Caused huge attrition of the 1st and 2nd year stem students (i.e. quit with a masters). The union was dominated by humanities students, and they fought for what they wanted, not what the overall membership wanted. Very few STEM folks had any interest in being part of the union, but because so many voted with their feet, it was hopeless to set up a decertifiying petition.
TBH the way you explain it sounds to me like 1st and 2nd year stem students were disengaged and uninterested in solidarity with their academic peers who have less options than them. I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!
> I'm not even particularly fond of the humanities I just don't understand why you wouldn't fight for the allowance for your peers to start families, god damn!
What the GP said was that instead of taking a cash option that would benefit all members, they chose benefits that only benefitted parents. It's reasonable to be angry that an alternative that would benefit all members wasn't chosen.
> TAA activists in the Fall of 2008 also turned their eyes again toward attaining Domestic Partner Benefits for TAA members and UW employees. The TAA pushed on the issue, joining the LGBT Campus Center to table on Library Mall during their Coming Out Week, and creating a memorable Bascom Hill display. The TAA then networked into the University’s Domestic Partner Benefit Task Force, and arranged meetings with Governor Doyle’s Office and UW Chancellor Biddy Martin, while activists also spoke with nearly a thousand TAA members about the importance of winning Domestic Partner Benefits. The State Legislature, which in years past had meticulously denied state employees Domestic Partner Benefits, was poised for a sea change in the November elections. The TAA’s Political Education Committee launched an AFT COPE award-winning program, through a vibrant and ambitious series of phone banks and Labor Walks throughout south-central Wisconsin. Though Domestic Partner Benefits were not ultimately won in the 2007-2009 contract, the TAA was responsible in ensuring that the issue would be considered in the 2009-2011 budget.
> As of Sept. 23, 2017, the State of Wisconsin no longer allows the establishment of new domestic partnerships under Chapter 40 of the Wisconsin statutes.
> Carefully review this document if you are in a Chapter 40 domestic partnership established before September 23, 2017 because it contains important information about the benefit changes for established domestic partnerships.
> If you are currently in a domestic partnership that was established under Chapter 40 between Jan. 1, 2010 and Sept. 22, 2017, your domestic partnership remains in force for the Wisconsin Retirement System retirement benefit administered by the Department of Employee Trust Funds. Your domestic partner is also still eligible to be the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, either through retention of your validly established domestic partnership, or through the submission of a Beneficiary Designation (ET-2320 or ET-2321) form.
So the humanities folks' priority is sculpting a union program to their specific needs. That also doesn't sound very "fight for the allowance of your peers". That's democracy though. Doesn't mean the right choice is made but that the voters pull the strings.
I think it is objectively the right choice to enable people to build families if they're going to be in a program until their late 20s! This sounds ridiculous to me on its face-- why the hell wouldn't you support your maximally educated populace (getting doctorates) to have families? The 1st and 2nd year STEM kids (literally kids-- you can enter into a masters fresh out of college, so like 21-23 yrs old) who see the opportunity to try and organize to help their humanities peers start families and instead don't participate, exit to industry (an option humanities graduates probably don't have), and say nothing as a governer with a presidential campaign crushes their organizing hopes... a lack of solidarity with one's peers is exactly how it sounds to me.
Calling 22 year olds "kids" and then also saying they have a lack of solidarity with their older "peers" seems a bit insensitive to me. People having families is great, but if their benefits come from the expense of your own salary, that's asking for more than solidarity; that's asking for altruism.
I'm darkly amused that you spend the first half of your comment talking down about how one group of students is "kids" compared to another and then in the second half complain about how those same people have "a lack of solidarity with [their] peers". Gee, I wonder why!
STEM grad students often have much bigger stipends than humanities grad students given that STEM is more well funded. It sounds like the union simply equalized things, although I’m not sure how that would work with DARPA or similar funding agencies, since RA salaries are taken out of grants (maybe just raise overhead to redistribute more funding to humanities, but grants have caps on overhead as well), so maybe just apply it to TA wages (then anyone in STEM would need to RA and avoid being a TA)? Anyways, it doesn’t take a leap to see how stipend equalization at a university would make it less appealing to those who would get less and more appealing to those who would get more.
What school did you go to? In my grad school, there was very little money for humanities students, and they had to compete for TA positions. STEM money wasn't much of a problem, and most grad students could be RAs, and the opposite problem occurred (they were short on TAs).
They always pitch the union as a way for you to get better pay and benefits. But the talk can suddenly shift to how you are a greedy opportunist if you actually take steps to increase your value.
One of main uw campus, Madison, doesn't allow cs masters students. You are brought in as a PhD then allowed to leave when you've achieved your masters. This also causes attrition rates in those programs to skew low. Walked gutted a lot of funding for the programs and made it so the university couldn't find new sources of revenue. These factors definitely impacted the ability for students to finish phds
Yes. Doesn't "a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population" sound extremely implausible to you? As if graduate students can control enrollment.
The comment sounds like a political hit piece, with no evidence provided. And Scott Walker was a major union buster who spurred massive protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 and a recall election (which Walker unfortunately won).
The University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants Association is one of the oldest student unions in the nation. It's hardly a "disaster".
> Employment in STEM occupations grew by 10.5 percent, or 817,260 jobs, between May 2009 and May 2015, compared with 5.2 percent net growth in non-STEM occupations. Computer occupations and engineers were among the types of STEM occupations with the highest job gains. Employment in computer occupations was nearly 3.2 million in May 2009 and nearly 3.9 million in May 2015. Employment of engineers was nearly 1.5 million in May 2009, compared with over 1.6 million in May 2015. Some STEM occupations lost jobs. In 2009, there were nearly 478,000 jobs in STEM-related sales occupations, compared with approximately 406,000 in 2015.
Anyway, I'm not disputing that grad students leave school for job opportunities. I am disputing whether they left because of some student union disagreement, and whether such a union disagreement could somehow limit undergraduate enrollment.
Moreover, the budget for the University of Wisconsin is set by the Governor and legislature, so if there's no enough money to pay TAs more, it's their fault.
If you were a STEM major graduating in 2009 or 2010, you went to grad school for a year or two and got a masters to wait out the recession.
In 2011, grad school was made much worse as the union for grad students was severely curtailed and benefits for state employees (grad students being state employees) reduced.
As the economy was picking up and you've got a masters and hiring in STEM fields is outpacing all other hiring - it is time to put off procrastinating in grad school and get a job.
> In Wisconsin politics and with the context of unions, 2011 was a very memorable year.
I'm confused about the nature of your reply. You're more or less repeating what I already said in an earlier comment: "Scott Walker was a major union buster who spurred massive protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 and a recall election"
To be clear, I'm a Wisconsinite and a former member of the TAA.
I suspect we're in agreement then. My comment was intended supporting material to your claim that the reason people left wasn't the wins by the TAA that became part of the 2010 benefits for domestic partners for state employees but rather that they were done procrastinating entering the job market.
> Yes. Doesn't "a bunch of them went off and got private sector jobs instead, limiting the size of the undergrad population" sound extremely implausible to you? As if graduate students can control enrollment.
You can't run a department without TAs. Who's going to grade homework and exams? Professors? Don't make me laugh.
If you don't have enough grad students to TA your department, you have to borrow some another department. But what if all the STEM departments don't have enough TAs? Do you hire adjuncts (at roughly 3x the rate)?
It's presidential election season in the US. People are going to fight hard to bury what the other side says and raise up what their own side is saying.
Here's some free advice: leave until January 2025 and spend your newly free time learning a language or growing a garden.
Democracy isn't perfect, but checking out is the quickest route to ensuring your interests are only minimally represented. True at all levels of democratic organization.
What happens when there is no where left to move, or the cost of moving is too high?
Solidarity, not freedom, is the opposite of tyranny.
Neutrality and running away implicitly supports the injustice you are running away from. Flight-ing instead of fighting leaves those left behind to the wolves.
Political change only happens once people are willing to put themselves at risk.
Your lack of solidarity for others means they will have a lack of solidarity for you.
The mindset guarantees your exhaustion, loss, and ultimately your oppression.
You don't have to fight the battle, but you should at least support those who self sacrifice and hold it in high regard and equally you should feel shame for running away.
Your privilege let you run away, but others aren't so lucky.
How do you know how much I've run away from compared to you?
Maybe it's been less.
But I sure don't stick around in every shitty situation hoping that I can turn it better with enough sweat of the brow and sufficient persuasion to others to play nice. Hopefully you don't, either.
The thread we're talking about is a classic tyranny of the majority situation: something that democracies handle poorly. If you're outnumbered by a large factor by people with drastically different interests than you, and it's going to be decided by voting, you're in for a bad time if you stick around.
