Membership Dues
Like every union, TUGSA collects membership dues to fund our efforts to organize and advocate for Temple’s Graduate Employees
Our union is entirely self-funded, which means that TUGSA dues are an essential part of ensuring our shared success as a graduate community. What we gain through our union, the raises, the health care, that is money your dues put back in your pocket! This is because without the union, our wages would be thousands of dollars less, and we would have no healthcare coverage.
We work to ensure our rights as employees are protected and that each of us is treated fairly, with dignity and respect, from the moment we are hired to the moment we graduate. The one thing administration looks at when determining how seriously to take us is the number of dues-paying members of TUGSA. Our power doesn’t just come from our membership, it is our membership!
What are membership dues?
A labor union is a collective of people that come together in order to advocate for and protect their interests as employees. For all unions, dues are a small, regular payment of money made by members to support these collective interests. Dues from members are the only source of funding for TUGSA, as we are not funded by the university. Dues provide the financial foundation necessary for all the various activities that our community engages in, and are essential to the union’s existence as a representative body and a community of colleagues and peers. As TUGSA members, we pool our collective resources (dues, volunteer time, skills) to work together to bargain for better pay, healthcare, and workloads for ALL graduate employees at Temple. We work to ensure our rights as employees are protected and that each of us is treated fairly, with dignity and respect, from the moment we are hired to the moment we graduate.
Worried about the cost of dues?
As graduate employees just like you, we get it! It’s certainly not always easy making ends meet. While an extra monthly cost may seem intimidating at first, graduate employees in every college and department make it work, amounting to hundreds of us across campus. If they can do it, so can you!
A big reason the cost of dues is much smaller than it might seem is that you only pay dues on money you receive from Temple while you are actively working in a TUGSA-represented position (TAs and non-DAB RAs). Don’t have funding in the summer? Not working as a TA or RA? No dues!
When considering the financial benefits alone we see that dues are just a tiny amount in comparison to our yearly wage increases (between 30 and 40% over the life of the 2022-2026 CBA which covers your union dues and more!) plus the approximately $500 worth of free healthcare coverage we receive each month. When comparing 2023-2024 to the previous year, that amounts to over $1,100 more each month in compensation from things that the union is wholly responsible for securing for us! And this year, 2024-2025, we’ll receive an additional 4% in pay on top of that.
In comparison to all the benefits of having a union, dues are really just a small fraction. What we gain through our union, the raises, the health care, that is money your dues put back in your pocket. This is why we say membership in TUGSA doesn’t cost, it pays!
How do I pay dues?
Paying dues is super simple! There is no payment required when you fill out and submit the membership form. Instead, dues are automatically deducted from your pay by the University and then sent to TUGSA’s elected Treasurer. Dues are just 1.65% of your pay, and are only deducted when you are actively employed in a TUGSA represented position. The process is automatic, easy, and is administered between TUGSA and Temple’s payroll department. Additionally, there is no need to worry about cancelling and re-signing up, as your movement onto and off of the dues roster is an automated process as well.
In short, all you have to do is fill out the form — we handle the rest!
What do dues go toward?
Dues go toward both protecting what we currently have and allowing the Temple graduate community - particularly the most underpaid and vulnerable among us - the opportunity to win the respect, raises, and healthcare we all deserve.
Protecting and expanding our rights on the job is not a cheap endeavor! Dues allow us to be affiliated with national organizations that provide us with support and help us to pay for a labor lawyer to guide us through negotiations and grievances. Dues also allow us to: bring greater numbers of our colleagues into our union; more thoroughly investigate and correct issues across campus; rent office and storage space for our records and materials; hold training, orientation, and informational meetings; organize social and meet-and-greet events; and more. More members and greater funds means we can better enforce the contract all across campus and win higher compensation and protections at negotiations.
Why is paying dues important?
Before TUGSA, graduate employees at Temple made $10,000 a year with no healthcare, no guaranteed tuition remission, no limits on workload, and no way to seek redress for mistreatment and discrimination. Without the union our wages would be thousands of dollars less a month, we would have zero healthcare coverage, and our employment would be completely unpredictable.
Like all union contracts, the benefits that the TUGSA collective bargaining agreement provides are the result of a negotiation process with university administration. Importantly, signing up to pay dues as a full member contributes to what gains we are able to win in negotiations. This is because, regardless of how much general support the union has on campus, the one measure of power that the administration pays attention to when formulating their proposals and responses to our demands is what’s called our density. This figure is the percentage of individuals who are both in our bargaining unit and full, dues-paying, members of TUGSA.
