Graduate student employees deserve recognition
By Joseph Nevins
An open letter to Chancellor Young:
Despite the myriad of problems facing UCLA, the school year
arrives full of opportunity and hope. Restructuring, budget cuts,
downsizing and staff lay-offs have created an atmosphere of
disillusionment on the UCLA campus.
By democratizing the relationship between UCLA employees and the
administration, however, Chancellor Young could help improve the
work environment and strengthen the academic mission of the
university.
In the immediate sense, opportunity presents itself in the
Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE), the collective
bargaining unit of student academic employees such as teaching
assistants, research assistants, tutors, readers and acting
instructors. SAGE is the culmination of extensive organizing by
student academic employees to establish a democratic organization
for effectively representing their employment concerns.
It is our hope that Chancellor Young will recognize SAGE at the
earliest possible moment. Recognizing SAGE will enhance
undergraduate education, improve the work environment of student
academic employees and alleviate a source of campus tension.
All of this can be achieved without the expenditure of a single
scarce dollar.
Fulfillment of the university’s twin missions of education and
research is heavily dependent upon student academic employees. We
teach or grade work of every undergraduate at UCLA. We assist many
professors in their research. We are indispensable.
The indispensability of TAs, RAs, tutors, readers and acting
instructors is not reflected in the terms of our employment,
however. Rather than recognizing us as employees, the university
continues to argue that we are "apprentices" learning a trade.
Such a characterization is not only incorrect but it is also
disrespectful. It results in a work environment that undermines the
university’s academic mission. Fortunately, the remedy is simple.
Recognizing SAGE will restore the assurance and respect which are
necessary for excellence in the classroom and in the
laboratory.
Many well-regarded universities have already taken this step.
Yale, Rutgers, the entire State University of New York system,
Wisconsin and the University of Massachusetts have all entered into
collective bargaining agreements with their graduate student
employees.
SAGE is a democratic organization. The State of California’s
Public Employee Relations Board confirmed this last May; they found
that SAGE’s 3,300 members represent a majority of graduate student
employees at UCLA. SAGE achieved this by a year-long membership
drive that touched every single department on campus.
The alternative to respecting such a democratic expression is,
of course, to fight SAGE in the state bureaucracy and in the
courts. We believe that this would be futile and counterproductive,
a wasteful expenditure of scant resources resulting in further
campus instability. It upholds no principle of education, and it
flouts principles of equality and justice. Most importantly, it
detracts from the university’s mission to educate California’s best
and brightest and to seek new knowledge.
In a recent letter to Chancellor Young, SAGE requested a meeting
with the chancellor. The chancellor’s answer was one of refusal on
the grounds that "the issue of whether certain categories of
graduate students are employees of the university for purposes of
collective bargaining is under litigation."
Our response, submitted Oct. 11, reminded the chancellor that,
regardless of the litigation, the California Higher Education
Employment Relations Act provides him with the legal right of
voluntarily granting recognition to SAGE. We have called upon
Chancellor Young to meet with SAGE by October 21, 1994 to discuss
new and flexible ideas about recognition.
By exercising his administrative prerogative to recognize SAGE,
Chancellor Young could greatly improve the learning and research
environment on the UCLA campus. UCLA works because we do. Failure
by Chancellor Young to recognize and respect this fact will only
serve to hurt the academic mission of the university.
Nevins is a teaching assistant in the department of geography
and a member of the SAGE Organizing Committee.