Members of the Teaching Assistants’ Association gripped posters and picket signs on top of a blustery Bascom Hill Wednesday, chanting “We are the TAA, we deserve fair grad pay.”
The first graduate student employee union in the nation, TAA formed in 1966 due to a lack of representation in educational policy.
UW-Madison administration announced a new policy Tuesday that will adjust the rate of pay to set a stipend amount for research assistants.
Wednesday’s rally furthered a nearly 50-year-old ideology of TA representation as about 100 graduate students congregated around TAA Co-President Cynthia Burnson who declared the union’s four main points of the rally.
Burnson detailed that the UW-Madison administration should give all graduate workers a raise, redo the proposal to include graduate students’ viewpoints, provide them “seats at the tables” in the decision-making process and respect graduate students as workers.
“We individually are the path of least resistance and that’s why the university thinks they can ram this thing through,” Burnson said. “Together we are the path of most resistance.”
UW-Madison Graduate School Dean William Karpus started his position on campus Aug. 1, after the completion of the new policy. He emphasized that graduate assistants will not lose jobs, have increased work loads or have their stipends reduced due to the policy.
Karpus acknowledged the committee that created the policy changes included UW-Madison faculty, deans and associate deans of schools and colleges on campus, members of the University Committee and the secretary of the Academic Staff, but not graduate students.
Graduate student in electrical and computer engineering Adria Brooks said she worries about the fact that graduate assistants earn different wages depending on the department they work in.
Karpus said each department has the autonomy to increase stipends, granted they use funds stemming from their own budget, and not the university as a whole. He added that the change in the rate of pay will be used to remain competitive with other peer research schools, such as the University of California, Berkeley.
While TAA members have said they want to be recognized as employees first, Karpus said it is important for graduate students to focus on their education as well. He said in the future he hopes to form a council or group that allows the administration and graduate students to work together.
“I don’t know if it’s going to fix how this policy was generated, but going forward I think it’s important that whenever there are considerations of issues that affect graduate students, that we have that input,” Karpus said.
