CARY -- As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison 10 years ago, every month a few dollars of my stipend went to pay dues to the TAA; a unique union that represents and protects graduate employees working in the UW-System. In return, I worked under a contract that ensured full health care benefits and basic dental care (with no out-of-pocket premiums), and tuition remission (without which my education would not have been possible) as well as other fair labor protections.
At the time, I took these rights for granted. I have consistently struggled to pay high health insurance premiums for far less coverage in other positions in other states since.
Difficult economic times have already meant the erosion of some of these rights for Wisconsin's graduate employees. The TAA negotiates a new contract every two years, and has made concessions in pay and health care premiums in an attempt to work with the state government while struggling to maintain basic levels of care and fair compensation for graduate student workers.
Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would end the TAA's collective bargaining rights rendering it unable to fight for any of these protections, all of which could be immediately revoked.
Undergraduate students are just as outraged as graduate students, recognizing that this is a direct threat to their education by damaging the university's ability to recruit and support the graduate students who teach so many of their classes. Under the rallying cry "Hands off our Teachers," undergraduates have taken to the streets in recent days alongside their graduate student instructors.
Wisconsin's 3,000 graduate student workers are but one of the many constituencies that will be directly harmed by the state government's attack on unions and workers' rights. As Wisconsin's unions offer up economic concessions in terms of pay and premiums, only to be completely rebuffed by state lawmakers, it is clear that this issue is not about the budget: it is about ending workers' collective bargaining rights.
Those of us who have been fortunate enough to have those rights know what they are worth, and the thousands who continue to flood Madison's streets make it clear that the right to fight is one thing they will not concede.
Amanda Gengler earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. She lives in Cary and is completing a Ph.D. in sociology at Brandeis University.
