In a move that a graduate workers’ union called “a significant victory,” UW-Madison administrators agreed to grant a 3.5 percent raise to many graduate employees Wednesday.
Standard teaching assistants and project assistants (PAs) earned the raise after several meetings with administration officials, according to a Teaching Assistants’ Association Facebook post.
“This is a welcome increase over the 2% raises we have won in previous years. Of course, there is more to fight for,” the post said.
Not all graduate employees stand to benefit from the pay increase. According to the post, salary rates for “Senior TAs, SA / Lecturers, and Research Assistants” will not change next year.
UW-Madison title guidelines state that standard TAs are graduate students not yet at dissertator status, and PAs are graduate students enrolled in a UW system institution employed to assist with research, training and other academic projects.
While the TAA heralded the pay raise as a “testament to the value of unions”, they said there is still more to gain. Not only did some graduate employees not get a raise, but standard TAs and PAs’ salary are still quite low, the organization said.
“Even with this raise, graduate employee salary rates will still be below a living wage,” the post said.
