WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Here are the opening paragraphs of an article in the Guardian from March 30 of this year:
Thousands of graduate student workers around the US at private and public universities have gone on strike over the past few years, from Ivy League institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University to public state universities in California.
Graduate workers at even more colleges have organized unions in spite of staunch opposition from their administrations. Among the most pressing unifying themes among graduate student workers organizing unions and holding protest actions and strikes is the low pay, an issue plaguing graduate student workers around the US.
In the US, graduate workers take on jobs such as helping teach courses, assisting with research projects and performing often vital clerical tasks that help run academic institutions.
Included in this group are the members of the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition who voted to Strike on April 13 and have recently re-authorized the strike with 95.7% of those voting approving the action.
In our first segment we’ll offer more context on this as it has been building for several years, and in our other two segments we’ll be taking a close look at the graduate dissertations of IU’s new president, Pamela Whitten, and Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Eliza Pavalko – this will provide us with perhaps some ironic framing of these University leaders’ positions on workers’ rights.
GUESTS
Three PhD candidates at Indiana University:
Marina Mecham is in the History Department, Anne Kavalerchik is in the Sociology and Informatics Departments, and Nathan Douglas is in Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
RELATED
Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition (thorough information and donation links)
US graduate students protest against low pay while universities profit from their work
Indiana University Graduate Workers Are on Strike and Demanding Union Recognition – interview with Cole Nelson
State Timing of Policy Adoption: Workmen’s Compensation in the United States, 1909-1929
by Eliza K. Pavalko (American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 95, No. 3) – paywall
RELATED Interchange Episodes
Stacked Crooked: Renting Rooms In the Humanities Ghetto
The Public University in Crisis: An Interview with Michael Burawoy
The Mask of the Public Good: What the University Costs
Authority and U: On the Anti-Democratic Campus
The Business of Blaming the Worker
MUSIC
Loose Fur, Born Again in the USA
“The Ruling Class”
“Wanted”
“Thou Shalt Wilt”
“Stupid as the Sun”
CREDITS
Host: Doug Storm
Studio Engineer: Kade Young
Executive Producer: Kade Young
