Editor,
I am writing to support SB 400, recognizing graduate assistants, teaching assistants, research assistants and project assistants as employees as introduced by Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino.
This is a common sense, one-and-a-half-page bill with zero fiscal impact.
Without assistantships, UNM could not keep tuition costs low relative to peer institutions because assistants teach at least 20 percent and support at least another 15 percent of undergraduate courses for minimal compensation.
The work these graduate assistants do is vital in furthering the University’s core mission: educating students and conducting research. Incidentally, these are the University’s two most profitable enterprises.
Despite the incredible work graduate assistants do as employees, we do not have job security, nor do we have a position at the bargaining table since we lack a definitive decision about our legal status as employees.
In the fall, the College of Arts and Sciences proposed to the Board of Regents that 40 graduate assistant positions be cut in spring to reduce costs. Only after raising student awareness were student groups able to rally to restore funding for these positions.
In the Graduate and Professional Student Association’s Legislative Priorities Survey, we found that 81 percent of graduate students support a bill that would recognize teaching assistants, graduate assistants, professional assistants and resident assistants as employees. When we asked graduate students to numerically score which legislative priority is most important to them, we found that protecting graduate employee funding lines came in second and a state bill recognizing assistants as employees came in fourth (behind fighting to cut UNM administration and preserve research funding lines).
Providing this recognition and basic protection features prominently in graduate students’ minds.
SB 400 is fiscally responsible and doesn’t cost anything. Through Section 1 Subsection B, TAs, GAs, RAs and PAs as employees would be exempted from the Educational Retirement Act.
And as employees, they would be exempted from Social Security contributions and would still be eligible for student health insurance. Designating these people as employees would not require that they receive additional benefits greater than they currently enjoy.
What it would mean, however, is that graduate assistants would gain the recognition they deserve for the work they do at UNM. As employees, graduate assistants would be able to negotiate grievance procedures and engage in binding dispute resolution.
Currently, there is no mechanism to negotiate hours of work or discrimination complaints. There is no transparency expectation with regard to hiring, no ensured access to materials and resources needed to perform the work, no ability to negotiate leave policies, no ensured due process with regard to termination and no formal protections for academic freedom.
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With regard to workload and hours worked, having no mechanism to negotiate these results in more hours worked on something that is not directly related to the graduate assistant’s own research/dissertation. This means that completing a degree takes longer. Employee status would make it easier for graduate assistants to finish their degrees.
Student employees have been classified as employees through state law in Wisconsin, Michigan, California, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Florida.
It’s time for all New Mexico university employees to be treated equally under the law, so we can affirm the critical work that assistants do in furthering the academic mission.
Please call or write your state legislator and urge them to support SB 400.
Nick Engquist, MPA student
Lissa Knudsen, GPSA president
