Around 2,000 graduate student teaching assistants at the University of Iowa have been organizing to get meaningful raises for a while now.
This week, they decided to try a new tactic to get the Board of Regents’ attention.
Dozens of workers affiliated with the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) disrupted a Regents meeting on the University of Iowa campus on Wednesday by holding signs, chanting, and demanding those with the power to raise their wages to a living wage actually do so.
They were joined by workers from the Iowa City Starbucks near campus—Iowa’s only unionized Starbucks—in a show of solidarity.
“We are demanding an emergency wage increase for graduate workers to meet cost-of-living standards,” COGS President Hannah Zadeh told Starting Line this week.
Workers currently make $21,329 for a 50% academic year appointment, or $26,069 for a 50% fiscal year appointment, which means 20 hours of work per week. Graduate students are generally prohibited by university policy from working more than that, Zadeh said.
“They don’t want us to work more than 20 hours per week so we can progress with our research and studies,” they said.
In a statement to media, the University of Iowa claimed that graduate students’ wages, if “converted” to a 40-hour work week and year-round, would be well above $60,000 per year—something Zadeh and others said didn’t make sense.
“My dept’s TAs get paid sub $22k for 9 months of work. It doesn’t ‘convert’ to anything,” Jenny Singer wrote on Twitter (X). “People in my @uiowa class use food banks.”
COGS is demanding a 25% bump in pay for teaching assistants. Zadeh noted the state of Iowa, which pays graduate student teaching assistants, is operating on a massive surplus. They suggested that money be used to stop rising tuition as well as pay fair wages to student workers at state universities.
“[The Board of Regents] have the decision-making power to increase wages for graduate workers and all campus workers, and we are demanding they do so,” Zadeh said.
Those interested in more information can sign up for COGS’ newsletter here.
“Graduate students are expected to live on this salary while in graduate school, and this is nearly impossible for anyone who does not have existing wealth to draw on, or who is supporting one or more dependents,” Zadeh said. “It is telling that, in the mental gymnastics they perform to justify our wages, they have to triple our actual pay to make it sound reasonable.”
Amie Rivers
9/29/23
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