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I was a graduate student at Columbia University when the United Auto Workers tried to unionize my classmates. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Our needs as students were much different from autoworkers, not to mention the dues and extra taxes we would owe.
There were many debates over the merits of joining, usually the economists against everyone else. Graduate students in other departments believed a union would get us better pay and benefits based on a romantic idea of solidarity with other workers. In the end they prevailed and the economists lost. Sure, graduate students got better pay but now the possibility of a strike at Columbia may threaten the partnership or even the future of private sector unions.
Union membership in the private sector has been on a decades-long slide as the economy changed and offered fewer manufacturing jobs in right-to-work states. Graduate students, a population that believes it’s underpaid and have a natural sympathy to labor, seemed to be the answer to the union’s problems. Starting in the 2000s, graduate students at elite universities unionized with UAW and other trade unions. But in the last few decades, as universities have become more overtly political, these members expect unions to deliver more than higher pay and better working conditions.
Columbia graduate students this month voted to authorize a strike, their second in five years. Their list of demands naturally include things related to pay and working conditions. They are seeking $76,000 a year in pay, about twice the stipend I got as a graduate student (adjusting for inflation) and a more than 50% increase from the current level.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.