TAs at Brown are working with the NLRB to hold a union election, as students use their left-inflected education against the institution that provides it.
Computer Science TAs at Brown are working with the NLRB to hold a union election, as students use their left-inflected education against the institution that provides it.
U ndergraduate computer science teaching assistants (CS TAs) at Brown University are following a trend of undergraduate student workers at various schools who have decided to unionize. Surprisingly, however, when the Teaching Assistant Labor Organization (TALO) asked the university for voluntary recognition of their union, the left-wing university’s administration rejected their request. Instead, administrators advised TALO to file for an official election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which they did on January 13. The election is expected to occur during the spring semester.
While public university unions are governed by state law, private universities adhere to the policies of the NLRB. Graduate students have been unionizing for decades, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon for undergraduates. The trend began when undergraduate resident advisors at UMass Amherst first unionized in 2015, and it grew when dining workers at Grinnell College formed a union in 2016 and then expanded the union to include all hourly student workers in 2022. The Ivy League made its debut when multiple groups at Columbia University unionized in 2019. And last March, student workers at the Office of Residential Life at Wesleyan University were the first undergraduate students to win voluntary recognition, doing so within four days of launching their campaign.
Brown graduate students successfully unionized in 2018 after a four-year process. And now, undergraduate TAs are attempting to do the same. According to a press release from the TALO Organizing Committee, the TAs believe they are not being treated the way they should be and are now “seeking higher wages, better working conditions, and a more inclusive and equitable workplace.” According to one student organizer, Colton Rusch, who was quoted in the press release, the activists spoke to nearly 74 percent of TAs in the department, and “over 65% of all TAs have signed union authorization cards, giving us a supermajority of support.” NR reached out to Rusch but did not hear back. Harshini Venkatachalam, another leader of the effort, stated in the press release, “CS TAs at Brown are systematically exploited and underpaid” and many “play the role of professors.” According to Venkatachalam, many students do not log the actual number of hours they work because they fear retribution.
However, a TA in the computer science department who is against unionization but chose to remain anonymous told National Review that this is not true. The job “is very reasonable,” he explained, adding that “the computer science department is very upfront about its expectations for the TAs’ workload.”
Clearly, the idea that Brown TAs are underpaid and overworked is a matter of opinion. Undergraduate TAs (UTAs) and Socially Responsible Computing Teaching Assistants (STAs) make $15.50 an hour, while Head TAs (HTAs) make $17.50 an hour: both more than double the federal minimum wage. There are also guidelines that dictate that a TA should generally work no more than an average of ten hours per week once the semester begins. In a Zoom meeting on August 31 reviewed by National Review, Vice Chair of the Department of Computer Science Tom Doeppner explains that the department granted TAs a pay raise of “around 20 percent” beginning in the fall of 2022. He also gives clear instructions to teaching assistants regarding working hours. Doeppner explains, “A major concern is your workload. You should be working an average of ten hours a week. If you are asked to work substantially more, you have the right to refuse. And you won’t be fired and otherwise penalized. You are a student first and a TA second.” And according to an email obtained by National Review, Doeppner reiterates the guidelines regarding the working hours that computer science TAs should follow:
While we much appreciate the hours you put into your TA work, it’s important that you don’t overdo it. . . . We would like UTAs to work no more than an average of 10 hours per week; HTAs no more than an average of 15 hours per week. While there might be weeks, particularly early in the semester, in which you might work more than that, you should compensate by working less later.
But Brown shouldn’t be surprised that its students are willing to betray, exaggerate, and conspire in the name of equity and inclusivity. They are only following the social-justice orthodoxy that the university is attempting to inculcate in them. Even in the Computer Science department, for example, an initiative began in 2019 to create STAs — Socially Responsible Computing Teaching Assistants — in an attempt “to integrate ethics and social impact topics broadly” across the CS curriculum. After all, how can one learn to code if one hasn’t first mastered the concept of equity?
The same can be said of unionization more broadly: Brown is simply reaping what it sows. Indeed, Brown’s professors regularly champion the virtues of unions. In a class called “Freedom, Work, and Leisure” that I took last semester, for example, my professor, who is a contributor to the socialist magazine Jacobin, taught us that our nation’s labor laws are far too lax, that work is often extremely oppressive, and that the right to use coercive tactics is sometimes justified.
Now that the consequences of these lessons are negatively impacting the bottom line, however, university administrators are getting mugged by reality. And they suddenly had an epiphany about the downsides of unionization. For instance, Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy at Brown, said in a letter to TALO that students must have:
The full range of information available to them about what unionization entails, including the anticipated amount of student dues that will be deducted from their hourly pay, how those dues will be expended . . . and how decisions will be made about those dues and other union matters.
Rather than approaching the position of a TA as an opportunity to learn, help others, and make money, Brown students are turning against the university that schooled them in their victim mentality.
In the end, the specter of undergraduate unionization should come as no surprise. It is the predictable result of Brown and other universities’ left-wing indoctrination.