Organizing Committee
The disastrous return to campus, the impending budget cuts, the ongoing assault on our health insurance benefits and working conditions, the upcoming start of contract negotiations—all these and more necessitate a large, organized, and responsive membership in TUGSA, one that emphasizes communication, coordination, and collaboration among graduate student workers across the university. The TUGSA Organizing Committee aims organize around these challenges, recruit new members to union, identify new issues to resolve, and deepen inter-departmental communication among graduate workers.
In these unprecedented times, it is essential that we hear from as many of our graduate colleagues as possible. The difficulties faced in the sciences, for example, may be different than those in the arts, but we can only resolve these issues if we both know about them and work together to combat them. In other words, our union can only be successful if grads from all schools and departments get involved and voice their concerns, working with one another to develop solutions and fix problems as they arise.
If you are interested in joining or learning more about the TUGSA Organizing Committee, email organizing@tugsa.org and we will answer any questions you have and provide info on our next meeting.
The TUGSA Organizing Committee meets monthly, but smaller groups of organizers collaborate more often. Email us to get plugged into our current campaigns!
No Unpaid Labor!
During the recent shift to online teaching and learning, many graduate workers undertook university-mandated training efforts to become accredited for online teaching. This process was sudden, difficult, and came at the expense of a great deal of time we could have spent on other work. We want to let all past, present, and future TAs and RAs know that this type of mandatory training is considered to be separate from the commitment you make to work for Temple University as a teaching assistant.
According to the terms of our current contract, this work must be compensated above and beyond your normal salary.
Our members work hard to keep the university running and maintain their own academic progress. Taking time to be trained in new technology or approaches for our work in the middle of the semester goes well beyond the twenty-hour-per-week maximum that the administration and our union have committed to. If you have undergone this training, PLEASE EMAIL US at union@tugsa.org. If you are asked to undertake this kind of training as part of your employment in the future, then be sure to let your department know that you expect to be paid accordingly, and email us for assistance.
Graduate employees already perform one third of all academic labor at Temple. If they want us to do more, they need to pay more. The university has already made this commitment. Now they must live up to it.