Is a teaching assistant a worker or a student, and do they have the right to unionize? Last July, the National Labor Relations Board unequivocally ruled that TAs are students, and their unions cannot be legally recognized unless the institution where they teach voluntarily recognizes them. At Columbia and Yale, the graduate student TAs are demanding recognition, along with improved health benefits. To force the issue, they have taken the extreme measure of striking-refusing to lead discussion sections, write problem sets or grade work. This decision is unwarranted and a wrong turn for the labor movement.
While few would argue against giving TAs a stronger voice or adequate healthcare, the American labor movement was certainly not begun with them in mind. It originated to protect the grossly underpaid and merciliessly overworked laborers during the 1930s, notably immigrants and children, and exists today to provide that same protection to a new generation of workers.
TAs at American universities do not toil under the type of conditions that merit the protection of unions. At the two universities in question, graduate TAs typically receive free tuition and a stipend totaling around $18,000 a year at Columbia and $25,000 at Yale-no small sums. Many graduate assistants already receive health benefits, though they do not extend to family members. At Georgetown, TAs receive a stipend of around $2,000 a month from the school along with free tuition.
The “teaching assistant” position exists to provide graduate students with experience teaching in a classroom setting. For any Ph.D. candidate, such experience is invaluable. “I think [being a TA] really prepares graduate students for when they take over their own classes,” Richard Santos, a graduate student TA in the English Department, said. “I don’t think it’s wrong for professors to ask them to research or to go to the library and hit the books.”
None of the TAs we spoke to were opposed to unionization or improved working conditions.
“I think there should be, if not a limit to the amount of work they can do, then at least a forum where they can express their grievances and be taken seriously as a collective group,” Santos said.
Shervin Malekzadeh, a TA in the Government Department, expressed similar support for unionizing TAs. “The bottom line is that an effective counterweight is needed for market forces,” he said. A TA’s workload, according to Malekzadeh, is entirely dependent upon their relationship with the professor under whom they work. If they can communicate, the professor and his assistant can strike an agreeable balance in workloads.
Any University will have horror stories of absentee professors who force their TAs to teach their classes. At Georgetown, the vast majority of TAs we spoke to appear content with the benefits provided by their position, which aren’t all that different from those of TAs at Columbia and Yale. They are students, not workers, and the vast majority of them do not toil under cruel working conditions. Their complaints are clearly not severe enough to merit a strike.
