Forming a Student Worker’s Union: A Guide
Graduate & undergraduate workers are organizing like never before. Here’s how to join the on-campus labor movement.
Recently, I received this question from a student worker in my Tumblr inbox:
As a former graduate worker who was expected to put in 20 hour per week shifts (in a setting where hours were actually not tracked at all, and so my demand routinely exceeded that) in return for a paltry stipend of $14,000 per year, I knew I had to put together some resources to help this student worker out.
I remember what it was like trying to negotiate healthy work-life boundaries with the two professors who assigned me work each week. As far as I can tell, my two bosses did not communicate with one another about the workloads they were giving me, so it was impossible for either of them to know when I hit my twenty-hour workload limit every week. If I had officially hit that limit, I’m not sure either one would have chosen to be easier on me anyway.
There was no overtime pay, no disability pay or maternity leave, no formalized method of logging sick days, no HR…
