Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?
But also AIUI Temple took away the whole of the tuition remittance for the entire semester. Companies are allowed to stop paying wages for the time workers are on strike and not working, but taking away tens of thousands of dollars for the entire semester simply for participating in a strike action during a tiny piece of it is absolutely beyond the pale.
Edit: why disagree? What have I said that's factually incorrect? Please, educate us all and add to the discussion in the spirit of the forum.
Nothing precludes them from doing anything, and nothing precludes students from seeking legal remedies for those actions.
Look, I'm not sure. Temple might have a defensible claim for charging tuition; it's a really complicated situation and I wouldn't take advice from anyone who isn't an employment lawyer.
But the letter that Temple sent out is probably going to get Temple into some trouble for the reason identified by your parent comment.
It's certainly gotten them into reputational trouble. I don't think they'll get into legal trouble until there is an actual harm when either the fine is charged, or a registration is blocked. Courts don't generally rule on hypotheticals.
My employment contract as a graduate student was one page long. There was definitely an implicit consensus ad idem regarding tuition remissions for graduate students.
It was not spelled out what exactly entitled me to the remission. It DEFINITELY wasn't an explicit benefit given in consideration for my labor as an RA. In fact, that situation might even be uncredible for universities to claim given the tax structure at play here.
Temple's "and therefore you don't get benefits and therefore YOU owe US money!" reasoning might make sense to a Goldman mouth breather, but I somehow doubt that anyone else involved in this agreement going back 5+ decades has ever thought that this is how things are supposed to work. I am genuinely skeptical that the COO (or whatever)'s interpretation of the contract is spelled out in writing in the contracts, or that there was ever a meeting of the minds on this matter.
And it's pretty trivial to show damages here without a bill coming due. If I were a grad student I'd put $xxK in a money market account, document my investment plan (or three ;) ), and sue for the opportunity cost plus treble damages even if this all gets resolved.
It's not just internal budgeting, it also allows them to accurately charge faculty grants for that tuition. Faculty are given grants by various organizations, but they don't get that money up front, they have to identify a cost relevant to the grant that was paid, then the grantor reimburses. In the case of tuition, the grantors generally require some documentation that the charges are reasonable and allocable, so they are charged whatever tuition would be charged to a student with no TAship or Research Assistant position.
> taking away tens of thousands of dollars for the entire semester simply for participating in a strike action during a tiny piece of it is absolutely beyond the pale.
Temple is also pushing this way down the calendar. The tuition demanded does not have to be paid until March, and even if not paid then, it only blocks registration for the next semester (presumably Fall). They seem to be minimizing the impact to the degree possible. Hopefully the strike will be over long before then, and this will all be moot.
Beyond the pale morally or legally? The grandparent claim is that this is a slam dunk violation of labor law, but I’m not sure that’s true.
That said, I’m not a labor law expert. I’d like to hear from one without an ax to grind. Too often advocates conflate what the law currently is with where they think it should go. I’m often interested in both, but want to know which is which.
But as I said, you don't actually make a penny, so I wouldn't really call it "wages".
There is such a thing as noncash compensation. And that's part of total compensation.
If the govt has any inkling that you are taking payments in other than cash, they want to know (and tax) it too.
You're correct in the case of 90+% of grad students.
Students and Universities both could be accused of underreporting income or tax witholdings.
I suspect there are armies of education lawyers that vetted this, but in any other industry, this is simply a no-go zone. You report what you get and what you pay as comp, cash and noncash.
Tuition remissions in particular definitely do not show up on your W-2.
Now, to the question in this thread. If you choose to report tuition as income, you might be able to do that in certain cases, but it's probably because you have some strange reason for wanting to report a higher gross income. I can't even begin think of any reason why that might be. So, murky and likely to cause an audit? Maybe. But then the gov is complaining about getting extra $$$, unless your situation is really fucking weird.
Mind you, this is exactly why I find situations like this so reprehensible. Universities get tons of breaks in how they treat grad student labor. For universities to turn around around and fuck grad students like this, on top of the insulting wages, is beyond the pale.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/2...
Edit: A slight twist on this is that Temple University is a public university and and the NLRB in theory does not have jurisdiction over other parts of the government. PA law, however, offers similar protection. This is off to court for sure.