Consequently, I think Professor Velleman is wrong to count it as income, but he’s absolutely correct that having a graduate program incurs costs that NYU has to bear. Claims that no-one would pay for a liberal arts Ph.D. (correct claims, I think) are really neither here nor there; if NYU decided that they wanted to save money, they could easily cease admitting graduate students and pay adjuncts to assist at $3000 a pop.

That said, I’m not really sure what the monetary arguments are supposed to solve. It seems absurd to consider a Ph.D. student, especially at a top place like NYU, as in the same boat as a janitor, even if they make about the same. This isn’t because the Ph.D. student has more moral worth or any such strawman, but because it’s, we hope, a temporary situation.

But I’m not sure why anyone’s bothering to make the argument that they are similar. Who cares? If Ph.D. students cannot organize, does that say anything about the janitors’ rights to do so?

If there are good reasons for graduate students to unionize, they’re probably a) independent of whatever the janitors are doing and b) independent, believe it or not, of the amount of money made. It’s there to balance bargaining power, and that case can be made even if working conditions are relatively tolerable.

Final comment/question: Is there a reason that NYU could not permit a graduate student union and limit its input to non-academic issues? As Tad Brennan pointed out over at Leiter’s, nurses can unionize, and that’s never meant that the union controls how much medication patients receive.

On the other hand, is tuition waiver, however real, a form of income? Congress, in its transient wisdom, decided so one year—pushing TAs and RAs into taxable brackets of the income tax. College presidents en masse (and succesfully) testified that tuition waivers do not constuitute a form of income, so we may trust their authority on that matter.

By the way, one year my TA had an operation and I was amazed how lousy his insurance was (because he was operated but not hospitalized, the insurance imposed a very low cap on reimbursement so he owed the hospital several thousand dollars, moreover, there was nothing optional about the operation: one evening he was suddenly writhing in pain, a friend drove him to the emergency room and there doctors decided to operate) Maria, are you sure that faculty and staff have as bad insurance as you do?

If the NYU union has been spending too much of its energy on “its own survival,” surely this is in large part because the administration has refused to continue recognizing it! If anyone is to blame for this particular predicament, it is those who have tried to threaten the union’s continued survival – and not the union itself!

I’m actually rather heartened by what you write. Velleman seemed to be trying to stake out a middle ground which doesn’t exist. I’m glad that you acknowledge that you can’t be on both sides of the picket line. I’m also glad, incidentially, to hear that you aren’t scabbing.

As for the question of the union being interested in its own survival, I confess I think that a perfectly legitimate aim. Even when not in a contract fight, unions serve a valuable purpose for workers, defending the rights enshrined in the contract, making sure that grievances are heard properly, and mobilizing members for their own sakes and for solidarity with others. I want a union not just because I want a written contract that I or my democratic organization have negotiated, but because I want a structure in which my coworkers stand up for each other on an everyday basis.

You’re either with the union, or you thug for J.H. Blair.

I’m not American, so I don’t know who J.H. Blair is, but I take it he’s someone I don’t want to be.

In my actions, I understand that there is no middle ground now the strike is in force – I either cross the picket line or I don’t. However, I am currently a fellow, and have been for the past year, so I’m not in the union. Also, as some of the strikers, I’ve attended my own classes, which don’t have graduate assistants. So, I’ve managed to avoid having to decide whether to stand for or against the union. It would have been a hard choice, and I won’t hypothesize about what I would have done (it would be easy but vacous to say I would’ve gone on strike).

Having said that, I wish the union’s complaints were about something more than its own survival and a misleading accusation of benefit reduction. The insincere way they have treated the reduction in health coverage really makes me mistrustful of its good will in the future.

More to the point, if Ph.D. programs decided to charge this fictional tuition, far fewer people would go into Ph.D. programs. $50K-$150K, frequently on top of undergraduate loans, is just too much, considering the job market. It’s like medical school, if most of the graduates couldn’t get careers as doctors.

“But the point is not so easily dismissed. The NYU faculty does devote time and resources to teaching the Ph.D curriculum. There are hard costs involved.”

Yes, but what would happen if I waved my ‘ceteris paribus’ wand, and made the administration actually act like they speak, and displace TA’s for adjuncts? The majority of Ph.D. students simply wouldn’t be there; I imagine most departments would simply not have a Ph.D. program. The second-tier universities would have much smaller Ph.D. programs, in most (but far from all) departments. The top-tier would probably continue, and they’d still need to subsidize their Ph.D. students – e.g., a liberal arts Ph.D. from Harvard is certainly elite, but tuition costs are well over $50K (for the program, as far as I could tell from their website). Throw in $10K/year living expenses, and it’ll be around $100K. That hurts.

“But without tuition remission, the graduate program would dissolve. And those faculty and departmental resources that are devoted to instructing graduate students could be redeployed. How? I look forward to seeing how NYU responds.”

My guess is that professors in program which no longer teach Ph.D. students would teach more undergraduate courses, especially the ‘service’ courses for non-majors, which bring in the largest chunk of most departments’ budgets.

Since, from my experience, most professors prefer to teach graduate courses, and Ph.D. courses over master’s courses, this would be unpleasant for most professors.

I think others have raised the obvious question about this point—whether this kind of learning is different from on-the-job training in any other trade. But here’s another question, asked in complete sincerity: is there anything at NYU apart from tuition reimbursement and in the way of apprentice training that would distinguish TAs as students from adjunts as temporary labor? My impression is that in most graduate programs at most prestigious schools the idea that TAs are apprentices trained as teachers is a fiction.

Then, too, given the employment market in most fields in the social sciences and humanities, the value of training in the field is not at all damn valuable.

But even if it were the case that teaching was only done to the extent it was necessary for training and profesionalization, I wouldn’t agree. There’s a major divide between your thinking and mine, and it probably can’t be solved by argument. To me, being recognized as a worker—with a set of rights and responsibilities that go along with that—adds dignity to sweeping floors to teaching Hegel. The notion that the latter is too noble, or good, or special, or whatever to be considered “a job” doesn’t resonate with me because I don’t think about jobs—any socially neutral to beneficial jobs—that way.

Because they are supposed to be learning how to be professors; so teaching is a part of their education, for which, taken as a whole, they pay the university (in theory, anyway) and not the other way around.

As I and others have mentioned, this is very disconnected from reality. In most disciplines, in most good programs, actually paying for tuition—except maybe for a term or two—isn’t a serious option. Tuition bills and waivers have become a quaint custom in most serious PhD programs, and for good reason.

But the point is not so easily dismissed. The NYU faculty does devote time and resources to teaching the Ph.D curriculum. There are hard costs involved.

But without tuition remission, the graduate program would dissolve. And those faculty and departmental resources that are devoted to instructing graduate students could be redeployed. How? I look forward to seeing how NYU responds.

Strikes suck. They’re not fun for anyone. They’re least fun for the strikers, who face reprisals from the employer (as this case amply demonstrates), who don’t get paid, and who have to spend much of the day outside in the snow picketing. They also suck for customers (in this case undergrads) who find their lives disrupted. And hopefully they suck for management.

Contrary to management propaganda, unions don’t like strikes. They’re expensive for the union, it’s bad for members, and if you lose even after a strike you’re really screwed. Thus they’re nearly always the last resort, taken when nothing else works. Again, that’s clearly the case here, where management summarily and unilaterally stopped negotiating in August. GSOC could chose to fold their hands, give up, and go back to work with no protections, or they could strike. Striking was the only way to keep their union.

Sometimes strikes happen. And when they do, people have to chose which side they’re on. If you’re a worker, you either walk the line or you scab. If you’re a consumer, you either cross the line or you respect it. And if you’re anyone else, you either support the strike you you aren’t a friend of labor. You’re either with the union, or you thug for J.H. Blair.

That’s how solidarity works, folks. Once the strike starts, you don’t get to pick and chose what demands you support and which you don’t. You pick a side. And if you’re a friend of labor, if you’re part of the labor movement, there’s only one honorable side to be on.

As a thought experiment, think about this non-academic labor scenario. The employees at the restaurant are only paid for a half hour after closing time, and the restaurant isn’t getting properly cleaned (and the employees don’t seem to care!). Solution: remove that pesky law that prevents management from locking them in off the clock! Imagining that teaching isn’t work and TAs aren’t employees opens the door to reactionary positions people wouldn’t otherwise dream of taking.

ADM, all your arguments may be fine and good, but don’t you think that ought to a consideration for the students when deciding whether or not to unionize? At some point, presumably, such arguments were considered and rejected by the students, at which point they become irrelevent. It’s one thing for students to consider such arguments and use them to reject a union, it’s another entirely for the Administration to harp on them after the students have already rejected them.