More Grad Students Want Unions
Catherine Donaldson-Evans,
Fox News,
Sept 09, 2003
When I was president of the Graduate Students' Association at the University of Alberta I tried to organize graduate students into a union. I felt that paying gradute students (who are in no position to say no) between $350 and $800 per month (Canadian) to teach university classes and tutor university students was exploitation. I still do, which is why an article like this make me happy and warm inside. University officials may say they enjoy a collegial relation with graduate students, but when they actively oppose those students' desire to make a living wage, it shows me that it's a relation based on power and sometimes abuse, not collegiality. From a wider point of view, the university model of education has been unsustainable for some time, this fact being masked, not mitigated, by rising tuitions and an increasing reliance on academic serf labour.
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