Grad Workers Continue to Whine About Pay

The Indiana Graduate Workers coalition hosted a town hall on Thursday to further their efforts to unionize and demand higher wages from the university. IU grad workers have been attempting to unionize since May and are working with the United Electrical Workers union to that end.

I rarely side with the university on anything and am often highly critical of their actions, including their fervent endorsement of Black Lives Matter and their failure to provide transparency with regard to how student fees are utilized. However, IU is unequivocally and undoubtedly correct in their refusal to capitulate to any of the graduate workers’ demands.

A chief concern of the coalition is, of course, pay. Grad students allege that their compensation falls below IU’s estimated “costs of attendance” and cost of living in Bloomington. However, since when is it a school’s responsibility to pay their students the cost of attendance? A university’s sole concern should be to provide their students with the highest quality education attainable. If students do provide services for the university, then they should be paid a competitive wage, which, for students, isn’t extremely high.

Graduate workers are also not full time employees, often working around 15 or 20 hours a week. Furthermore, IU covers the tuition of many grad workers and pays for their healthcare. The university additionally notes that grad workers’ stipends are not meant to cover all living and attendance costs and encourages students to seek other sources of funding including loans and off-campus employment.

Grad workers’ argument that compensation should be tied to how much it costs to attend IU or live in Monroe County has no logical foundation. Their pay is simply a stipend for the work they do on campus and is in no way reflective of what their expenses may be or how much it costs them to enroll at IU.

The coalition is also demanding that the university no longer charge them mandatory student fees. Again, the correlation between being employed by the university and paying student fees is unclear. Graduate workers enjoy the amenities of and utilize the resources of the university to the same extent as any other student. There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason or rational for their exemption from student fees.

The cost of the coalition’s demands is another critical issue. Public universities such as IU operate as non profits, meaning they don’t have an abundance of cash on hand to raise the wages of their employees. If graduate workers were to be paid more, some revenue source for the university would have to increase, likely student fees and tuition. Additionally, if grad workers were no longer required to pay mandatory fees, then the lost revenue would have to be recouped, which again, would likely occur through increases in the fees of other students.

It seems rather unfair that undergraduate and non working graduate students are essentially being asked to accept tuition and fee hikes so that grad workers can get more generous stipends.