WSU-CASE:  The CASE FOR SupportING WSU-CASE 

CONGRATULATIONS TO WSU-CASE (1.22.2024)

The WSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (WSU-AAUP) congratulates the graduate workers of WSU and their bargaining unit, WSU-CASE, for reaching a tentative agreement with administration during the recent graduate worker strike. As the largest faculty advocacy organization in the United States, AAUP supports collective bargaining of fair and equitable contracts for all academic workers. We look forward to continued collaboration with and mentorship of our graduate workers as together we strengthen WSU’s academic and research mission. For more information on WSU-AAUP please see wsuaaup.com.

Statement of Support for Graduate Workers at Washington State University (11.15.2023)

The Washington State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (WSU-AAUP) supports our graduate employees and the WSU-Coalition of Academic Student Workers union  in their complaint of unfair labor practice against Washington State University. WSU-AAUP recognizes and supports their right to strike given the University’s unwillingness to negotiate fair working conditions—including a livable wage and a robust health care plan—in a timely manner. In the event that WSU graduate workers decide that going on strike is the only remaining course of action, we stand in solidarity with this decision.

Graduate workers are essential to the research and instructional mission of the university. These workers have been underpaid, have suffered harassment and discrimination, have received severely inadequate health care benefits, and have been denied a voice in negotiating their working conditions. The effects of these damaging and exploitative conditions in which they labor are passed along to our undergraduate students because the working conditions of graduate workers are the learning conditions of our students.

As faculty, we understand that a healthy, thriving university cannot survive on the labor of workers who are constantly stressed and destabilized in their physical, mental, and financial well being. WSU-AAUP stands firm that the administration should negotiate fairly, responsibly, and promptly with WSU-CASE, and we support the graduate workers’ decision to withhold their labor should the administration continue to avoid negotiating in good faith.

The Executive Committee of WSU-AAUP on behalf of the WSU-AAUP Chapter.   

For more information see:  wsuaaup.com

Guidelines for Faculty to Help Support a Possible WSU-CASE Strike (12.15.2023)

The WSU-AAUP chapter supports our graduate workers as they try to collectively bargain for fair and humane working conditions, including stipends that address the high cost of living in Pullman and throughout the state, and a health care plan that does not expose students to the choice of either foregoing important care or risking catastrophic medical debt.

As faculty, you have an important role to play in helping our graduate workers achieve a fair and reasonable contract with the administration. Should graduate workers decide that a strike is their only remaining option, here are some points to remember:

• You should not go beyond your contracted workload to cover graduate worker responsibilities. While you might wish to cover class or lab sections, pick up grading, maintain Canvas course pages, or hold extra office hours, doing so requires uncompensated labor on your part and undercuts the power and leverage of the union to negotiate fair working conditions for its workers. Remember that taking over the maintenance of Canvas course pages is equivalent to crossing of a picket line–picket lines can be virtual, too.

• You are welcome and encouraged to discuss the strike with your students. Your undergraduates may be unaware of how much the university relies on graduate workers to deliver the programs that comprise their education. Your students may also be unaware of the stipend and health insurance plan upon which their TAs are expected to survive. Your students will likely understand that such low wages and poor benefits are unreasonable and exploitative, and that some inconvenience to and disruption of their academic work is a small price to pay for an improvement of working conditions for graduate employees, when such improvements will lift the entire academic enterprise of WSU.

• You may express your solidarity in other ways that you deem appropriate. AAUP supports academic freedom, which includes any other speech or action that expresses solidarity with striking workers (as long as such expression remains within the bounds of the law). 

• Remember that in many institutions, austerity and exploitation are not limited to graduate workers. Graduate workers are often on the frontline of battles for fair working conditions, but as recent, draconian cuts at many universities (most notably West Virginia University, another land-grant institution) have shown, administrations will rarely stop at underpaying graduate workers when they feel financial pressures. Contingent faculty, tenure-track, and even tenured faculty can be put at risk under the auspices of “financial exigency.” Programs that have been chronically underfunded, and whose enrollments have suffered through this fiscal starvation, can easily be put on the chopping block. 

It is in the collective best interests of WSU and its faculty to support graduate workers in the event of a strike.