I came to the University of Florida to pursue a degree, not to choose between rent and groceries. Yet, for many graduate assistants, including myself, this impossible choice is a monthly reality.
Despite working as teachers, researchers and essential contributors to the university’s success, graduate assistants are paid wages that barely cover basic living expenses, that is, if they do at all. The university claims to value its graduate workforce, but its stagnant stipends tell a different story.
In 2008, the minimum annual salary for a graduate assistant student at UF was $8,250, according to Graduate Assistants United. At the time, UF saw this as fair and acceptable for the work these students performed.
Since 2008, graduate assistant minimum pay has increased to $19,200. Though a significant improvement over time, this amount is less after inflation than what graduate assistants made in 2017 and less than the living wage of $42,576 in Gainesville. If nothing changes, it will continue to fall further behind.
As wages are stagnant for graduate assistants, more and more pressure is being placed on us to support the functioning and well-being of the university.
In 2023, graduate teaching assistants accounted for 16% of all full-time equivalent university employee salaries. To compare, graduate research assistants accounted for over 37% of these salaries.
UF clearly relies on graduate students to support the university at large, and yet, it continues to underpay and undervalue GAs’ work — primarily because it can.
Advocating for GAs, working to raise pay and address these systemic issues, is Graduate Assistants United. Since 1980, the first year graduate students were classified as employees, GAU has been working to improve the graduate assistant experience.
Over these decades GAU has created and raised the minimum stipend, won affordable healthcare insurance options through GatorGradCare and won some protections against discriminatory hiring and firing practices.
GAU, in sum, represents the past, current and future graduate assistants, but the union is now under fire.
The UF Board of Trustees doesn’t believe in raising the graduate stipend enough, even though it publicly said it did following GAU’s last round of negotiations in Fall 2023.
In the negotiations with GAU, the board plays a key role, and if the members truly believed in paying GAs a fair stipend, GAU would have a much easier time in negotiating to achieve its goals to support all 4,000-plus graduate assistants at UF.
Instead, bargaining negotiations, which have been ongoing between the board of trustee proxy negotiators and GAU for over a year, have met brick wall after brick wall. Instead of discussion, change and progress, GAU has been met with refusal, disinterest and stagnation.
The negotiations itself aren’t meant to be quick by any means, as over two dozen articles in the GA contract are up for change.
Each side approaches the table with set goals, and by exchanging dozens of proposals and counterproposals, the process is intended to end someplace in the middle — a place that everyone can agree to.
However, as negotiations continue, the board of trustees has chosen several articles and topics it refuses to discuss or to work toward finding a middle ground for, some of which being:
- Graduate Housing – While GAU presented an article to enshrine GA rights within graduate housing facilities, such as living with roommates and having pets, UF has refused to bargain over this topic in its entirety.
- Discrimination – GAU presented major changes to this topic, ranging from increasing the protected classes, to enhancing the definitions of sexual harassment to setting aside funding to allow GAs in toxic work environments to find a new adviser. While UF did give a single counterproposal, board members have refused further bargaining, instead reiterating their first counterproposal, which was the smallest step forward from the existing contract language, and is much closer to stagnation than progress.
- Stipends – GAU always begins its negotiations for stipends at a living wage, a value that UF repeatedly deems unserious, and its counterproposals hardly raise the minimum stipend to any significant degree, even as rent and the cost of living continues to grow. While UF faculty got a 4% raise in August, with some employees getting a $10,000 bonus, it seems none is to spare for graduate assistants, even though the raises came from an extra $25 million the university had to spare.
The list goes on, including other topics like workload, appointments, reappointments and academic freedom.
If GAU and the university can’t agree on changes, the board of trustees can implement whatever language it wants, regardless of what any third party mediator or GAU wants. This perversion of justice is perhaps what the UF negotiating team envisions, as it doesn’t have to treat proposals from GAU with any degree of seriousness at the end of the day.
And while the negotiations provide struggle enough, GAU is unable to go on strike, in accordance with Florida state laws. The organization also struggles to retain membership, as graduate assistants cycle in and out of the university and as state legislation works to add additional burdens.
GAU’s strength, in all of this, comes from each graduate assistant. It comes from individuals working together to make progress, despite headwinds. It comes from holding the board of trustees to its word, and holding members accountable if they break that word. It comes from GAs working together, talking about GAU, talking about their struggles and choosing to help each other however they can.
For many of us working on our degrees, just working classes and research feels like it takes more time and effort than we can manage. It takes long hours inside and outside of the classroom, more perseverance than we thought we had and a lot more out of each of us than we knew was possible. To ask any graduate student to add more to that heavy load is not easy, and yet GAU needs the help of each and every GA. It needs the help of each and every student, regardless of whether they are undergraduate or graduate.
The fight for progress, for improving the lives of GAs, is a mission that connects back to every single member of the UF community. It affects not only us, today, but future generations of graduate assistants. It affects the families of graduate students now and into the future. It affects other unions and individuals by allowing them to see that progress is possible, and that all it takes is being a part of it.
Austin Britton is the co-chief negotiator for Graduate Assistants United.
