Paper and Presentation Ideas

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To get a better sense of topics that could fit into the conference consider the questions below and click below on the field of study or research that interests you. There are many ways for people outside of history and the social sciences to present on a labor conference. Many outside of STEM fields may not know how pivotal the university lab is and what the highly skilled graduate workers contribute. Certain medicinal breakthroughs, work with controlled substances and the like happen at universities as much as in the private sector. Additionally, certain endeavors are exclusive to the university. How else would we have ended up with the patent-free polio vaccine? But remember that Jonas Salk did not work alone!

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The typical historical and "current events" questions we might ask ourselves are ...

• What lessons lie in the history of social movements? Who and where are our allies?
• How have we persevered in adverse political conditions? Is it local pressure, political agitation, the courts?

We can also consider our place in academe and as workers. Graduate workers are not just older students!

• What is the value of the graduate assistant to the university? To the discipline?
• What unique roles do university labs play in research?

Unionization is one way to improve our working conditions and could help those most taken advantage of.

• What is the value of a union to the graduate assistant?
• What insights do you have from surveying your co-workers?
• How are the international graduate workers respected—or not?

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Remember that these are suggestions and anyone can follow any interest. Someone in linguistics trying to start a union on campus may want to cover the history of graduate unionization in the USA or do a cross-country comparison.

Topics will be organized into panels based on content and themes. Consequently, a panel may have a labor-focused academic discussing the unionization or wages of researchers at university's research centers who are struggling to get into a bargaining unit, as well as a presenter on key advancements in satellite technology taking place in labs staffed predominantly by assistants.

Category of Participant

All Graduate Assistants

• What are the experiences of people in your department and what has it been like to organize within your department? Is this typical for people in your field?
  
• What obstacles, political hangups and psychological hurdles affect people in your field? (For example, the ethos of meritocracy is a strong part computer science culture, but there can be false dichotomies between working reasonable hours and working hard and myths can pervade that unionization holds back raises. What struggles do full-time organizers find when trying to unionize tech workers? How does the issues manifest in the university setting?)
  

International Graduate Assistants

• How are graduate workers on temporary visas and their supporters pushing back against new immigration restrictions?
  
• What do international graduate assistants uniquely contribute to the university and to America while at the university and even beyond?
  
• How are international students’ contributions seen or overlooked and how are the workers (mis)treated?

Post-Docs, Adjuncts, Visiting Professors

• Is the rise of graduate organizing coterminous with adjunct unionization efforts? How does unionization relate to the nationwide transition away from tenure-track hiring towards more adjuncts and graduate assistants?
• How does changing the discussion around and the conception of graduate assistants (not just students) relate to adjuncts and post-docs as highly specialized practitioners of skilled labor?
  
• What do we make of the Yeshiva case?
  

Professors and Scholars of Labor and Social Movements

• Especially for those conducting research in history and sociology: What are the arguments for and against distinct unions and leadership depending on type of work?
• How is unionization of graduate workers similar to or different from other unionized trades, particularly with regards to the recent pushes by traditionally non-academic worker unions like UAW and SEIU?
• Given what we know about the experiences of former 1960s activists and the impacts on political behavior and voting patterns later in life, how might graduate unionization affect political and social behavior of graduate union members who go on to work in, e.g., government or the private sector?

Undergraduates

• This can be a great opportunity to hone paper-writing skills and a taste of the world of academic conferences and panels. Is there a teaching assistant or professor with whom you have worked closely or would like to?
  

Activists, Full-Time Organizers, Union Staff

• Where should we go? What is to be done?
  
• What is the most important issue to organize around in 2020 and beyond? (We welcome competing strategic viewpoints.)
• Why are traditionally non-academic unions like SEIU and the UAW expanding in universities and organizing graduate assistants? Trade union (all academics)? Workplace (all workers at a given university)? One big union?
  

Field of Study or Interest

History

• Why is graduate assistant organizing increasing now? Why not in 2009 or 1969? Is this a fad or the start of a new era?
  
• How have social and political changes affected the feasibility of graduate labor organizing?
• How does the expansion of “acceptable” debate make unionization, for example, become more mainstream?
  
• What is the trajectory of labor history?
• Is full unionization more likely with a widening gulf between high and low-income earners?
• Are we progressing towards something? With regards to the movement, are historical changes teleological or stochastic?

Journalism, Media, Communications

• How do university representatives and presidents talk (or not) about graduate assistants in public relations and in interviews?
  
• Are mainstream news reports of graduate labor unions favorable or unfavorable?
• Does unionization at the graduate level grow thanks to increased coverage, or does it grow in spite of (negative) coverage?
• What are the best practices (and tactics) for advertising and promoting student unions/causes Media coverage of student mobilizing across college campuses (unions and causes)

Politics, Elections, Law

• How important is the role of the courts and the law in unionization success?
• Are electoral results a barrier to unionization?
• How much do political structures play a role and how much, or is the struggle at the grassroots and with university administration?
• What variables contribute to graduate student unionization and in what amounts?
  
• How can we interpret Columbia, Janus and Yeshiva? Do the following distinctions help or hurt and what is their justification: public/private university, worker/manager, professor/other academic worker?
  

Philosophy and Sociology

• Mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative approaches
  
• What is a worker? A student-worker? A student-teacher? What is a worker? Is it the nature of one’s tasks? The level of one’s income? The power? The social reputation?
  
• How do low wages for graduate assistants affect first-generation graduate students?
• What does distributive justice say about graduate assistants within and between universities?
• What is the role of graduate organizing for progressive politics? What is the graduate assistant's social responsibility?

Laboratory Research and Applied Sciences

• Why is the university laboratory, staffed with graduate assistants, vital to your field? In pharmaceutical and agricultural sciences in this country, cannabis (both the “hemp” and the medicinal strains) is a controlled substance. To be a leader in safety testing and economic development, the controlled, large-scale laboratory settings is vital.
  
• What is the diffusion of innovations and what is the graduate assistant’s role? How is this role overlooked by those who implement innovations or society at large?
• How does research differ at the university, a public institution like DARPA and in the private sector?
• What does the research assistant add to the practice of science? How does the practice of science in your field (e.g., archaeology, biology, physics) differ today from the 1950s? (Why is the team model important?)
• How is working as a graduate assistant important for building leadership skills?

Psychology and Behavior

• How do graduate assistants respond to incentives?
  
• How do prestige, dignity and security affect worker output?

Religion

• What is the importance of religious communities? How do they relate to social movements?
  
• How can labor movements and religious groups work together? How are they different?
• Why are secular groups needed? Or, is one big movement for environmental, social and economic and moral justice necessary to avoid narrow egoism in activist groups?
• Why does someone join an organization? What are the similarities and differences between professional organizations, labor unions, recreational clubs and parishes? Where is the overlap?
• Religious practice is common through time and space in human history; what are some common impulses to the human experience that can inform labor organizing? What "sustains" group members?

Economics and Accounting

• Can a university justify the expenses of well-paid graduate assistants?
  
• What are the incentives for someone to join an American PhD program and how are the incentives for programs abroad and other alternatives changing?
  
• Who benefits from the move away from tenure track positions to more adjuncts?
• Who decides which funding sources are de facto "recurring" and which are not? What kinds of loss leaders does society prefer?

International, Ethnic, Regional Studies

• How does the typical graduate program in the USA differ from those abroad? What is distinct about the PhD path?
  
• How does the “junior academic” PhD model (studying and teaching on parallel tracks) draw in graduate assistants from abroad?
• What do they add to the university?

Pedagogy, Education, Teaching Assistant Work

Why not go 100% Khan Academy, Chegg, Smokin’ Notes? What does the TA add? What does the undergraduate student gain from having GAs hold discussion sessions?