Duke should discuss grad unionization

This week, graduate workers at Columbia and Yale are striking for the right to bargain collectively for fair wages, affordable health care, and decent working conditions. Graduate teaching assistants at Duke have also raised the issue of unionization this year, in editorials, discussions with President Richard Brodhead, and conversations in our workplaces. Last summer, the National Labor Relations Board ruled along partisan lines that teaching assistants are apprentices not workers, and thus don’t have a federally protected right to unionize. President Brodhead has agreed, arguing that “the analogy of a laborer who works for a wage and a graduate student, who through teaching and scholarship is being molded into a scholar, does not fit.” The NLRB also reasons that unionization might harm the educational relationships graduates form with faculty and undergraduates.

The Duke community will benefit from questioning the assumptions behind the NLRB ruling. To begin, the distinction drawn between teaching assistants and laborers is not self-evident, as evinced by the partisan ruling and its narrow application to private (not public) universities. The dichotomy also undervalues wage labor on campus: Duke should create opportunities for all workers to form meaningful relationships in the workplace and benefit from intellectual and human development. To reserve this opportunity for graduates is shortsighted, even as it forgets that we too are held accountable by our paychecks—on which we too pay taxes. Finally, unionization should not be equated with antagonism. It is quite possible for graduates to value deeply both our relationships with faculty and undergraduates and our rights to freer and fairer labor conditions.

This is a call to the broader Duke community to begin a dialogue about the roles of graduate students in helping the university function effectively and enriching the quality of academic life. This conversation ought to be part of broader efforts at Duke and beyond to secure livable working conditions for all workers—graduate workers included.

Laura Grattan

Graduate student, Political Science

Dave McIvor

Graduate student, Political Science