The graduate workers in my program sent out a letter of demands to all faculty, students & program administration last October. In the letter, we demand a living wage, among other equity items.
We did not get an official response from program leadership about the letter, and so far, none of our demands have been met. I have heard many reasons why we don’t deserve a living wage, but one has been repeated.
As graduate researchers, they say, we don’t deserve to be paid fairly because we are not workers. We are graduate students. Our PIs (“principal investigators,” faculty who are in charge of research labs) are not bosses but teachers, or mentors, even friends. We are deemed lucky to be paid to pursue our degrees, as other paths of post-secondary education are something people pay (and usually go into staggering amounts of debt) for.1
But when graduate research is not considered work, workplace rights to bargain over fair pay and conditions are obscured. Today, in academic science, unfair pay and poor conditions are rampant while access remains restricted to privileged few. In order to secure fair pay, great working conditions, and open access, we must assert that graduate research is a full-time job.
Before setting foot in our labs, we are told that our selection is an admissions, not a hiring, process. To gain entry into graduate school, enterprising scientists must have an outstanding academic and professional record. At least a year of research experience is required, plus a minimum GPA and stellar letters of recommendation. It is not easy to get in.
Each graduate researcher, therefore, is carefully selected, often from the entire world, to be highly technically trained. Of course, there are many barriers to getting this experience; you must attend an undergraduate institution with access to research opportunities, spend summers in a lab, or work as research staff (“tech”) for 1-2 years, all competitive positions (we just interviewed 6 undergrads for my lab and took one).
Once we get in, we read over our graduate researcher appointment letter, and the lines blur between student and worker. My contracts states I am a 20 hours/week employee (50% appointment), though I am expected to work 40 hours/week (or more). I do not get employer-matched retirement benefits because I am “part-time.” But we call ourselves as graduate students. Even if I am not taking classes, my PI is charged my tuition, around $12,000/year. In-state, undergraduate tuition at my institution is $10,720/year.
In my program, we are considered students when we are taking classes, meeting program requirements like committee meetings, giving presentations, and serving on committees. One semester of TAing is required, without pay; this is billed as a “professional development opportunity.”
However, graduate researchers like myself perform experiments, analyze data, teach, mentor, write papers and grants. Legally, in the eyes of the United States government, we are employees. I file a W-2 every year.
Though it is not obvious that research labor is like that of profit-driven production. But, quite simply, research labor is work, and grad students are workers, because we dependent on wages to survive and are denied the profits of our production. Calvin Wu, as part of a wonderful collection of essays Organize the Lab, writes:
“While observations, data, papers are not for sale, their production pushes money around, enriches institutions, maintains social reproduction, and creates new spheres for investment”
The National Labor Relations Act guarantees workers’ rights to join or form unions and to engage in concerted activity (petitions, strikes) in order to improve working conditions. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the governing body of the NLRA and protects against illegal retaliation.
However, graduate workers have historically been denied these essential rights. In 2004, the NLRB rejected extending collective bargaining rights to graduate student assistants at private universities. Why? Recent research by Rogers et al. (2013) explains:
“The NLRB argued that graduate student assistants were primarily students and thus not statutory employees, the student–university relationship was not analogous to the traditional employee–employer relationship,
and extending collective bargaining rights to graduate student assistants would threaten the quality of student–teacher relationships and ‘infringe upon traditional academic freedoms.’”
Rogers goes on to show that unionization has either no impact or a weak positive impact on “academic freedom” and faculty-student relationships. In 2016, the NLRB reversed its 2004 decision and ruled that graduate researchers at private universities are protected by the NLRA.
Graduate researchers paid by national fellowships perform the same job duties and research as other graduate workers. However, the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowships Program (the Holy Grail of graduate fellowships. Or is that the NIH’s F31? sound off in the comments) defines its recipients as students. Institutions pounce on this distinction to restrict collective bargaining access. Boston University is attempting to exclude STEM workers on NIH training grants from joining its recently-established graduate union, I have been told the same rule applies to my graduate union, though this is not true.
Culturally, most STEM labs don't want to be seen as a "workplace" but more a place of learning, discovery, and selfless commitment to a greater good. They don’t want to be a place where people labor, but a place where people pursue a calling. We were looking for inspiration for my lab's website revamp, and all thought that the website of a big lab on campus felt too "corporate.”
To shed light on the distinction between graduate student and full-time worker, we can examine the role of the academic staff member: a clear “job.” To keep a biology lab running, there are a multitude of tasks which are required, such as ordering supplies, maintaining equipment, keeping everything up to code, training personnel, and, the important but often overlooked knowledge of the history of the lab, such as where things are and what protocols to use. Many labs have one or two full-time staff with a “lab manager” title, others distribute the essential duties among graduate students.
In addition to lab manager roles, labs at my institution will often employ full-time, benefits-eligible research staff. Research staff perform the same job duties as graduate workers. They conduct research.
A threat has been made to me by PIs that they would start hiring entry-level research staff to replace graduate labor if we go on demanding higher pay.2 Because of the cost of tuition and benefits, I'm not sure if research staff are a more expensive hire than a graduate student worker, and there are further complications such as the relatively fixed term of graduate students (5 years) vs. the unfixed term (1-2 years? forever??) of research staff.
But I do know that staff researchers are not considered "students" in the same way grads are, and therefore are not as easily persuaded to take on additional hours (staff often qualify for overtime pay) and stress in the name of learning and degree completion.
There is less “prestige,” but research staff often have workplace benefits grads do not have, such as overtime, paid time off, family leave, yearly pay raises, the ability to negotiate their wages with their boss, retirement benefits, and, in some cases, union contracts.
It is worth examining the distinctions between grad student and staff worker, whether these are shrouded in elitism, whether the pursuit of a degree is truly distinct from scientific labor, or, if the “student” label is manipulatively employed. The first 20 hours we grads work are compensated, for the rest, I suppose, we are learning.
I was a full-time research staff member at Stanford for two years. I hardly thought about my workplace after 5, I wasn’t allowed to work more than 40 hr/week, and didn’t feel pressure to finish a project or experiment not to mention balance classes, teaching, or committee meetings. I quite enjoyed that time of my life, being able to do science, learn new techniques, hang out with smart and funny people; I made money that I could save, or spend on trips to visit my boyfriend. I was in a union, SEIU Local 2007 (purple up!).
At Stanford, I learned the same as I do now, I learned so much: how to code, how to design an experiment, how to speak; I could attend seminars without the worry that I would have to give one. I did notice, however, I was not perceived as on the same level as the graduate students, by both my boss and my fellow lab mates, and the awareness of this hierarchy, the idea I will not truly achieve or be someone unless I went for a PhD, is what nudged me to begin one.
Now, I hunch over my computer in a stained sweatshirt going back and forth about whether to go back to work at Cyclebar and how it would impact my mental health if I did.
Perhaps graduate students are students due to our enrollment in classes. Classes. The university’s product. A graduate worker’s nemesis. “Ah it is so good to be done with classes!” We say after our prelims, as we feel we have transitioned from part-time student to full-time worker (though we do not see this in our paychecks).
In my program, we are to take 20 credit hours over the first two years, while working. In my experience, there wasn’t anything particularly special about graduate courses; all but one of my classes were half or mostly undergraduates. We also have to register for 3 credits of “research independent study” each semester after we are done with the required coursework. We must pay mandatory "student" fees to continue to work our job.3
PIs will openly advise their students to just get a B in their courses (the minimum GPA to remain in the program is a 3.0) so they can devote as much time as possible to research. I skipped many of my courses to catch up on my research or to fit in an extra experiment. This is far from uncommon; and quite interesting given the academic commitment required for entry into a PhD program. If we are students, we are mediocre ones, and only for two out of the five (or six or seven) years.
Yes, I have witnessed people skip all kinds of courses, seminars, committees, engagements, lunches, and presentations, optional and non-optional, in order to work. Genuinely, we love our work. We want to work. We need to; just like workers everywhere, our work is what keeps us alive.
A job is something you do to sustain yourself; academic research is something you do to … feed your passion? Intellectual spirit? Perhaps, even, if you’re lucky, to save the world! To assert PhD research as simply “work” is to take away its sparkle. But, we must assert our workplace rights as graduate employees in order to secure livable working conditions.
We must organize for equity and fair pay through collective bargaining in a time of academic job precarity, inflation, and housing crisis. There’s a reason institutions are spending millions in attempt to restrict union access for graduate researchers: collective bargaining rights will disrupt their ability to exploit us. Jane McAlevey calls unions “the most effective tool ordinary people have to challenge the powerful elite in their workplaces.” Institutions will not respond to the request of an individual graduate worker, but they will respond to a collective majority.
When we declare ourselves workers, when we join together, we have power.
Follow me on BeReal, where I am, often, working.
Why is higher ed so outrageously expensive? Consider the racist origins of tuition.
Is this an NLRA violation? lmk
Mine would be called: Spelling Errors at the Command Line 101.
Totally agree that grad school is effectively a job in of itself, really any science related grad work (public health, biology, engineering, etc.).