Graduate Student Unions

Graduate student unions are organizations formed to represent the interests of graduate students at universities. Graduate students work primarily as teaching and research assistants. Teaching assistants have been doing an increasing proportion of the academic workload in universities, including teaching and grading duties. Research assistants help academics with their research and are involved in such duties as doing literature reviews, conducting primary research and data analyses, and helping to write manuscripts.

While some of the work that graduate students do is integral to their training as students, it can go beyond to include work done primarily for professors and universities. With graduate students’ labor being increasingly used in the daily functioning of universities and colleges, their unionization is beginning to attract increased attention. There has been ...