Furthermore, these TA's perform the bulk of "behind-the-scenes" grading and evaluation of undergraduate work.

While the GESO is affiliated with the Local 34 and 35 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Yale has refused to recognize the union, insisting that they are students and not workers which has prevented the GESO from negotiating with the university.

"We want Yale to recognize our union, negotiate with it, and negotiate a contract," Dugdale says. "Yale pretends like we don't exist."

TAs of the World, Unite!

While graduate students at Yale University have not experienced much success in their dealings with the administration, students at other schools across the nation have made great strides in improving their working conditions.

One of the most recent victories occurred at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor this month when graduate students and university administrators reached an agreement which raised wages and other compensation for international graduate students who are required to stay in Michigan during the summer for English workshops.

Nicholas R. Olmsted, a second-year student in Michigan's philosophy department and vice-president of the Graduate Employees Organizations (GEO), believes that unions played a critical role in achieving these concessions. The GEO is associated with the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO.

"There's no question that graduate students who are unionized are much better off than graduate students who aren't," Olmsted says. "People at universities who don't have union affiliation should work as hard as possible to get a union together."

Kevin C. Wehr, a third-year sociology student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and president of the Teaching Assistant Association, agrees that their union, the AFL-CIO, was a powerful weapon in recent contract negotiations that resulted in tuition wavers for many graduate students.

"Unions are a good thing because they help to define the relations between the administration and its employees," Wehr says. "Unions can act as an incredible participant in politics and can model democratic practices on a large scale."

While the students at UCLA have not received benefits like those at Ann Arbor or Wisconsin, they recently won a major legal battle when UCLA TAs and other graduate teachers voted to be represented by an affiliate of the UAW.

This forced administrators to officially recognize the union and immediately begin negotiations. Razza says similar elections would be held on the seven other UC campuses by the end of this schoolyear.

The Road Ahead

However, while these organizations have madetremendous advancements in their fight to gainbetter working conditions, they are not satisfiedto simply remain content with the victories theyhave made.

Instead, leaders of these graduate studentorganizations have said they will continue theirstruggle until graduate students are fullyrecognized for the contributions they have made tocollege education.

For graduate organizations which have alreadyhad success in their dealings withadministrations, future goals are much broader andare aimed at improving graduate student employmentconditions both locally and nationally.