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Comment by CraigRo | Hacker News Reader

It was a disaster at Wisconsin. Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students, and traded cash for benefits that really only affected people with families. Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities, and the union refused to let wages rise for in-demand TAs, so a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population. Scott Walker killed it, and those problems haven't come back.

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It was great for us at UC Santa Cruz. The reason I had healthcare during grad school was because the union won it right before I joined. The reason they have a housing stipend now (in the most expensive rental market in the US[1]) is because the union fought for a cost-of-living allowance. We at UCSC didn't always agree with the course of the larger UAW 2685 but they did a lot for us.

I'm not sure what the system was like in the union in Wisconsin but I'm surprised that more STEM students didn't join and change the course of the union if they were that negatively affected. Our union was democratic almost to a fault but maybe the structure in Wisconsin was different.

[1]https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/most-expensiv...

When was this? Just before the pandemic, the grad students protested at UAW meetings and went on a wildcat strike after UAW ratified a contract the campus voted against.

Later, Janet Nepolitano released police drones and set up barricades to try to shut down the picket lines. Eventually covid ended the drama, but only after some students were deported (I assume. The plan was to deport them, but the story stopped making news once the 2020 lockdowns hit.)

Anyway, the UAW was a similar disaster at UC Berkeley a while back. There weren’t widespread protests, but there were salary caps for grad students, and the union eliminated health care coverage for a number of female problems (over student objections).

The wildcat strike is exactly what I was referring to as "We at UCSC didn't always agree with the course of the larger UAW 2685..."

The wildcat strike was led by the local union leadership after they abdicated their official positions iirc. Having that previous level of organization and identified leadership certainly made organizing wildcat actions easier.

Unions are more than just the highest level of leadership.

Do you have sources for those claims? I don't have any knowledge here; just cursory googling indicates the issue was a lot more complex than UAW being the bad guy.

Female problems? Are you serious, that is a pretty negative way to describe health issues that might apply only to women. Why would you put it that way, it's just kind of dismissive.

How would you have put it, rnk?

Health concerns?

> The reason I had healthcare during grad school was because the union won it right before I joined.

I’m sorry if this is weird, but as someone who also went to UCSC for grad school I found this a bit confusing. So I looked it up and you started at UCSC at 2014, yeah?

UCSC grad students had GSHIP coverage for years before that time. I myself was on it when I joined starting in 2009, and there’s plenty of documentation of fights folks had over trying to get better rates and coverage on GSHIP well before both our times: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/13/18415831.php (Which personally I thought was pretty good especially after the expansion of airlift coverage which was an unfortunately common problem for UCSC’s location “over the hill” from many tier 1 emergency rooms.)

Maybe I missed something when I was there 2009-2015. But what did the union representation and bargaining bring to the table there?

From a couple years ago, it doesn’t seem to have resulted in anything close to a reasonable or even livable stipend for a researcher. It was bad when I was in grad school, but I was pretty appalled to hear during the wildcat strikes ten years later that despite the increase in costs there didn’t seem to be that much change in the stipend amounts for graduate researchers. The students who were wildcatting out of frustration seemed to have a pretty good reason IMO.

I think that meets a pretty similar pattern of unions focusing on fighting about healthcare while leaving wages to stagnate over years of price increases, which I guess also applies in many unrepresented UC roles and in dynamics elsewhere. I personally didn’t see much difference between UAW’s representation and not when I was there, but I guess I didn’t have a huge point of comparison.

I hope whatever this new swell of support is provides livable stipends for young researchers though. So I hope I’m either wrong or grad student unions are able to win more in bargaining in the future. :)

Nice to see a fellow slug! I think you are correct on the timeline being further back. The narrative I recalled was that there was a major victory around health care fee remission before I joined but it looks as if that was part of the original contract the union negotiated [1].

I spent my final years at UCSC working through the systems they had set up internally (administration meetings with GSA, getting on committees of administrators as a grad student voice, working with on campus housing developers[2]) in order to improve housing availability and cost. We had marginal wins if anything. The strike the next year won everyone thousands of dollars toward housing every year. I understand the nuance of it being a wildcat strike but the entire organizing infrastructure there was from the union.

I agree with your final points and hope stipends will follow upwards in the near future.

[1] https://livinghistory.as.ucsb.edu/tag/uaw-local-2865/ [2] https://payusmoreucsc.com/history-of-students-attempts-to-en...

Likewise! Those housing stipends seemed sorely needed. Nice work on organizing around them and thanks for sharing your perspective on it! :)

I'm confused. The article that you linked says San Francisco is the most expensive rental market. However, you speak about UC Santa Cruz. The campus is about 120 km south. It's a totally different rental market. Do I misunderstand?

First line: “Santa Cruz County has vaulted over the San Francisco area as the most expensive market in the country for renters”

It’s an hour and 14 minute drive. It’s not unheard of to commute from there, and it’s far more beautiful than any of the closer beaches, so yes the Bay Area rental prices still apply, in addition to beach community rental prices. As far as calling it SF, some people shorten “The San Francisco Bay Area,” which includes San Jose, to “San Francisco,” and people still know what they mean, though I see why it can be confusing.

I can't know if this is true or false. It reads like it is politically motivated. Can you cite sources to substantiate the many claims you have made here?

I don’t know about Wisconsin, but based on how UAW behaves in California, I’d need strong evidence before I believed they acted in the interest of graduate students in any state.

Here’s the “do what the union agreed to even though your campus voted against it or you will be fired” notice that UC sent to the UC Santa Cruz graduate students:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/graduate-student-prot...

The “small group” of striking students they mention led to UC calling in aid from the military and federal police:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kppna/california-police-use...

They also set up lots of barricades and released a fleet of police drones.

It would have made more news (and likely continued longer), if it hadn’t started just before the Covid lockdowns.

Anyway, this all happened after the students protested in front of UAW meetings, and were ignored by their union reps.

One thing to keep in mind is that the union is presumably made of their members, and should act in alignment with some decision making process they arrive at together. Bargaining and figuring out goals shouldn’t be something for just the Bargaining Committee to do in a vacuum. If they valued the “wrong” things, then maybe they were still right for the majority in the union.

(I’m a proud technology union member myself, and we are currently in bargaining.)

That is not how UAW works. There is an opaque set of rules that lead to UAW reps being elected, and then the UAW reps will not listen to member concerns unless the members first successfully petition to be heard at a meeting. To be counted in the petition, the people that sign it have to physically show up to the meeting, and the rules are set so that they may have to attend multiple meetings.

At that point the UAW rep is “allowed” to hear the concerns.

Many other things happen that can kill even the most basic common sense request.

Eventually, when it is time to vote on the contract, the UAW rolls the negotiations up into multiple campuses (at least with UC), so it is mathematically impossible for a given campus to block a contract ratification.

This is exactly what happened with UC Santa Cruz in 2020, and the reason UC Berkeley’s health care plan no longer covers a bunch of women’s health issues. (Word has it the union rep suggested that cut, not the administration.)

See my other comments on this thread for links, etc.

Do you know why they choose the UAW? It seems a really strange fit.

The choice of what union to affiliate with, and selecting their rules is something that should have been done carefully, and with the needs of the membership in mind.

What women’s health issues were cut?

Any sources for this? I tried googling but found nothing.

This is a real issue. Graduate students are a very heterogenic bunch, with some study domains forfeiting very substantial wage and carreer opportunities by staying at university, and students in other fields have no or comparably very less lucrative prospects outside of academia.

Not differentiating these groups does have a real impact. (I was on the board of a university so had a first row seat to this)

Forming a union is one thing. Actually agreeing what to demand and getting it is another. That seems to be where these things break down. I watched the Amazon union go from popular and "more money, less crazy metrics, more toilet breaks" to "end racism in Amercia" and then no one wanted to risk their jobs to ask for the impossible...

If you mean in AL there was a lot wrong there including massive union busting efforts and a lack of worker education on what unions are, but people who want a union really should choose their union leadership carefully and be ready to replace them if they feel they aren't being represented.

> Union favored the 8th year humanities students at the expense of the 1 and 2 year STEM students

Having been a one-time 1st or 2nd year STEM student, I think this is the proper decision.

Caused huge attrition of the 1st and 2nd year stem students (i.e. quit with a masters). The union was dominated by humanities students, and they fought for what they wanted, not what the overall membership wanted. Very few STEM folks had any interest in being part of the union, but because so many voted with their feet, it was hopeless to set up a decertifiying petition.

TBH the way you explain it sounds to me like 1st and 2nd year stem students were disengaged and uninterested in solidarity with their academic peers who have less options than them. I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!

> I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!

What the GP said was that instead of taking a cash option that would benefit all members, they chose benefits that only benefitted parents. It's reasonable to be angry that an alternative that would benefit all members wasn't chosen.

https://taa-madison.org/history/

> TAA activists in the Fall of 2008 also turned their eyes again toward attaining Domestic Partner Benefits for TAA members and UW employees. The TAA pushed on the issue, joining the LGBT Campus Center to table on Library Mall during their Coming Out Week, and creating a memorable Bascom Hill display. The TAA then networked into the University’s Domestic Partner Benefit Task Force, and arranged meetings with Governor Doyle’s Office and UW Chancellor Biddy Martin, while activists also spoke with nearly a thousand TAA members about the importance of winning Domestic Partner Benefits. The State Legislature, which in years past had meticulously denied state employees Domestic Partner Benefits, was poised for a sea change in the November elections. The TAA’s Political Education Committee launched an AFT COPE award-winning program, through a vibrant and ambitious series of phone banks and Labor Walks throughout south-central Wisconsin. Though Domestic Partner Benefits were not ultimately won in the 2007-2009 contract, the TAA was responsible in ensuring that the issue would be considered in the 2009-2011 budget.

https://etf.wi.gov/publications/et2166/download?inline=

> As of Sept. 23, 2017, the State of Wisconsin no longer allows the establishment of new domestic partnerships under Chapter 40 of the Wisconsin statutes.

> Carefully review this document if you are in a Chapter 40 domestic partnership established before September 23, 2017 because it contains important information about the benefit changes for established domestic partnerships.

> If you are currently in a domestic partnership that was established under Chapter 40 between Jan. 1, 2010 and Sept. 22, 2017, your domestic partnership remains in force for the Wisconsin Retirement System retirement benefit administered by the Department of Employee Trust Funds. Your domestic partner is also still eligible to be the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, either through retention of your validly established domestic partnership, or through the submission of a Beneficiary Designation (ET-2320 or ET-2321) form.

(note the date when domestic partnerships established would benefit from the benefits that spouses traditionally got - https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/40 )

> who have less options than them.

So the humanities folks' priority is sculpting a union program to their specific needs. That also doesn't sound very "fight for the allowance of your peers". That's democracy though. Doesn't mean the right choice is made but that the voters pull the strings.

I think it is objectively the right choice to enable people to build families if they're going to be in a program until their late 20s! This sounds ridiculous to me on its face-- why the hell wouldn't you support your maximally educated populace (getting doctorates) to have families? The 1st and 2nd year STEM kids (literally kids-- you can enter into a masters fresh out of college, so like 21-23 yrs old) who see the opportunity to try and organize to help their humanities peers start families and instead don't participate, exit to industry (an option humanities graduates probably don't have), and say nothing as a governer with a presidential campaign crushes their organizing hopes... a lack of solidarity with one's peers is exactly how it sounds to me.

Calling 22 year olds "kids" and then also saying they have a lack of solidarity with their older "peers" seems a bit insensitive to me. People having families is great, but if their benefits come from the expense of your own salary, that's asking for more than solidarity; that's asking for altruism.

I'm darkly amused that you spend the first half of your comment talking down about how one group of students is "kids" compared to another and then in the second half complain about how those same people have "a lack of solidarity with [their] peers". Gee, I wonder why!

STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. It sounds like the union simply equalized things, although I’m not sure how that would work with DARPA or similar funding agencies, since RA salaries are taken out of grants (maybe just raise overhead to redistribute more funding to humanities, but grants have caps on overhead as well), so maybe just apply it to TA wages (then anyone in STEM would need to RA and avoid being a TA)? Anyways, it doesn’t take a leap to see how stipend equalization at a university would make it less appealing to those who would get less and more appealing to those who would get more.

It is a zero sum problem, unfortunately.

> STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded.

That was the opposite of my experience, actually.

What school did you go to? In my grad school, there was very little money for humanities students, and they had to compete for TA positions. STEM money wasn't much of a problem, and most grad students could be RAs, and the opposite problem occurred (they were short on TAs).

> uninterested in solidarity

They always pitch the union as a way for you to get better pay and benefits. But the talk can suddenly shift to how you are a greedy opportunist if you actually take steps to increase your value.

One of main uw campus, Madison, doesn't allow cs masters students. You are brought in as a PhD then allowed to leave when you've achieved your masters. This also causes attrition rates in those programs to skew low. Walked gutted a lot of funding for the programs and made it so the university couldn't find new sources of revenue. These factors definitely impacted the ability for students to finish phds

This is an interesting story. I don't understand why it was flagkilled. Is it obviously false or something?

> Is it obviously false or something?

Yes. Doesn't "a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population" sound extremely implausible to you? As if graduate students can control enrollment.

The comment sounds like a political hit piece, with no evidence provided. And Scott Walker was a major union buster who spurred massive protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 and a recall election (which Walker unfortunately won).

The University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants Association is one of the oldest student unions in the nation. It's hardly a "disaster".

A number of STEM majors graduating in 2009 and 2010 decided to get a masters rather than enter that economy.

As the economy recovered, STEM hiring picked up substantially and people with a masters degree were quite hirable.

https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/science-technology-engine...

> Employment in STEM occupations grew by 10.5 percent, or 817,260 jobs, between May 2009 and May 2015, compared with 5.2 percent net growth in non-STEM occupations. Computer occupations and engineers were among the types of STEM occupations with the highest job gains. Employment in computer occupations was nearly 3.2 million in May 2009 and nearly 3.9 million in May 2015. Employment of engineers was nearly 1.5 million in May 2009, compared with over 1.6 million in May 2015. Some STEM occupations lost jobs. In 2009, there were nearly 478,000 jobs in STEM-related sales occupations, compared with approximately 406,000 in 2015.

The OP didn't even say which year this happened.

Anyway, I'm not disputing that grad students leave school for job opportunities. I am disputing whether they left because of some student union disagreement, and whether such a union disagreement could somehow limit undergraduate enrollment.

Moreover, the budget for the University of Wisconsin is set by the Governor and legislature, so if there's no enough money to pay TAs more, it's their fault.

In Wisconsin politics and with the context of unions, 2011 was a very memorable year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests

If you were a STEM major graduating in 2009 or 2010, you went to grad school for a year or two and got a masters to wait out the recession.

In 2011, grad school was made much worse as the union for grad students was severely curtailed and benefits for state employees (grad students being state employees) reduced.

As the economy was picking up and you've got a masters and hiring in STEM fields is outpacing all other hiring - it is time to put off procrastinating in grad school and get a job.

> In Wisconsin politics and with the context of unions, 2011 was a very memorable year.

I'm confused about the nature of your reply. You're more or less repeating what I already said in an earlier comment: "Scott Walker was a major union buster who spurred massive protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 and a recall election"

To be clear, I'm a Wisconsinite and a former member of the TAA.

I suspect we're in agreement then. My comment was intended supporting material to your claim that the reason people left wasn't the wins by the TAA that became part of the 2010 benefits for domestic partners for state employees but rather that they were done procrastinating entering the job market.

> Yes. Doesn't "a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population" sound extremely implausible to you? As if graduate students can control enrollment.

You can't run a department without TAs. Who's going to grade homework and exams? Professors? Don't make me laugh.

If you don't have enough grad students to TA your department, you have to borrow some another department. But what if all the STEM departments don't have enough TAs? Do you hire adjuncts (at roughly 3x the rate)?

It's presidential election season in the US. People are going to fight hard to bury what the other side says and raise up what their own side is saying.

Here's some free advice: leave until January 2025 and spend your newly free time learning a language or growing a garden.

Democracy isn't perfect, but checking out is the quickest route to ensuring your interests are only minimally represented. True at all levels of democratic organization.

Checking out and moving to an environment that represents your interests well is a way to see that your interests are met, though.

What happens when there is no where left to move, or the cost of moving is too high?

Solidarity, not freedom, is the opposite of tyranny.

Neutrality and running away implicitly supports the injustice you are running away from. Flight-ing instead of fighting leaves those left behind to the wolves.

Political change only happens once people are willing to put themselves at risk.

Not every battle is mine to fight.

I've spent plenty of time tilting at windmills. But there are limits to how much effort I'll put in for collective good.

Your lack of solidarity for others means they will have a lack of solidarity for you.

The mindset guarantees your exhaustion, loss, and ultimately your oppression.

You don't have to fight the battle, but you should at least support those who self sacrifice and hold it in high regard and equally you should feel shame for running away.

Your privilege let you run away, but others aren't so lucky.

How do you know how much I've run away from compared to you?

Maybe it's been less.

But I sure don't stick around in every shitty situation hoping that I can turn it better with enough sweat of the brow and sufficient persuasion to others to play nice. Hopefully you don't, either.

The thread we're talking about is a classic tyranny of the majority situation: something that democracies handle poorly. If you're outnumbered by a large factor by people with drastically different interests than you, and it's going to be decided by voting, you're in for a bad time if you stick around.

Why wouldn't all the 1st and 2nd year STEM students bail for the private sector, right when a massive STEM hiring boom started across the economy?

> Stipends were the lowest in the country among major research universities

Is this adjusting for cost of living?

I volunteer taught at a high school for a few months in Milwaukee when Scott Walker was in power.

A lot of poor kids were bused to this school in a nicer neighborhood and couldn't do sports or extracurriculars because Walker cut funding for extra school buses to come later.

The main point is a lot of kids had single parent moms and were basically unsupervised after school. Having extracurricular’s or sports would hopefully give them more structure and discipline and something productive to do along with building healthy social skills rather than just veg out at home at best or go out in the streets at worst.

Such a weird concept, I could never understand it. Why not spend effort making their local neighborhoods and schools better?

Everybody grew up with richer and "better" schools and areas, I would have hated being sent out to those.

Likely a matter of the parents in richer neighborhoods being able to donate more time and money to the local school than in poorer neighborhoods. The buildings are better, there are more resources available to teachers, more extra-curricular activities, skilled teachers fight to be posted there. Certainly things can be improved at schools in poorer neighborhoods, but I doubt it could be equalized to the point where kids won't benefit from being bussed to the richer neighborhood schools.

It's not really solving the problem though, is it? The bad neighborhoods and bad schools are still there. And the idea that if you can't equalize it to rich neighborhods (when they can and will never be equal anyway even with this bussig) then there's no point, is exactly the kind of thing I find absurd about it.

I don't deny that it might help some kids some amount. Although now I'm curious -- what kind of improvement does the evidence actually show? Anything close to "equalized"?

"Good school" is like 99% pupil safety and the general disciplin related and 1% other. Money won't buy you that.

> "Good school" is like 99% pupil safety and the general disciplin related and 1% other. Money won't buy you that.

I think money could help that. Even if it never left the schools. Assuming that it went to things like removing lead, made the schools look less run down, supported after school programs, and added security (not police).

Since the suggestion was "making their local neighborhoods and schools better" there might be a lot that could be done in local neighborhoods to improve student safety too. Fixing environmental issues there, cleaning the place up and planting trees, improving access to good stores, improving public transportation, and providing daycare. That could lower crime rates, improve the health of the kids and parents, and give parents more time to spend with their kids or get involved with the school.

Before a child sets foot in kindergarten many inputs have already been happened. Did their mother abuse alcohol or drugs during the pregnancy? Does their household have domestic violence? Did their parents read to them on a regular basis? Did their parents teach them how to interact with other kids? Were their parents able to pass along the English language?

A school is not just faculty and a building. While public schools will enroll any resident children their parents must be able to afford the area. This has a high correlation with the average quality of students at the time of enrollment. The selection effect is the most powerful force in educational institutions. Parental involvement can vary from helicopter parents down to parent teacher conferences that are a ghost town because the crowd of parents is stuck at their second job or they decided they have better things to do.

Transforming an under-performing school district or neighborhood takes many years and is far beyond the capability of a single person. Calling the police on drug dealers carries personal risk.

> Before a child sets foot in kindergarten many inputs have already been happened.

That can also include environmental harms and lack of access to good food or medical care. Investing in neighborhoods that have been neglected and exploited can fix a lot of things and improve them for everyone in the area. Not being an easy fix doesn't mean it wouldn't be worthwhile. Clean up the neighborhoods, lift the the desperation and despair, and the drug dealers won't stick around anymore than they do anywhere else.

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