The Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) is a graduate student union formed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1966. It is credited as the first graduate student union. After voluntary recognition by the university as a bargaining agent of teaching assistants in 1969, the negotiations resulted in a 1970 strike, which guaranteed the acquisition of "bread and butter" such as job security in addition to the complaint procedure. Their unfulfilled main demand from their strike - the inclusion of teaching assistants and students in the course planning process - was not met. TAA struck again in 1980 and lost its union recognition until 1986. The union protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol building began a protest in 2011 in Wisconsin.
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Histori
After the anti-draft sitting at the Bascom Hall of the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the end of May 1966, a small group of teaching assistants (TAs) were organized to form the Teaching Assistant Association (TAA) in June and became the first union of graduate student workers. The initial goals of their campaign were mostly "bread and butter": higher wages and better working conditions for TA. In the first month, TAA reaffirmed its connection to and rooted in the anti-war movement and its call for reform of education policy.
United fought for graduate student support until February 1969, when the Wisconsin State Assembly leader, Republican Representative John C. Shabaz proposed a bill to remove forgiveness of tuition for graduate students on assistance. The bill was introduced during a black strike as a component of a conservative strategy to expel UW students from abroad, a group blamed for campus dissatisfaction. While the faculty thinks the bill will not pass or vice versa will be vetoed, TAA promises to fight the bill and propose that they become the official collective bargaining unit of TAs. Within a few weeks, they gathered 1,100 members from 1,900 TAs and approached the university for recognition as bargaining agents of teaching assistants. Citing the lack of legislative approval, the campus chancellor H. Edwin Young refused, but denied when a consequential strike loomed later in the semester. Young offers to bargain if a ballot managed by the Wisconsin Labor Relations Commission supports the TAA majority representation claim. After two days of election, the union became the official bargaining agent of the students on May 18, 1969, with 77% of the voters as a whole supporting and 52 of the 81 academic departments with TA in the majority consensus. With the threat of a strike, Shabaz's bill was canceled.
With recognition, the university voluntarily agrees in the Structure Agreement to recognize and negotiate with the graduate student union. In completing a lengthy agreement process, the university decided to hire new graduates to represent them. The process of bargaining is complicated by a lack of experience, skepticism, political ideology, and the nature of decentralization of trade unions. TAA is operated as participatory democracy and, as such, does not have a consistent bargaining group, leading to recapitulation and confusion on both sides of the negotiations. Both sides struggle to find common ground on union demands for "bread-and-butter" salaries and additional co-operative conditions call for academic and human rights, such as job security through sustainable employment, class size limits, health benefits, office environment standards light levels and space requirements, policies intended to end discrimination, participation in university governance, and evaluation by student teams, faculty, and TA, are shared equally. Among their more controversial requests are to bargain departments with TAA to establish and institutionalize roles for students and TA in designing courses where TA is used. Demands that erode faculty authority are not well received by faculty or other unions, with the AFL-CIO head Wisconsin showing the latter request is "not a matter of the right guild". TAA reaffirms the importance of "educational planning" demands for the future of their generation, and at one point universities develop joint course design clauses before being removed in faculty resistance.
1970 strike
With the deadlocked negotiations, TAA set January 8, 1970 as their bargaining deadline to be followed by "unspecified action". They set March 15 as the deadline for their strike and despite a hasty attempt to make amends in previous days, the union rejected the latest offer and broke down. It was the first staff strike in university history and it will last for 24 days. The Young Chancellor called the strike illegal by state law and contrary to the agreed terms for bargaining. Consequently, the government decides the discussion when the strike begins, and asks for a court order to stop it. Local workers' support varies, as Local 171 ignores strikes and Teamster Local 695 is a respectable picket line, stopping the delivery of food, buses, and laboratory services of liquid nitrogen. Some students who study with TAA and some interesting TA hold their classes off campus. The strike reduced the classroom presence in areas closest to the largest picket site, Bascom Hill, at the College of Letters and related Science and School of Education.
The strikes were mostly nonviolent, but increased in militancy over time, especially when spring arrived. Groups like the New Year Gang and Mother Jones Revolutionary League threaten physical damage if union demands are not met, and the same radical waves make some strikes and keep others away. TAA's president and others were arrested on March 24 for blocking shipments, and delivery routes for pesantren during spring from March to April. Around the same time, Teamsters relented and let their drivers work, the university announced hundreds of TAs would receive a salary reduction during the strike, and a circuit judge petitioned the attorney general's order: the strike was illegal and TA had to get back to work.
The private talks were resumed during the break, and TAA's "education planning" request - an unfulfilled main demand in which they were stranded - was out of the table. While the request led to undergrad support and similar provisions outlined in the 1969 Structure Agreement, the faculty is now fundamentally opposed. The university proposal has no provisions and was rejected at the TAA meeting of 5 April, where they decided to resume the illegal strike. In the next two days, the Faculty Senate adopted a resolution that recognizes the Language of the Structure Agreement but adds that the faculty holds "the ultimate responsibility... for the curriculum and course content". On April 7, TAA voted against continuing the strike and accepted the university's latest offer in the 534-348 vote, and the Bupati's Council approved the contract on 10 April 1970. State MPs were unhappy with the contract and at the request of the Joint Committee for State Finance, decide on the legality of the contract, find it legal. TAs has won union representation with bargaining and contracting rights that provide better security and complaints procedures, although TAA and Cardinal Daily leadership are not sure who wins the strike.
strike 1980
TAA conducted another strike in 1980 about policies related to education and university governance. In response, the university canceled its recognition of their contract. The Wisconsin legislature began to recognize the union in 1986.
Act 10 and Recall Walker
TAA led 1,000 protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol building on Valentine's Day in 2011, which started protests in Wisconsin in 2011, including month-long protests at the parliament building. United voted against supporting challengers in the 2012 recall selection.
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Legacy
Media related to Teaching Assistants Association in Wikimedia Commons
- Official website
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