Groundhog Day (or) Luxuries vs. Rights

I know, wrong holiday. But I tell you listening to arguments about unions from the opposition makes me feel like Bill Murray.  It's the same story day after day--the same arguments, time after time.  The latest example comes in The Examiner's article on the efforts by Maryland graduate employees to organize and help pass enabling legislation that was recently introduced.

First you got the boss weighing in with the usual they aren't employees line:

University officials oppose the legislation, arguing that graduate teaching assistants are students, not employees.

“It’s an educational relationship with the university, not an economic relationship,” said Patrick J. Hogan, lobbyist for the University System of Maryland.

Right. So when the university has a graduate student cover a class, she isn't being paid for a service--i.e., an economic relationship--because she is "learning."  But if someone else, say a faculty member, covers the same class, he is being paid for a service--i.e., an economic relationship--and I guess if he learns something along the way, that is a bonus.  This is known in the technical argumentation world as the "having your cake and eating it too" maneuver.

If a graduate student doesn't cover a class, someone else will and every alternative is someone called "an employee"!  You cannot deny someone employee status becasue they are learning something.  People learn things while they work all the time and they become better at what they are doing--often that is a sign of a good employment situation.  But we are still providing a service and being remunerated for it because it is an employment situation. 

More to the point, as Laura Moore, president of the Graduate Student Government at the University of Maryland and Organizing Committee member of the Maryland Teachers and Researchers responds:

“If we stop working, we stop getting paid. That’s an employer-employee relationship.”

Perhaps that recognition is why there are over 40,000 graduate employees in this country in over a dozen states that have organized unions and been recognized.

More after the flip.

Of course, you expect that from management--why would they ever want a group of underpaid workers to get organized and demand decent working conditions (so much for the enlightened higher education establishment).  The more pernicious argument in this article comes from the company union Graduate Student Association who doesn't want to jeopardize their special relationship with administration.

“We have a really good relationship with our administration, and if we start unionizing, that would create antagonistic negotiations,” said Evan Perlman, a Ph.D. public policy student and vice president of external affairs for UMBC’s Graduate Student Association.

“Now, we have the luxury of being able to walk into the president’s or provost’s or dean’s office with concerns.”

I suspect that a very few people have the luxury Evan speaks of, but the key is that it is a luxury rather than a right and rights are what those fighting for a union want.  The administration, as it now stands, can decide if and when it wants to speak with graduate employees and they are certainly under no obligation to negotiate wages and working conditions.  Evan and his folks might see that as a relationship worth protecting, but I call it an unequal and unfair playing field in which the employer has all the power. 

Unions are the only mechanism by which employees can level that field and ensure it stays level through negotiating and enforcing a legally binding contract--a contract that protects all employees in the union, not just the special few who have a relationship with the provost.  So sorry to sound strident, but if it is a choice between rights and luxuries, I'll take rights every time.

Now back to my hole to prepare for another day.