#templeunionmade
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After a historic 6 week strike, the Temple University Graduate Students Association - the first graduate worker union in Pennsylvania - has WON.
When we went out on January 31st, I don’t think any of us thought that we would end up here. This was a long and arduous process that could never have been accomplished without everyone involved—and I do mean everyone.
Numerous news outlets have been reporting throughout the whole strike, but I’d like to run through what, exactly, it is we’ve done.
After well over a year of negotiations (we went to the table in January of 2022 after the administration delayed responding to our RFIs for months) and more than a year without a contract (it expired on February 15, 2022), we were stuck with an administrative team whose position was, resolutely, “we are happy with the contract as it is.” Their belief was that teaching and research assistants, who facilitate—at a conservative estimate—approximately one-third of all instructional work here on campus were “not a core function of the university.” Pay was structured around a tier-based system that generated inequity as part of its structure which ultimately manifested as race and gender based wage gaps, and that pay averaged out between 19k and 20k for the majority of our bargaining unit. We had only five days of parental leave in the event of childbirth. To cover a single dependent on the dependent healthcare plan required an individual to spend approximately 30% of their paycheck. There had been no substantive raises or adjustments for the cost of living since our first contract as a union.
During the strike, Temple university cut our healthcare and revoked tuition remission, attempting to break us through punitive bills and threats. They quite literally threatened peoples’ lives in addition to their livelihoods. International students were threatened for daring to exercise the rights they have as visa holders to engage in protected concerted activity. They attempted to break our will and our organization.
They failed. We didn’t.
On Monday, voting on a second tentative agreement closed. The contract negotiations team and the executive board unanimously endorsed that TA. It passed at an overwhelming 98% vote among our members. That TA, which will now become our contract, did the following:
Eliminated the tier system completely
Brought our pay up to 24k at the beginning of our contract, reaching pay of 27k by its end in 2026
Introduced 25% dependent healthcare coverage which, in addition to the pay raises, lowers the burden of single dependent care to just about 18% of one’s paycheck instead of 30%
Increased parental leave to 21 days
While this contract is not the most perfect contract, it is one of the largest single contract wins in recent history. It signifies an incredible amount of organizing power and it opens the door for future negotiations that will make TUGSA even stronger.
But more importantly, this strike and this contract are incontrovertible proof that graduate worker unions can win. They are proof that we can do it, and that administrations cannot expect to silence us through retaliation. We are stronger than them.
The fight doesn’t end here. The union of graduate workers, faculty, postdocs and more at Rutgers University has passed their strike authorization vote. The graduate workers at Duke University are fighting for their right to be recognized as employees, and that fight will soon be passed up through the nation to challenge rulings made at the National Labor Relations Board. Graduate workers at other universities in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia area are moving to unionize. TUGSA continues to organize—our next contract negotiations will begin in less than two and a half years. Now is the time to support graduate workers. We cannot backslide. We have to fight for each other, because when we fight, we win.
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