Graduate students are both students and employees.
As employees, they act collectively to ensure fair wages and working conditions, as well as a quality education for themselves and their own students. The logical step is to form a union to maintain and achieve these goals. Graduate students who teach at universities without unions often contend with the threat of arbitrary firing and inferior wages and benefits. Over the last 20 years, colleges and universities have begun to rely on graduate students and lecturers to teach an increasing number of classes. While their prospects for tenure-track employment dim, graduate students accumulate staggering debts from their undergraduate and graduate education.