Striking Power: How Temple University Graduate Student Workers Won a New Contract

By Alexander Fischer

The Temple University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA 6290), a union that represents more than 750 graduate student workers at Temple struck for over a month from late January to early March 2023. TUGSA, the only graduate student union in Pennsylvania, demanded a living wage, greater parental and bereavement leave, and dependent healthcare. Founded in 1997, this marked the first time TUGSA voted to authorize a strike, the first graduate student-worker strike in Pennsylvania history.

TUGSA’s Initial Demands

Temple graduate student workers, comprised of TAs (teaching assistants), RAs (research assistants), and IORs (instructors of record) across non-medical and non-law-related colleges were working without a contract for over a year, still on the terms of the previous outdated four-year contract with pay of $19,500 per year, with less than one week (each) of parental and bereavement leave, and no option for dependent healthcare coverage.

TUGSA’s initial demands were:

$32,800 per year (based on, but still less than, the cost of living in Philadelphia in 2022)

Full healthcare premium coverage for all dependents

6 weeks of parental leave

Bereavement leave: Include grandparents as “immediate” family and provide an additional seven days for international travel

A study by the Century Foundation found that Temple University spends just $0.62 of every tuition dollar on instruction, the lowest of any “R1” public university in the country. 

TUGSA Actualizes the November Vote to Authorize a Strike 

Graduate students at Temple worked without a contract for over a year after Temple’s administration halted contract negotiations with TUGSA in February of 2022. In November of 2022, after months of organizing, educating, and agitating within and across the union, 99% of TUGSA members voted to authorize a strike for the first time in TUGSA’s history. The strike was officially called on January 31, only two weeks into the 2022 Spring semester. 

The strike gained wide support from the outset and remained widely supported on campus and by the public. It also continued to receive positive regional, local, and alternative media coverage from CBS, ABC, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and DemocracyNow! , though TUGSA did not receive significant nor sustained national media attention during the strike articles did appear in the more widely read venues: CNN’s opinion section, and Politico. The strike was, however, quickly thrust into the spotlight with support from TUGSA’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its President Randi Weingarten, Philadelphia mayoral candidates, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, newly elected Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, as well as other state and local representatives, and local union chapters including Philadelphia’s local AFL-CIO and Teamsters.

Union Busting: Temple Intimidates and Retaliates

Temple wasted no time retaliating. On February 4, less than one week into the strike, striking graduate students had their healthcare terminated — a tactic rarely if ever used by universities to suppress a strike. Most graduate students only became aware of this as news began to spread that people were denied their medical visits at doctor’s offices and their prescriptions at the pharmacy. Temple did email students before strike authorization notifying workers that this was an option, an intimidation tactic at a time when the university refused to negotiate with the union, although they were aware of TUGSA activity and the democratic processes within the union regarding pre-strike authorization and strike deliberation. No student, however, was notified directly by email that the university discovered they were striking and was indeed optioning for terminating their healthcare.

Healthcare at Temple is a student benefit, meaning every student has the option to buy healthcare through the university; It is not necessarily tied to worker status except to the extent that it is subsidized for graduate student workers because of their worker status. This is important because striking TUGSA members (because we are still students) can have their healthcare reinstated (with the subsidy in abeyance), by requesting this of HR, although Temple processes each case individually. My healthcare coverage, and the coverage of countless others was not reinstated by the university until the strike ended, although we had made formal requests.

Four days after our healthcare was terminated, striking workers’ tuition remission (a standard for Ph.D. students across the U.S.) was revoked and students were prompted with an overdue tuition bill. Each student was sent an email informing us that our tuition remission was revoked due to our participation in the strike, and that we had outstanding tuition balances due by March 9 or we would incur a late fee and financial “hold” on our account. In addition, there have been cases wherein students who borrow federal loans to supplement their low pay (and many do), had their FAFSA loans seized by the university to be used to pay the tuition balance that resulted from revoked tuition remission. Retaliation did not stop there. 

International students faced the brunt of Temple’s intimidation tactics, as it was suggested to them, in a deliberately convoluted and confusing manner (and with no legal basis) that they could be deported for striking. One student’s testimony at a rally noted that this email stated that “penalties for failing to follow the rules will result in [revocation of] F1 [immigration] status and all related benefits and could lead to removal and deportation from the United States.” 

On top of these retaliatory and intimidating measures, Temple immediately began the search for scabs to teach the classes of those of us who are instructors — a violation of our previous collective bargaining agreement. Some scabbed classes even moved online, like mine, and some were reportedly scabbed by people not qualified in the field. All graduate workers are covered under TUGSA’s contracts, but only striking workers have been retaliated against — an age-old tactic to divide and discipline labor.

TUGSA Strengthened in Face of Union Busting

While TUGSA represents over 750 graduate students in its bargaining unit, a conservative estimate of union density is somewhere near 60%, meaning there are somewhere around 450 dues-paying members. Density varies from semester to semester, mostly due to students graduating out of the union or their worker status changing to fellowship or dissertation completion. However, density was not that high pre-pandemic, as TUGSA members have worked tirelessly to increase the ranks over the last year or so.

Despite Temple’s retaliatory tactics, the strike grew with time, as at least 250 graduate student workers ended up participating in the strike, or just greater than one-in-every three (non-medical, non-law affiliated) graduate student workers at the university. In addition to support from political leaders and other unions, TUGSA was very well-supported by undergraduate students at Temple. Just two weeks into the strike, more than 1,000 undergraduate students participated in a walk-out from their classes to join us on the picket line and to rally. Undergraduate support continued to grow, assisted by TUGSA’s “strike classes,” which were held on campus Monday through Friday to inform students and passersby about the strike and how they could support it. TUGSA eventually gained support from some faculty at the university, and their union (TAUP, Temple Association of University Professionals), but the union believes that this was not quite enough to pressure the administration and that daily picket lines, undergraduate support, bad press, and local and state-level union and political support helped win the day. 

Rather than dividing the union and souring the relationship between undergraduate students and TUGSA, retaliation backfired, proving that well-organized unions who value their right to strike, transparency and information-sharing, and horizontal decision-making can remain steadfast. TUGSA’s resilience finally forced Temple’s administration back to the bargaining table, only for TUGSA to overwhelmingly reject their first formal offer in over a year, on February 21st. 

TUGSA Rejects the First Tentative Agreement

After two-and-a-half weeks of striking, picketing, and rallying, the Temple administration agreed to resume negotiations. After a few days of negotiation, TUGSA’s negotiating team put forward a “tentative agreement” offered by the university to a vote for union members. The tentative agreement proposed a one-time $1,000 bonus in 2023 and $22,000 in salary for the first year. The offer would have increased the average salary to $23,500 by the end of the four-year contract — in 2027. It included no dependent healthcare coverage.

The following results were read the evening of February 21st: with 83% of eligible voters voting, TUGSA voted by over 92% to reject the offer, with 352 No votes to only 30 Yes votes. 

Unsurprisingly, before the team even left the room, the Temple administration had already leaked information to the public. This led to the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting that a deal had been reached and that the strike would be “coming to an end,” or so its author tweeted, before the university’s email about the agreement going out. (The article had since been updated).

Despite Temple’s anti-labor tactics, the TUGSA negotiating team was nonetheless surprised to learn of this afterthey left the meeting with the administration. Continuing with its false narratives and corporate spin, Senior Vice President of Temple, Ken Kaiser sent an email to the entire campus which made it appear as if the dust had settled. Kaiser’s email implied that an agreement had been reached, and, as if we took a vacation, that striking students were “welcomed back” to their respective duties. Not only was the first offer rejected outright, but many instructors were never “welcomed” back to their original duties. In my case, even when the strike ended, I was formally relieved of my instructing duties and issued new work assignments for the semester as the scab who was hired when I went on strike finished teaching my former classes online. 

More Striking, a Visit to Harrisburg, and a New Contract

After TUGSA rejected the first offer, the strike continued as did local and regional support. The union maintained strong picket lines across campus every day and continued to organize campaigns and end-of-day rallies to gain support, including stopping traffic for short periods on North Broad Street to gain wider support from the local Philadelphia passersby. Moving towards the one-month mark of striking, each day of picketing was critical to continue to display the union’s physical presence and power on campus and in the media. 

After 34 days on strikr, a few dozen TUGSA members drove to Harrisburg on March 6 to rally for support and speak with house members. TUGSA was welcomed and received critical public support from various Senate and House members such as PA Sen. John Kane, Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta and Dan Miller. Within three days of this meeting, Temple Administration hashed out a second offer on a new four-year contract.

Before voting, union members debated the agreement on its terms but also wrestled with political strategy. Not only were the striking union members in limbo, but they were losing income, had no healthcare, were experiencing strike fatigue, and were facing a not-so-well-endowed strike fund. We were also dealing with the reality of having built up political support coinciding with bad press for the university. Striking members faced some universal yet unique features of withholding labor. With only one-third of the union on strike, we strategized on the benefits of continuing to strike under such circumstances. This unique scenario, combined with a shift in the terms of the agreement led to an open and deliberative caucusing process to discuss terms and strategies together.

After four days of voting and 42 days on strike, TUGSA members voted overwhelmingly to ratify the March 9 agreement, which consisted of the following: Reinstatement of tuition remission effective immediately

Reinstatement of healthcare effective immediately

One-time $500 bonus effectively immediately

 Pro-rated March pay from the date the accepted agreement was offered

A wage increase to $24,000 in the first year (effective immediately), gradually increasing to $27,000 by 2026

Abolition of pay tiers within and across disciplines

Half premium coverage for dependent healthcare 

Increased bereavement leave and extended time for international travel

While TUGSA had to compromise on its initial demands, and while the pay increase by 2027 will hardly appear as a win when factoring in both inflation and the devaluing of the purchasing power of the Temple graduate student worker wage (having been stagnant), or when compared to our comrades across the way at the University of Pennsylvania, or our striking comrades in Michigan. Nonetheless, one-third of TUGSA members went on strike and won the above benefits for nearly eight-hundred graduate student workers at Temple University, a factor which increases the value of the inner city working class position of graduate student worker at Temple University in the eyes of incoming students. Striking workers set a precedent for TUGSA and Universities across Pennsylvania, demonstrating labor’s political power, even when only one-third of union members participate in striking, and even fewer show up on the picket line — issues TUGSA will continue to address through union consciousness-raising efforts and material gains such as the new contract. 

TUGSA’s success ripples throughout a nation experiencing rates of labor unrest in academia not seen in two decades. TUGSA’s strike follows threatened student-worker strikes at in Temple’s hospital network, graduate student-worker strikes at the University of California, and has been followed by a successful strike at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and a graduate student-worker strike at the University of Michigan which continues well into its third month after having begun on March 29. 

The new four-year contracts TUGSA agreed to were ultimately short of our ultimate demands. However, TUGSA has set a precedent for graduate student workers striking in Pennsylvania and demonstrated graduate student workers’ political power to the nation by withholding their labor and striking for a living wage as well as other benefits viewed by most workers as human rights. 

Alex Fischer graduated from Moravian University, completed his Masters at Lehigh University, and is now a PhD student in Political Science at Temple University.