MIT graduate students vote to unionize
As someone who just finished their PhD, I fear these unionization efforts will have the exact opposite effect that the students are aiming for. In particular, many universities provide subsidized housing in some of the most expensive places in the US. Housing is not a bargainable. The direct consequence is that universities will kick graduate students out of the housing, replace them with undergrad students to pay for the 10% wage increase. So the grad students get the 10% raise with a 50% housing increase. Grad students really are not in a position to bargain for much as they work 20 hours to earn their salaries which is most often teaching. They can easily be replaced with a lecturer whose full time equivalent already matches PhD stipends at this tier of universities. At least the last time I saw the numbers. Furthermore, who wants to lose a year of PhD when they already take so long to complete? Striking would really lower your lifetime earnings by delaying your real earnings another year. Furthermore, many other union benefits are moot in the PhD setting. Grievances with your supervisor are irrelevant because you&#x27;re supervisor cannot be replaced. Or, again, the pain of replacement is burdened by the student.<p>The democratic process is the democratic process and so I respect their decision but grad students unionizing is really more complex than the workforce. In particular, the union is turning over every 5-8 years. It is quite possible no one wants the union after those who voted it in and don&#x27;t have a choice not to join. Your PhD is defined by your advisor and my #1 advice to future PhD students is to pick your school based on advisor before location and other things. What this means is that your choice to &quot;join&quot; the union is incredibly overshadowed by external forces.<p>Again, as someone who went through this very recently, the problem is the power imbalance between the institution and the students. They have complete control over your supply of labor. That is, many (all?) US universities usually have the policy &quot;any outside job is considered incompatible with full time PhD work and grounds for removal from the program&quot;. To me, forcing universities to pay students their prevailing market rate would solve all these issues. The first step towards this would be a cultural shift that allows part time PhD and moving towards PhD students being employees and not students. This would require a massive change to the F1 visas to allow international students to work which really pinpoints the root cause of all of this. PhD students are really in this strange limbo of being neither a student nor an employee. This limbo allows the university to use whichever definition fits their prerogative just like the NCAA. For instance, PhD students want more pay but the university decreases tuition assistance, nothing has changed.