Graduate students who teach fighting for better living standards at NYU

The Graduate Assistant's Union (grad students seeking their PhDs who teach courses at the university) is under attack by the administration at New York University. Graduate students generally earn very little money and receive little if any thing in benefits while teaching at the university and studying for their PhDs. At NYU, the union, known as the GSOC (Graduate Student Organizing Committee), was recognized reluctantly by NYU some years ago. However, after an unfavorable ruling from the National Labor Relations Board (stacked with the Terrible President's appointees), the university administrators have gone on the attack against the union. See this link for details of the Terrible President's terrible appointees' decision.

Michael Berube, whose name should by now be well known to readers of this web log, has written an excellent public letter to the president of NYU.

Here is a link to the main GSOC web site (the union aligned with the United Auto Workers union). Here is their strike fund web site. I donated $50 and encourage others to do the same or better. It has long been a scandal how graduate students are treated at universities. With administrators screaming they can't make it on six figure incomes, it is especially shameful of them to attack the reasonable demands of these graduate students, who do much of the daily teaching and interacting with students while working long hours on PhDs or other graduate research work.

Some may say working in a university is still better than working at Wal Mart. However, we should never let Wal Mart become the standard for employee benefits or wages. This is yet another union worthy of support.

(Edited)