Bigger paycheck? UI grad student workers need a reality check

In my 20-plus years in the American workforce, I’ve had a fair number of jobs in a variety of industries, both public and private. I’ve worked entry-level positions and supervisory roles. Most of my previous jobs ended very amicably.

I pondered if any of those previous employers would have let me get away with crashing a meeting of the organization’s top executives and demanding an enormous pay raise without disciplining or even firing me. The short answer: None of them would. Apparently, that kind of conduct doesn’t bode well for many.

Yet that’s exactly what happened last Wednesday, when student protesters descended on a meeting of the state Board of Regents held on the University of Iowa campus. The stir they created was in support of efforts of the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, known as COGS, which is demanding a gigantic raise in pay for its workers.

Union represents grad students

COGS is the labor union that represents UI graduate student workers who are employed by the school part-time, often as teaching assistants and researchers. Yes, even university students get a union, because apparently nobody embodies the experience of an oppressed and exploited worker better than mostly 20-something college graduates earning advanced degrees.

Officially, COGS is the Local 896 affiliate of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Most university grad students are none of the above, but with membership waning as labor unions have lost their appeal to many in their original constituencies over the last several decades, it’s not uncommon for unions to look to replace those losses with workers from other occupations. Call it “expanding into a new market,” to borrow a term from those evil corporate capitalists.

“We welcome any group of workers who want to join a militant, democratic union,” states the UE on their website. Militant. OK, then.

Steep demands already exceed hourly ‘living wage’

COGS’ demands included a pay raise of a whopping 25 percent, which they justify by claiming that the average yearly salary of student worker amounts to 25 percent less than what the living wage calculator developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology states is necessary for a single adult to live in Johnson County. The MIT calculator defines a living wage in Johnson County as $16.90 for a single adult with no children, claiming that minimum yearly expenses for that person would be $35,145.

The union’s current contract with the Board of Regents took effect on July 1 of this year. Its minimum salary for graduate student workers is $21,329 for part-time (or “half-time”) work for the academic year. On its website, COGS implies that part-time means 20 hours per week.

For the fiscal year, which presumably includes work during the summer, the minimum salary is $26,059. Using the standard figure of 2,080 hours per year for full-time work and 1,040 for part-time, 20-hour/week work, that salary equates to $25.05 per hour. For the nine-month appointment paying $21,329, UI officials cited an hourly wage of $31.74.

I can think of more than a few jobs that don’t pay anywhere near that wage. So if a grad student wants to complain about their pay during their first few years post-undergrad, let’s just say some might not be inclined to sympathize.

It’s true that not everybody is in a position to live on $21,000 a year working part-time hours while they pursue their advanced degree. (Although some can and do.) Like every other functioning adult on the planet, it is up to each graduate student to know their options, consider their circumstances and all of the factors that determine them, and choose a career path (and subsequently, employment) that fits with those circumstances. Welcome to the real world. This is how we roll.

Foolish demands include instant satisfaction

But apparently, real-world circumstances don’t exactly register to members of COGS. Led by COGS UE Local 896 President Hannah Zadeh and Political Action Committee Chair Nicole Yeager, both Ph.D students who chanted “WHAT DO WE WANT?” demonstrators demanded “A REAL RAISE!”

When did they expect that raise? “NOW!” they crowed. And if the board didn’t pause their meeting to instantly acquiesce to their shouted demands? “SHUT IT DOWN!” Which is exactly what the board did.

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I’m not going to say that this is the stupidest plot I’ve ever seen devised by progressives on college campuses, but that’s mainly because I know better than to use superlatives when assessing the activities of zealous ideologues. There’s always a chance that they’ll pull something even stupider later on, and we’re barely a month into the academic year.

But make no mistake, this move by the COGS is indeed a stupid one — incredibly stupid, at that. For one thing, unless the protest was specifically authorized by the university, the disruption of the Regents’ meeting was likely a violation of the UI Code of Student Life, which prohibits unauthorized demonstrations “within the interior of any property owned, leased or controlled by the University.” Granted, I wouldn’t put it past the university to take a timid approach to enforcing that code.

Wages one of multiple benefits

The demand for higher wages also completely ignores the full package to which the grad students’ part-time employment correlates. Aside from health benefits, which unlike with most part-time jobs are available to any grad student working as few as 10 hours per week, that package also includes an advanced education at a world-class institution. The university states that it covers “all or most” of many grad students’ tuition, which can amount to up to $11,256 a year. If the paychecks seem a little light, perhaps that fancy graduate degree funded in part or in whole by that same institution should serve as recompense.

Trust the process, or trample on it?

The stupidest part of the whole protest is that by engaging in it, members of the COGS UE Local 896 flouted the same process they embrace by their very existence: the right to bargain as a collective which, even after reforms that the liberal left still screams about to this day, guarantees a union’s right to negotiate for base wages — the core focus of the protesters’ demands.

Collective bargaining allows both sides to reach a consensus on wages. That consensus was already reached between the Board of Regents and the COGS UE Local 896 — quite recently, at that. It’s detailed in the formal collective bargaining agreement that Zadeh herself signed not six months before she and a group of demonstrators went barreling into a public meeting of a government body to raise hell. If Zadeh has any questions about what she and her unit agreed to, she can find the agreement she signed on her own union’s website.

The very core of collective bargaining requires that both sides come to the bargaining table in good faith. That’s not just a procedural obligation — it’s a legal one, which makes me question if Zadeh and her committee have even glanced at Iowa collective bargaining law. (Hint: It’s in Chapter 20.)

Show me a reasoned, objective thinker who believes that shutting down a public meeting to demand extrajudicial amendments to an established contract is an example of bargaining in good faith. In return, I’ll show you the mermaid that lives in my bathtub.

Better yet, show me an arbitrator who defines those tactics as bargaining in good faith. I won’t hold my breath until you find one.

On the other hand, show me a union that does get a contract they’re pleased with. In return, I’ll possibly point to a poised negotiator who knows what can be realistically achieved, not zealous 20-somethings who exist in an ideological bubble.

The entire point of a union is to address the problems of a body of workers by organizing to advocate for solutions. COGS UE Local 896 failed at that with their stunt. The graduate student protesters don’t deserve a bigger paycheck. What they need is a reality check.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com