Speaking of the Crappification of Work . . .

On Tuesday, I posted about Barbara Ehrenreich and the professional managerial class (PMC).  in that post, I shared an anecdote from the Know Your Enemy Podcast episode devoted to Ehrenreich’s legacy in which one of the podcasters shared a story about trying to organize graduate students into a union.  The students were resistant, in part because they didn’t think themselves worthy of a union. 

Not so at the University of California, where graduate student organizing has led to salary increases to $36,000 in the Fall.  So I learned from this story from the Mother Ship, Paul Caron’s TaxProf Blog.  According to the story, clipped from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Amanda Reiterman was hired as a Lecturer to teach two 120-student sections of classes covering classical texts and Greek history at the University of Santa Cruz.  She recommended that the history department hire as her T.A. a recent graduate who was pursuing a masters degree.  When the department copied her on its offer letter to her former student, Professor Reiterman learned that the student’s salary to be her teaching assistant would be 10% higher than her salary to teach the course.  She responded by quitting one of her two sections, instead teaching a small history course for which she would not need a T.A. She experienced learning that her student was earning more than her as “a gut punch.”

Strange story, right? I mean how can it be that there are 240 students at UC Santa Cruz who want to attend a lecture course on ancient history? I wonder if any of them would be interested in taking contracts at the Oklahoma City University in the Fall, because I would love to have them.  The response is odd too. Learning that her T.A. is relatively well paid should not make Professor Reiterman want to quit.  She should just be happy that the union’s efforts mean that her students can afford decent housing and meals other than packaged ramen noodles.  It should make her want to organize and demand the sort of remuneration she deserves. 

More generally, I wonder about the economics of the California state university system generally.  T.A’s now earn four times what I earned when I was a graduate student at Cornell in the 1990s.  I did fine on my princely stipend, and when my wife and I both landed visiting professorships, bringing our household income over the $50,000 threshold, we felt financially secure in the moment (although prospects for future employment were gloomy).  

I understand that the cost of living in California is shockingly high, so I’m not sure $36,000/year in California goes any father than my $9000 in Ithaca, NY.  I just don’t get where the money comes from.  According to the story from the Chronicle, there are 48,000 unionized graduate students, researchers and postdocs who work in the University of California system.  Their aggregate salary is now $1.728 billion, representing a $500 million increase over their aggregate salary from 2023.  The mind boggles.  If universities start spending that much money on graduate assistants, how do they have money left to recruit a football team? I mean, have the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs (above right) ever even played in bowl game?