unionize Nationwide

Graduate students at five universities across the country have formed unions, which organizers say have secured increased salaries and benefits for teaching assistants.

The Association of Graduate student Employees (AGSE) at the University of California at Berkeley formed in 1983 in response to a tuition fee increase.

"Teaching assistant salaries had not been raised substantially in several years, and inflation was eroding them away," says Lee Badger, an AGSE spokesperson. "We eventually won a court decision to collect bargaining rights, and it was generally believed that the pressure that AGSE made led to the subsequent raise in pay."

Since then, the AGSE "has been in a constant fight to earn employee status for resident T.A.'s." Badger says.

Last semester, administrators tried to lower the status of several history department T.A.'s at U.C. Berkeley, decreasing their salaries and influence. The AGSE responded with threats to withhold student grades, forcing the university to capitulate, Badger says.

In the early 1960s, graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison established the Teaching Assistant Association (TAA).

"We were initially formed in response to the social and political concerns that emerged during the Vietnam War," says Brad Connors, a member of the Association's Executive Board. "Male students needed passing grades from their T.A.'s to maintain a grade point average high enough to defer the draft. The T.A.'s had to take action around these issues, and the only power vehicle strong enough was unionism," Connors says.

Fearing more protests on an already troubled campus, the school administration readily agreed to the TAA's demands for salary increases, improved working conditions and increased graduate student input in the curriculum.

"Basically, the entire campus was surrounded by the National Guard because of all the anti-war protests. The administration was forced to agree to our terms because they were afraid of even more trouble," Connors says.

The TAA has continued to be an effective voice in gaining benefits for graduate students. "Our strike threats and actions throughout the 1970s have left us with some of the best working conditions for T.A.'s in America," Connors says.

Well over 50 percent of all U.C. Berkeley T.A.'s are presently involved with AGSE, and of the 1500 resident teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin, 700 are involved in the TAA.

Connors says that other T.A. union organizations are currently in operation and meeting with similar success throughout the country at the University of Oregon, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Rutgers.