Happy Labor Day!
“Graduate Students Clear Hurdle in Effort to Form Union” (nytimes) says that graduate students, at least at Columbia, will be paying a fraction of their starvation wages to the United Automobile Workers, which the correct-thinking Democrats running the university will now be forced to recognize (university faculty and administrators have historically supported Democrats and unions everywhere except in this one little area of their own employees).
Given the glut of PhDs and the low cost of adjuncts I’m wondering if the unionization of graduate student labor will result in a heavier reliance on post-docs and adjuncts with PhDs. Why deal with the UAW when you can hire a fully trained PhD for less than a grad student?
Readers: What do you think? Will this lead to some restructuring?
Surely the next step is to unionize the adjuncts. That should actually be a lot easier than the grad students.
Most postdocs are already cheaper than graduate students.
In total, when you factor lost productivity to
°classes
°qualifying exams
°teaching assistantship
°applications for fellowship
°time to Train to value of ½ a postdoc