Hacker News Reader

Comment by Quillbert182 | Hacker News Reader

For the uninformed, what is the purpose of a student union?

>, what is the purpose of a student union?

I'm guessing the "student" part of "graduate student" is the confusion.

Fyi... grad students are also employees of the university. So a labor union applies to the "workers" aspect of graduate students. Grad students get paid a stipend (salary) for research, teaching, etc. It's a "workers union" and not a "student union".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_employee_unio...

In this case, the union is for grad students employed by the university (i.e. it has the same purpose as a normal union).

1. Protect students from advisors who want them to work 100 hour weeks.

2. Get dental insurance for the students. Almost no US graduate school offers this.

Dental insurance is a scam.

Because it pays out so little or what?

Yeah, basically. Most dental insurance I've seen has a "benefit maximum" [0], the maximum amount the plan will cover in a 12 month period, I've seen numbers from 1.5k to 3k for this. Since the coverage is capped, and capped so low, it's arguably not really "insurance", and isn't really protecting me.

That said, to a graduate student, $3k can be a non-negligible amount of money, and the school is likely kicking in money to pay for the plan. In my position, if my company didn't subsidize the plan, I'd be happy to just go without.

[0] https://deltadentalks.com/knowledge/what-is-an-annual-maximu...

not necessarily. most plans seem to be pretty bad at covering major work, but every plan I've had has paid out more for my two yearly cleanings than I pay in premiums, making it a no brainer.

Graduate students are paid by the university. Unlike undergraduate student unions, graduate student unions are actual unions in the workers sense. They have the same purpose as any other employee union would: protect the students from arbitrary and capricious changes to working conditions, and to negotiate for better conditions/represent the students in the event of negotiations.

When it’s used responsibly, it’s a great way to make sure union members are being treated reasonably and fairly. When not, it’s an easy way to extort your employer.

Eventually, Pournelle’s Law Iron Law of Bureaucracy takes hold and the purpose of the union is to strengthen the union regardless of the needs of its members.

Elect leadership. Who then negotiates with the faculty.

What leverage do they have? Worker's unions work because they can threaten to withhold labor. Are those students seriously going to not attend MIT? An institution as prestigious as MIT probably has no trouble finding replacements.

"MIT fires entire graduate student body in union-busting move" is probably not a great look for them.

The would use the term "expells" because they want to say they are students and not employees.

At which point there would be a lawsuit, and they would lose the lawsuit.

Labor labors are an established thing. If a union is approved by the government, then they would have protections.

When you run a research group: one student leaving is no big deal, every student leaving is a catastrophe. Who's going to fund you when you have no one to do the work? It takes years to get grad students up to speed. All wind is drained from the sails and you need to waste your precious time rebuilding. All because you didn't want to treat your workers like humans.

Withhold work via a strike? See how many labs run and MIT grants are retained without a graduate student labor force.

Except withholding research work also means ceasing degree progress in practice. For some types of work it could mean setting degree progress back months - experiments can be very time sensitive in some fields, and thesis committee will often require certain experiments to graduate.

TAs striking has been somewhat effective, but RAs mostly don't actually strike.

Same kind of thinking led to empires breaking up.

Failure to accept feedback makes for a fragile institution. Since the students decided to unionize, clearly their issues are not being heard, and a union will have a much stronger public voice than any individual student, perhaps on par with the university's brand and PR campaigns.

Lack of relevancy is no major obstacle to the formation of any sort of political body.

The purpose of a union is to make more money for their members and to handle infractions committed by their members internally. This is the purpose of almost all organizations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com