Not enough for the size of the load, she says. She and her colleagues at the Pennsylvania school voted earlier this month for representation by the American Federation of Teachers in hopes of getting better pay and benefits. Temple is just one of dozens of campuses where students are embracing unions, though the school is challenging the election with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. Graduate students at the private University of Pennsylvania announced an organizing drive last week. Michigan State graduate assistants voted last week in favor of union representation and organizing also is under way at Penn State.
College campuses are fertile ground for unions trying to recharge the labor movement.
United Auto Workers and the American Federa tion of Teachers are among those courting students. Renewed union efforts aimed at college campuses come as universities, driven by the bottom line, increasingly replace tenured classroom instruction with part-time faculty and graduate students. Those issues, combined with a landmark decision in November by the National Labor Relations Board allowing New York University graduate teaching assistants to unionize at a private school for the first time, are fueling a high-profile labor movement on b oth public and private campuses. There were 26 recognized graduate student unions in the United States on 62 campuses last year. The first teaching assistants' union was formed in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but the movement really began to spread only in the last de cade.