Opinion | Caltech Post Docs and Grads Seek Unionization

GUEST OPINION

Fountain at Caltech (Photo – MTP & CKSP)

In a move that is rapidly sweeping U.S. academia, Caltech post docs, lab researchers and teaching assistants are seeking to unionize.

By Briony James

Post docs, lab researchers and teaching assistants at Caltech filed with the National Labor Relations Board last month.

They are seeking to form a union, citing low pay, extremely long hours and exorbitant housing costs. If successful, over 2000 post docs and graduate workers will form a bargaining unit attached to the UAW.  This follows a two-year trend in higher education where the work of graduate students in the sciences and engineering has been used and abused on a large scale.  Doctoral graduate students have reported continuous use of their services at pittance prices, while they represent a major factor in all science higher education research.  Without proper compensation or recognition, there is a growing trend of up to 70+% of students favoring unionization, while universities have stalled and questioned their aims.  In the last two years alone, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, NY executive director William A. Herbert noted that 38 bargaining units were created, representing over 40,000 student workers nationwide.

In addition to the economic issues, there is also the fact that graduate students are often abused by powerful professors who use their talents as forced labor, take credit for their work and can threaten a student’s entire career while being protected by universities as ‘eccentrics’. These issues are more widespread than any school of higher learning would like to admit and union representation would help to address those issues as well as the financial ones.

It will be in the interest of all concerned to address these issues for Caltech and all schools of higher learning in all fields of study to work towards a more equitable future.

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