Unionization of Teaching Assistants

Abstract

In her News Focus article “UC teaching assistants win first union contract” (26 May, p. [1311][1]), Constance Holden quotes an anonymous University of California (UC) scientist as saying, “The [teaching assistant]-faculty relationship has been good; there wasn't much of anything that really needed to be fixed.” This is true overall. The teaching assistant (TA)-faculty relationship was never the catalyst for formation of the union nor for recent contract negotiations. Most TAs at UC Berkeley, certainly in my fields, have excellent working relationships with faculty. Steven Olswang, vice provost of the University of Washington, is mistaken to suggest as he did in the article that union membership undermines the collegial relationship. The concern on my campus is undergraduate class size, which is not controlled by faculty, most of whom would rather we have manageable workloads in order to do the best job we can as TAs. The union contract agreement is with the university administration; it provides controls and arbitration means to address matters that do not involve academic relationships with faculty, but rather such employee protections as the article reports (for example, health, safety, and discrimination issues). In my mind, we are students first, but this does not warrant unfair labor practices. Ideally, this contract will now require the university administration and the TA body to behave professionally rather than arbitrarily. TAs will have an avenue of professional redress for legitimate workplace grievances, and we no longer have to experience the (admittedly sometimes random) strike mobilizations that disrupt undergraduate learning as well as graduate student teaching. There is no reason the union contract will adversely affect the TA-faculty relationship. Perhaps this more level playing field can contribute to the development of the professional, collegial relationships that my classmates and I expect of university careers. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.288.5470.1311a