This School Is Charging Grad Students Thousands of Dollars for Going on Strike

Temple University is cutting off healthcare and tuition remission to some graduate workers in retaliation for their participation in a strike over issues of pay and benefits. 

On Wednesday, some members of the union who’ve been on strike since Jan. 31 received an email from the Philadelphia university saying that “as a result of your participation in the [Temple University Graduate Students’ Association] strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the spring semester.” 

Because of this move, union leaders say, those graduate workers who want to stay enrolled in their programs will be forced to come up with tens of thousands of dollars in tuition by March 9—or accept the university’s terms and end the strike.

Some union members have also lost their healthcare benefits. Manasa Gopakumar, a doctoral student in philosophy and a member of The Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA)’s collective bargaining team, told VICE News that some members weren’t informed of this until they actually tried to use their health insurance. 

“So many of our members were not even notified that their health insurance was deactivated,” Gopakumar told VICE News. “Some of them found out when they went to pharmacies to pick up their prescriptions, and they were told that their insurance was inactive.”

After one striking graduate worker was told by his pharmacy that his insurance was inactive, Temple told him in an email that his “coverage was terminated due to your decision to strike.”

TUGSA workers went on strike Jan. 31 after an impasse in negotiations over pay and benefits. Currently, graduate students who work as teaching assistants, research assistants, and graduate assistants receive less than $20,000 per year in compensation, and graduate workers want the university to pay a base rate of $32,500. The cost of living in Philadelphia is nearly $37,000, according to personal finance website NerdWallet. 

Gopakumar said workers also want better healthcare coverage for workers’ dependents. “Many of our members have families, and if they have to cover their dependents on their plans, they end up spending somewhere between 30 to 86 percent of their income on insurance premiums for their dependents,” Gopakumar told VICE News. “They cannot afford it.”

Temple communications director Steve Orbanek told VICE News in a statement that the university’s move to force graduate workers to pay thousands in tuition by next month was consistent with Pennsylvania laws. 

“Those TUGSA members who have chosen not to work and are on strike are no longer entitled to their compensation and work-related benefits, which include tuition remission,” Orbanek said. “Because striking workers are not entitled to tuition remission, they have been notified of their obligation to make arrangements to pay their tuition, consistent with how the university treats other students who have unpaid tuition obligations.”

While Gopakumar said that employers are required under Pennsylvania law to withhold compensation during a strike, she argued that tuition remission and healthcare are benefits, and Temple is therefore under no obligation to withhold those. 

“It’s completely a choice that they’ve made… no other university actually ends up doing that because it’s unconscionable to cut someone’s health insurance at this time,” Gopakumar told VICE News. “The fact that they’ve done that in such a hasty and chaotic manner shows that this is an attempt to discourage and intimidate the strikers.”

Temple University is technically a public institution, meaning it’s not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. In the past, Temple University Hospital has argued that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has no jurisdiction due to its ties to the university, but a federal appeals court ruled last year that isn’t the case. 

But the history of TUGSA goes back more than twenty years, predating by more than a decade the wave of unionization and labor militancy among graduate workers in the U.S. When TUGSA workers attempted to unionize in 2000 and the university argued that they were not, in fact, workers, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board disagreed. Negotiations between the university and graduate workers on a new collective bargaining agreement have been ongoing for more than a year. 

Orbanek said that more than 80 percent of the university’s graduate workers were not currently on strike and continue to receive their benefits, but Gopakumar told VICE News that “we have twice as many people on strike as the university is reporting”—and that their numbers are growing. 

“More people are joining every day,” Gopakumar said. “Those who have joined today have said it’s in response to the University’s actions.” 

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