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Article

Professors-in-Training or Precarious Workers? Identity, Coalition Building, and Social Movement Unionism in the 2015 University of Toronto Graduate Employee Strike

Louise Birdsell Bauer1

AbstractIn this article, I argue that graduate employees took on the political identity of precarious workers who face job insecurity and income insecurity, drawing attention to the casualization of work in the academic labor market in Canada, and the cost of undertaking graduate studies in Canadian universities. Their argument appealed to media, faculty, undergraduate students, and supportive media, which was key to building solidarity and public support for graduate employees’ struggle. Building on social movement unionism literature, I show how this identity moved the debate away from the bargaining table and into broader coalition building, suggesting a broader social movement unionism among academic workers.

Keywordssocial movement unionism, precarious workers, graduate employee organizing, casualization, academic labor, strikes

In March 2015, approximately 6,000 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902 Unit 11 struck at the University of Toronto, the largest university in Canada. In November 2014, members had voted 90.3 percent in favor of strike action, if necessary. This was the largest voter turnout of Unit 1 members for a

1University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:Louise Birdsell Bauer, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 2J4. Email: louise.birdsellbauer@utoronto.ca

731877 LSJXXX10.1177/0160449X17731877Labor Studies JournalBirdsell Bauerresearch-article2017

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strike vote in the local’s history, and the largest turnout for a graduate employee strike vote in Canadian history (Black 2015). Following an unsuccessful bargaining period, the union filed for conciliation in December 2014, then brought a tentative agreement to the membership. At an ascension meeting held on February 27, 2015, 802 members voted to reject the agreement, setting into motion a strike that lasted one month—from February 27 to March 26, 2015. Striking members included graduate employees2 working as teaching assistants (TA) and course instructors (CI) at the university during the 2014-2015 academic year, and the money received from paid work was part of their funding package3 as master’s and doctoral students enrolled in the university. Members were on strike with the aim of securing a funding package that offset the cost of inflation and matched the poverty line for annual income for a family of one in Toronto (CUPE 3902 2015). The annual minimum income in the funding package had remained frozen for seven years prior to the strike, despite increasing tuition and rising costs of living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

This article uses the strike to analyze how worker identities, rooted in real eco-nomic conditions, can mobilize coalitions of actors to address these conditions col-lectively. I do not argue these identities produced successful bargaining outcomes; rather, I examine success in coalition building “away from the table” in the university and broader community. I argue adopting the political identity of precarious workers allowed strikers to link individual lived experiences to economic conditions in Canadian universities, including an increase in contract academic staff (CAS),4 gradu-ate program expansion, increased tuition, and mounting levels of debt. In espousing this identity, workers helped build a coalition of support from media, faculty, and undergraduate students, who stood in solidarity with the cause. In making this argu-ment, I show how political identities, when rooted in real economic conditions, can be powerful catalysts bringing together disparate groups of actors and linking struggles to the broader political debates on austerity measures. This article is written from an activist standpoint; my argument is based on my experience as an active union mem-ber, striking graduate employee, and as a researcher.

Social Movement Unionism and the Political Identity of Precarious Worker

Literature has examined how unions, particularly in the United States but also in Canada, have adopted social movement practices as a means of gaining ground in campaigns and with the aim of allying with particular groups (Chun 2016; Duffy 2010; Johnston 1994; Kirton 2015; Robinson 2000; Sullivan 2010; Vallas 2016). The motivations for the adoption of social movement practices vary based on con-text—for example, in the United States, they are largely in response to “bread and butter” business unionism (Robinson 2000). In Canada, social movement union-ism (SMU) extends and elaborates on existing social and community unionism (Baines 2010; Cranford et al. 2006; Tattersall 2009). Literature on SMU departs in focus from the collective bargaining and legal framework analyzed in industrial relations (e.g., Carrell and Heavrin 2013; Huxley 2012; Kochan and Katz 1988;

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Marsden 2004; Reitz and Verma 2004). Scholars of SMU suggest we should look at dimensions “away from the bargaining table” like worker identity, coalition building, and demands in the name of social and economic justice like a living wage (Chun 2016; Chun and Agarwala 2013; Kirton 2015; Kirton and Healy 2013; Tattersall 2009).

Parsing contemporary class and political identities is key to understanding union-ism away from the table. Standing (2011, 7) suggests the precariat is a “class-in-the-making,” encompassing at least one-quarter of the world’s workers who lack a secure work-based identity and investment in employment, have a limited range of rights, and have experienced deskilling, alienation, and downward economic mobility. They face seven dimensions of insecurity, according to Standing (2011, 11). These include labor market insecurity or a lack of adequate income earning opportunities in the labor mar-ket; employment insecurity or a lack of protection and regulations around hiring and dismissal; job insecurity or a lack of opportunity to move up a job ladder and gain upward mobility; work insecurity or a lack of protections against psychic and physical harms of work; skill reproduction insecurity, or a lack of opportunity to gain skills and use those skills; income insecurity, or a lack of stable income through employment or social assistance; and representation insecurity, or the lack of adequate representation through unions. Others have called into question that the precariat is a class, arguing it is “too heterogeneous” to constitute a class in the sense of “objective conditions,” but argue the precariat is solely a political identity (Frase 2013, 11). Thus, one of the ques-tions that remains is whether the precariat denotes an objective class category, or a subjective political identity.

New discourses and identities “away from the table” have emerged in the context of an eroding middle class, increasing unemployment and underemployment and new forms of precarious work globally (Chun and Agarwala 2013; J. K. Rogers 1995; Sayce, Ackers, and Greene 2007; Standing 2011). Chun and Agarwala (2013, 642-45) argue expanded collective action and new organizational repertoires are key to under-standing the micro-politics of labor struggles under these conditions. New scholarship should examine how workers “recast labour disputes as broader issues of economic and social justice” and “the primacy of communities and social identities as key vehi-cles for building collective solidarity.” The use of identities to mobilize actors is par-ticularly salient when workers’ identity is at the crux of the struggle. Chun (2009) examines how marginalized service workers in the United States and South Korea managed to gain symbolic leverage in struggles for recognition and redistribution. Chun describes classification struggles among these workers, where definitions and expectations of employers and workers are contested and re-articulated, and public dramas, where contestations and articulations play out at public events, where they become subject to public opinion and judgment. Chun (2009, 152) defines classifica-tion struggles over workers’ political identity that are “competing struggles over whose vision of the social world should be recognized as authoritative and capable of chang-ing social relationships accordingly.” Broader narratives about economic and social justice are defined collectively through public struggles over which political identity is legitimate, and why.

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Precarious Academic Work, Restructuring, and the Cost of Graduate Studies in Canada

Around 60 percent of university courses at Canadian universities are taught by CAS (Basen 2014; Field et al. 2014). Current federal and provincial data are limited since Statistics Canada does not measure part-time CAS, and canceled its survey of academic staff in Canada in 2012 due to budget cuts.5 One study of seven universities in Ontario found the number of CAS increased by 69 percent from 2001 to 2010 (Brownlee 2015, 58). These data do not include graduate employees who teach, and thus federal and provincial data are unavailable. Yet, a glimpse at data on federal graduate enrollment and CAS provides con-text to understand the changing academic labor market in Canada. From 1992 to 2011, the number of Master’s and PhD students in Canada increased by 117 percent, and the number of PhD students in Canada increased by 99 percent. Ontario shows a similar pattern: from 1992 to 2011, the number of Master’s and PhD students has increased by 118 percent, and the number of PhD students has increased by 94 percent (Statistics Canada 2016a). Relative to this expansion of graduate enrollment, there has been little growth in full-time perma-nent academic jobs. During the same period, full-time tenure-stream faculty (TTF) increased by only 14 percent in both Canada and Ontario, but full-time CAS increased by 149 percent in Canada and 46 percent in Ontario (Statistics Canada 2012). Again, this increase in CAS does not include part-time CAS, who in some universities teach up to 60 percent of the courses (Basen 2014; Field et al. 2014). Data from the University of Toronto are limited but part-time CAS appointments increased by 235 percent from 2001 to 2008 (Brownlee 2015, 56). These statistics suggest a shortage of full-time tenure-stream aca-demic jobs, in favor of CAS jobs. Indeed, in 2011, only 18.6 percent of PhDs were employed as full-time university professors (Munro 2015). It is true that some graduate students, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, enroll in graduate studies aspiring to work in nonacademic sectors. In 2011, only 39.4 percent of Canada’s PhDs were employed in the postsecondary education sector (Munro 2015).6 Nevertheless, in contrast with growth in graduate enrollment, there is comparably little growth in full-time tenure-stream appointments.

The expansion of graduate enrollment and the question of graduate students’ employment prospects has been a topic of debate in Ontario. Since 2003, the province added an additional 15,000 spaces for PhD students, an increase of 55 percent, and promised to add 6,000 more spaces by 2011. The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (MAESD) declared, “Expanding professional and research-based graduate programs supports innovation in Ontario’s knowledge-based economy and improves the province’s competitive position globally” (MAESD 2011). Much debate ensued. Some asked whether the province planned a corresponding increase in the hir-ing of PhD graduates (see, for example, Chiose 2013). Federal agencies raised the issue of overqualification among job seekers (see, for example, Uppal and LaRochelle-Côté 2014). In recent budget planning, the province decided to reexamine which PhD programs place their graduates in paid positions (Chiose 2017). A public debate had emerged about the labor market outcomes for PhD graduates, adding to growing awareness of graduate employment issues in Canada.

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These debates come at a time when public funding for higher education has declined, and tuition, debt, and cost of living have increased in both Ontario and Canada. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) reported, “federal government cash transfers for postsecondary education in Canada, when measured as a proportion of GDP, declined by 50% from 1992–2012” (CAUT 2014, 1). In Ontario, government funding as a share of university operating revenue decreased from 85 to 45.7 percent from 1981 to 2011 (CAUT 2014, 3). Meanwhile, tuition, cost of living, and student debt increased. Average graduate tuition in Ontario increased by 302.4 percent from 1991 to 2011—an increase of 48.7 percent, adjusting for inflation (CAUT 2014, 49). This is the highest percentage change in graduate tuition during these years in Canada. Adding to this financial burden, the cost of living in Toronto is one of the highest in all of Canada and increased considerably from 2008 to 2015—childcare costs increased by 30 per-cent, rent increased by 13 percent, and public transit costs increased by 36 percent (Tiessen 2015, 5). Graduate employees in Canada also face mounting levels of debt: the percent of PhD graduates with large debt at graduation ($25,000+) increased from 26 to 49 percent for doctoral students from 2000 to 2010 (Statistics Canada 2016b).

Graduate Employee Unions, Academic Labor, and the Professor-in-Training Identity

Recently, graduate employees and nontenure-stream faculty have been unionizing glob-ally, citing a decline in full-time secure employment (Bauder 2006; Dobbie and Robinson 2008; Gilbert 2013; Lafer 2003) and drawing on narratives of antiausterity and corpora-tization (Collombat 2014; Rhoades 1998; Rhoades and Rhoads 2003). In Canada, gradu-ate employees started unionizing in the 1970s. The catalyst for initial unionization drives was a 1975 Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) ruling made on a York University case. According to one exploratory study, this case set a precedent for other graduate employees to unionize across the rest of Canada (Zinni, Singh, and McLellan 2005). Prior to this ruling, the university categorized graduate employees as students receiving scholarships, bursaries, or loans from the university, making them ineligible for protec-tion by the Ontario Labour Relations Act (OLRA). The Graduate Assistants Association (GAA) argued since they were workers, the work done as graduate employees was sepa-rate from their work as students, and “the work was of direct and immediate benefit to the employer” (GAA in Zinni, Singh, and McLellan 2005, 148).

Most universities in Canada are public institutions whose ability to unionize is governed by provincial labor boards like the OLRB. In the United States, state law determines the ability to organize in public universities, and federal law in private universities. In Canada, there are twenty-four graduate student unions (Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions [COGEU] 2015) and fifty doctoral-granting universities in Canada (Statistics Canada 2015), a unionization rate of about 53 percent. In the United States, there are thirty-two graduate student unions (COGEU 2015) and approximately 258 doctoral-granting universities (National Centre for Education Statistics [NCES] 2006), a unionization rate of about 12 percent. Graduate employees are more likely to unionize at public universities than at private universities, and since

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there are more private universities in the United States than Canada, this partly explains the lower unionization rate in the United States. Indeed, unionization of most public doctoral-granting universities in the United States had occurred by the early 2000s (Ehrenberg et al. 2002 in Zinni, Singh, and McLellan 2005, 149).

However, graduate employees at private universities in the United States recently won a long battle to unionize. In a 2000 New York University case, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that graduate assistants at private universities and col-leges could organize and bargain collectively. But, in 2004, Brown University chal-lenged this ruling and the NLRB denied collective bargaining rights to graduate assistants working at private universities and colleges. They based their decision on the argument that graduate assistants were not employees and extending rights to them would risk violating academic freedom (Brown 2004, 490). In 2016, this overturned ruling was reversed, and graduate students at private universities and colleges were granted statu-tory employee status and the right to organize and bargain collectively. Thus, graduate employees’ classification as trainees or students also has legal implications, especially in the United States, where graduate employees at private universities and colleges have only just won the right to certify and collectively bargain (NLRB 2016).7

Debates about whether graduate employees are workers or professors-in-training are fraught with tension between a view of the academic profession as exceptional, special, or is different from other forms of labor, and as a casualized job market (Bousquet 2008; Discenna 2010). Discenna (2010, 24) argues graduate employees who unionized at Yale University constructed a new identity composed of both paid, unionized labor, and work as graduate student researchers. Discenna contends mental labor is not viewed as “real labor,” and, therefore, not in line with traditional labor organizing, but graduate employees rejected this model and aimed to adopt a twin student–worker identity. In an op-ed written for the New York Times, McDonough (2015) argues graduate employees should not unionize because unions “can endanger the system of shared-governance with faculty, and complicate matters by claiming students aren’t students.” This “spe-cial” system of shared governance, he argues, is something worth preserving because of the relationship faculty members have with graduate employees. Similarly, the Brown (2004) decision was based on the rationale that unionization would harm academic freedom. These arguments have been contested in both research and debates. Research has found that, in fact, unionization has a positive effect on measures of academic free-dom (S. E. Rogers, Eaton, and Voos 2013). Critics also contest whether a shared model of governance accurately represents how universities are governed. For instance, Bousquet (2008) argues shared governance has been replaced by a model of faculty administrating the academic job market, downplaying solidarity between faculty mem-bers and graduate employees (Bousquet 2008, 20-21):

Under casualization, it makes very little sense to view the graduate student as potentially a “product” for a “market” in tenure-track jobs. For many graduate employees, the receipt of a PhD signifies the end, and not the beginning, of a long teaching career. Most graduate students are already laboring at the only academic job they’ll ever have—hence, the importance for organized graduate student labor of inscribing the designation “graduate employee” in law and discourse [emphasis added].

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Bousquet suggests the job market model, and subsequently the identity of graduate employee as “product” or “trainee” for long-term permanent employment as faculty, is less relevant given the casualization of academic work. What is not known is how this tension between the market model and casualization influences graduate employees’ identity and union organizing.

The casualization of academic labor varies across fields, and this is reflected in varied participation across fields in organizing (Discenna 2010; Rhoades and Rhoads 2003). In Canada and the United States, faculty and graduate employees in the human-ities and social sciences have been more active organizing than those in applied fields like engineering and medicine (Bousquet 2008; Kezar 2013; Kezar and Sam 2011; Levin and Shaker 2011; Rhoades 1998; Schuman 2013). Levin and Shaker (2011, 1466) note English departments and the Modern Languages Association (MLA) “expressed a special and longstanding interest in the roles, responsibilities, and rights of non-tenure-track faculty.” In Canada, the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) released guidelines for making “more equitable, humane and respectful working conditions for Canada’s contract faculty professionals” (ACCUTE 2014). Associations representing applied fields are not as vocal about CAS issues.

Faculty and graduate employees in the humanities and social sciences organized CAS and graduate employees more for three reasons. First, CAS in the applied fields have more nonacademic career alternatives than CAS in the humanities and may, there-fore, be less invested in CAS working conditions, thus, less involved in union organiz-ing (Baldwin and Chronister 2001; Donoghue 2008). Second, the relationship between paid work and graduate funding may differ by field. One report found that at the University of Toronto, graduate employees in the humanities do more paid work while completing their degrees than students in other fields (Bost 2016; see also Sultana 2016). Third, undergraduate enrollment in humanities and social science programs tends to be higher than in applied programs8 and, thus, demand for and use of CAS is often higher than in applied fields, translating to a larger pool of potential organizers.

Data and Method

In this article, I draw on ethnographic research conducted between March 2013 and March 2016 at the University of Toronto. I conducted participant observation at union meetings for years preceding and following the strike, and more broadly in the day-to-day operations of the university as a graduate employee. During the strike, I worked as a picket captain. I attended membership meetings, picket captain meetings central to organizing the front lines of the strike, solidarity rallies, and other relevant events. I analyzed union communication and literature including e-mails to the membership, past reports on bargaining priorities, meeting minutes, bargaining bulletins, picket-line bulletins, and the union’s newsletter and made summaries of these documents to gain a better overall understanding of the union’s history, structure, and bargaining priori-ties. I searched editorials, opinion pieces, and news articles using keywords such as precarious worker, job security, and words associated with temporary contract employ-ment in academia such as “adjunct,” “sessional,” and “part-timer.” To compare these

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narratives “away from the bargaining table” with those being used at the table, I stud-ied a video recording of the post-strike arbitration hearing, which I had access to as a union member.

I was not a neutral observer of this strike, but rather an active union member and strik-ing graduate employee. My participation in union meetings helped my understanding of graduate employee issues and the history and broader context in which the strike was situated. This informed my argument that graduate employee identity is grounded in issues of job and income insecurity. My participation in the strike allowed me to observe the identity created by striking graduate employees and union activists on a day-to-day basis. I aimed to interpret the strike within a specific set of social and economic relations rather than to observe the strike as an object of analysis from a neutral standpoint (Frampton et al. 2006; Smith 1990). As an active supporter of the strike, I saw the strike from a perspective “away from the table” and was not involved in collective bargaining. My analysis is, therefore, selective as it focuses on the identity created by graduate employees and not on bargaining. My position as a picket captain allowed for increased detail and depth of observation, but cannot be considered representative of all graduate employees, and I acknowledge this is a methodological limitation of the research.

In an attempt to gain insight into multiple perspectives, I triangulated my partici-pant observation by drawing on interviews with twenty-one TTF members, thirty-two CAS members, and eight union organizers at the University of Toronto.9 I interviewed faculty members in humanities, engineering, and science departments to gain a wide range of perspectives. In the interviews, I asked questions about working conditions in the university, professional identity, and general views about teaching, research, and the role of graduate employees in contemporary postsecondary education. The inter-views were coded with NVivo, and codes cross-analyzed with my ethnographic field-work. I coded thematically over several months and analyzed how participants evaluated the identity of professor-in-training or precarious worker. Pseudonyms were assigned to participants, and relevant information (e.g., department names) was removed to protect participants’ confidentiality. To better understand the labor rela-tions context, I contacted university administrators but was only able to obtain five interviews. I do not draw from these data since participants either declined to com-ment, or deferred to the official line (Mikecz 2012).

Interrogating the Official Line: Precarious Worker and Professor-in-Training Identities

Our claim to the political identity of precarious worker was rooted in addressing two dimensions of economic insecurity. First, union organizers and activists underscored job insecurity—or a lack of opportunity to move up a job ladder and gain upward mobility—through the casualization of academic work and rise of CAS jobs. They interrogated the professor-in-training identity, arguing that the precarious worker iden-tity resonated more with their experiences. Second, union organizers and graduate employees highlighted income insecurity, or a lack of stable income through employ-ment or social assistance (Standing 2011, 11). They argued their income insecurity made them precarious, and linked this insecurity to austerity.

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Job insecurity was mainly emphasized by union organizers and active union mem-bers. Away from the table, union organizers stated the university’s position on the funding package ignored the conditions of precarious employment for a significant portion of union members. In a letter to the university community, union organizers noted we incurred “significant opportunity costs for the (increasingly diminished) chance to pursue meaningful careers as scholars and educators” (Culpepper and Smith 2014, emphasis added). One union organizer says that graduate employees saw the distinct possibility of a long period of precarious employment following graduation and, thus, called into question the professor-in-training identity:

Recognizing that they’ve [sic] been treated unfairly and exploited in some capacities I think is obviously, that recognition is, I think, a very big thing. I think another part of that is they’re aware that the academy is a fundamentally changed place. Twenty years ago . . . you did your graduate degree and within a reasonable amount of time you would find full-time employment and you could look at your TA-ship as training for when you become a professor. [But] there just aren’t full-time consistent jobs out there in the academy in the way that there used to be. So the university’s ability to say, “Oh, well you’re in training, this is something that you should do to assist you in the job market later.” That argument doesn’t work anymore for our members, not all of them, but certainly some of them know that there is no golden egg at the end of the PhD. (Dana)

Dana illuminates how graduate employees might interrogate the professor-in-training identity and be more receptive to a precarious worker identity given increasing aware-ness of the academic labor market. This reflects the point raised by Bousquet (2008) and shows how existence of increased casualization calls into question the legitimacy of a professor-in-training identity. This interrogation leaves room for the precarious worker identity.

The second dimension, income insecurity, drew wide attention from the broader union membership. In initial talks at the bargaining table, the union had argued that since many members’ annual funding package was below the poverty line, the union should negotiate the funding package as a matter of income security. Here, the funding comprised of employment income, research funds, and fellowship monies was viewed as insufficient to meet the needs of a family of one living in the GTA. Union members argued that income insecurity was compounded by rising debt and tuition. In an open letter, union members wrote,

We need lasting structural change accompanied by language in our Collective Agreement that ensures that our members receive guaranteed funding and tuition relief. These structural changes mean more security for all of us and would begin to move the most vulnerable of us above the poverty line. (Varia 2015a)

At the picket line, chants used by striking members drew on language of precarity and referred directly to income insecurity: “Diapers, daycare, tuition, rent; 15K won’t make a dent!” and “We are U of T; Get us out of poverty! We are U of T; We don’t want precarity!” These chants described the main issue of the funding package, but also highlighted broader economic issues faced by graduate students like the cost of living

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in Toronto, one of Canada’s most expensive cities to live: “Tuition’s rise . . . Funding’s on hold! Rental highs . . . Funding’s on hold!” Union organizers and graduate employ-ees highlighted this in open letters (Black 2015; Culpepper and Smith 2014; Van Lier 2015). Our signage highlighted income insecurity: one sign said “Living 8k below the poverty line.” Like Chun’s (2009) workers, we used rhetorical tactics to emphasize our income insecurity and how it made us precarious.

Importantly, we tied income insecurity to austerity measures in the university, link-ing our identity as precarious workers to narratives of economic and social justice. We argued that the university was relatively well-resourced, citing its $194.4 million sur-plus in the 2013-2014 academic year (University of Toronto 2013). One graduate stu-dent noted in a letter to the university community,

Graduate students know that budgets are about priorities, and that these priorities are determined by those in positions of power. 73% of the university’s operating budget is allocated to administrative, faculty, and staff salaries, many of whom enjoy incomes in the six-figures. (Van Lier 2015)

By highlighting the university as a well-resourced employer, we asserted that below poverty-line graduate funding—like other austerity measures—was a political choice rather than an economic necessity, as argued in other cases (Ross and Savage 2014, 6). Although antiausterity narratives are popular in graduate employee unions, this was not a simple mirroring of political narratives. Instead, the interrogation of the profes-sor-in-training identity and the creation of a new identity that encompassed workers’ objective experiences of income insecurity tied lived experiences and antiausterity movements together and built a coalition of actors against austerity and precarity.

Some variation in strike participation by field should be noted. Union organizers made concerted efforts to mobilize engineering students and students in other applied fields like business and medicine, suggesting that participation was, indeed, lower among students in applied fields, and a key informant confirmed this. Numerous state-ments of solidarity and endorsement were issued by humanities, social science, and sci-ence departments—but very few if any statements were issued by departments in applied fields. Because of the involvement of humanities scholars in debates on the restructuring and casualization of academic work, and the differential impact of precarious work in humanities and applied fields, different levels of participation in different departments during the strike are to be expected. That graduate employees in applied fields were less involved in the strike is, thus, unsurprising, yet it is only one case. Exceptions and “pock-ets of support” in applied fields exist, as one informant maintained.

Building Solidarity: Media Coverage, Faculty, and Student Response

In the following paragraphs, I describe how media coverage, faculty, and undergradu-ate students responded to the idea of graduate employees as precarious workers, as reflected in claims of job insecurity and income insecurity. Although there was

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variation, I observed considerable support for graduate employees’ claims, lending legitimacy to our claims and helping to build solidarity, and put pressure on the uni-versity to attend to issues highlighted during the strike.

Media coverage of the strike highlighted the growing prevalence of precarious aca-demic work more than was expected, which was confirmed in union and faculty inter-views. To some degree, this was due to existing debates on the increase in precarious forms of work more broadly in Ontario (see, for example, Lewchuk et al. 2015). Coverage of the strike included university newspapers, local and national newspapers, magazines, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s public broadcasting system. Titles of news coverage citing the strike included, “Academia has to stop eating its young” (Yazdanian 2015); “Striking Grad Students on What It’s Like to Live on $15,000 a Year” (Yelland 2015). These articles highlighted both job insecurity and income insecurity as key issues. One staff reporter drew links between the strike and the university’s spending. In an article published in the Toronto Star, the reporter wrote that the university’s fund manager was given a $165,000 raise in the year preceding the strike (Levinson King 2015). These public narratives reflected not only the language of precarious employment, but also the questioning of political choices made in the university and, hence, a reflection of graduate employees’ argument about income insecurity. The result of these parallel discourses was media coverage that was relatively supportive of the strikers’ aims. Indeed, an informal survey of media coverage found 35/45 news articles were supportive. Seven articles were coded as neutral, and only three were coded as not supportive.

Many faculty members showed solidarity. The faculty association held a solidarity rally toward the end of the strike. Around thirty-five departments released statements of solidarity, which oft highlighted precarious work and antiausterity statements. For example, faculty in the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) highlighted “the precarious labor conditions that teaching assistants, course instructors and sessional instructors work under” (WGSI Members 2015). Individual faculty members wrote letters of solidarity voicing concern about job insecurity at Canadian universities but also broader issues like declining state funding:

This strike is a symptom of all the things many of us are most concerned about: the shrinking public investment in education; the corporatization of the university; the marginalization of the humanities; the rise of one or another form of precarious employment; the widespread hostility towards organized labour; and the ongoing disaster of our inability to promise PhD students in the humanities a decent chance of securing a tenure-track job. (Downes 2017)

Faculty support bolstered our interrogation of the professor-in-training identity and lent legitimacy to our struggle against job insecurity. In interviews with media, faculty pointed to structural inequities in academia (see, for example, Brown 2015). Many faculty felt the underlying issue was declining state funding of higher education. Around 300 faculty members signed an open letter published in the Toronto Star, stat-ing “chronic provincial underfunding means that Ontario universities are teaching more students per full-time faculty member with less money per student than are uni-versities in any other Canadian province” (Varia 2015a).

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CAS, who are represented by the same union as graduate employees, were very vocal supporters. Because of the way contracts are organized and reorganized, many CAS contracts had been transferred to graduate employees in prior years, and one might expect this to create a divisive relationship between CAS and graduate employ-ees. It did not. During one meeting, a CAS member gave a rousing speech calling on CAS to show “genuine collective power and genuine solidarity” at the strike. One CAS described how it was important to establish our issues as “part of the precariat’s struggle.” This solidarity by CAS was seen across fields. One CAS engineer who was not involved in the union said the following,

I think it’s entirely the place of the union to deal with the issue—especially the job insecurity thing because there’s a whole system there that’s kind of breeding the underclass of academics, that never will have job security—I think it’s exactly the kind of thing the union should take on . . . (Nelson)

Laura, a CAS scientist, said she socialized mostly with other CAS, postdoctoral fel-lows and graduate students because they were “in the same boat.” Laura suggests a common identity between us, based in challenging the professor-in-training identity that presumes future full-time secure academic employment. This shared interrogation of the professor-in-training identity is especially pertinent given CAS’s lived experi-ence doing precarious academic work.

Not all faculty members bought the narrative that graduate employees were precari-ous workers. There was one main reason for this: assuming we are being prepared for a professional career with job security and some degree of upward mobility, the claim of being precarious academic workers was viewed with some skepticism, and some faculty members were unsure that we could be likened to precarious workers. Importantly, they based their disagreement with the precarious worker narrative on the idea that graduate employees were seen as professors-in-training. Elsa, for example, who was a tenured faculty member and former administrator, argued paid graduate employee work differed from CAS work done by nonstudent employees:

I would also draw a big distinction between a sessional and a senior PhD student who’s got some courses to teach. The pay could be better, but I don’t consider it a particularly exploited relationship, in that they’re dying to have courses of their own, so they can sort of have their own syllabi to put in their job dossiers and they can get their teaching evaluated, and their own courses and so on. And we’re often kind of bending over backwards trying to make sure they’ve got those courses. Again, they could be paid better but—and they’re probably putting lots of hours into developing it . . . but I don’t consider that a particularly alienated form of labor necessarily, as opposed to when people have actually graduated and then they’re doing that same kind of work. (Elsa, emphasis added)

Elsa agreed to some extent with the income insecurity claim, but argued we were professors-in-training who needed work experience, and this need for experience negated the exploitative effect seen with CAS work. Some faculty members reflected this view, stating we were being trained for full-time secure jobs and professionalized

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in graduate programs. Some suggested unions were antithetical to academic work more broadly—an argument made in other contexts including where graduate employ-ees are unionizing (Discenna 2010; McDonough 2015).

Although their classes were disrupted by the strike, undergraduate students expressed considerable solidarity with graduate employees. This was unexpected according to one union organizer, who argued student mobilization at the university had dwindled over the past decade. Yet, concerned about their own economic futures—and in some cases, considering graduate studies themselves—students took interest and were generally very supportive. A total of thirty-four undergradu-ate student groups wrote letters of solidarity. Students wrote editorials about our income insecurity:

Graduate students at UofT receive a minimum funding package of $15,000 a year. This amount hasn’t increased since 2008, and it’s well below the $19,307 poverty line for a single adult living in Toronto . . . What’s happening at UofT and York is symptomatic of a larger problem across Canada. Underpaid part-time staff teach a majority of undergraduates in Canada . . . Paying the people who do the majority of teaching a salary that is above the poverty line won’t solve all the problems in academia, but it sure would be a good place to start. (Schwartz 2015)

Students joined our picket lines, and organized a student walkout day in solidarity with graduate employees attended by hundreds (CNW 2015). They spoke to the media about issues of precarious work in the university. One student representative gave a speech following the student walkout showing the stake students had in graduate employees’ struggle:

We’re told that we get a university education and everything will be alright. We’re sold the dream of stability, order, control over our lives, comfort and leisure, and freedom. And yet most of us are already living in precarity. And that precarity is by no means deserved or inevitable . . . I invite you to join us in a movement that is not just about this strike; a movement that demands a restructuring of the top-down corporate university; and fair payment to all of its laborers—and that includes workers in even more precarious positions in the food courts and the custodial staff, free and open education, and an end to the egregious compensation for the university administration and elites. I invite you in discussions to democratize the student body; to pressure the administration to end this strike fairly, and return power to the students and workers of this university, because we are the university—we are UofT! (Liam Fox, Student Representative)10

Undergraduate students formed alliances with organizers in the struggle to reclaim the university and fight against precarious work. Drawing on contemporary antiausterity narratives, undergraduate students interrogated casualization, as one of the unique socioeconomic challenges they would face upon graduation. Mirroring antiausterity narratives found in both the Maple Spring and Occupy movements, students high-lighted issues of precarious work, job insecurity, and income insecurity (Collombat 2014; Gilbert 2013; Rhoades and Rhoads 2003).

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Conclusion

The strike was halted on March 27, 2015 when members voted to send a collective agreement to binding arbitration. The arbitrator upheld the status quo, stating there was no precedent for altering the funding package. However, one year later, the uni-versity announced it would provide additional funds, raising funding up to the level demanded during the strike. Hence, the end sought by union organizers and graduate employees was won, though not through the means of collective bargaining. Instead, by focusing on coalition building, graduate employees gained support and solidarity in media coverage, from undergraduate students and faculty, putting pressure on the uni-versity to address income insecurity. The much larger issue of job security was not addressed, but gained visibility in the university community and in the public eye.

My interpretation of graduate employee identity during the strike is based on my experience as a striking graduate employee, and as a researcher of precarious aca-demic work. It does not reflect all graduate employees’ views. My interpretation of media, faculty, and undergraduate student response is based on years of in-depth observation, interviews, and publicly available data but it is also made in general terms, acknowledging some variation.

The political identity of precarious worker allowed us to recast the strike as a broader struggle for social economic justice in universities, institutions, and the labor market in Canada amid mounting debt, tuition, and cost of living. Interrogating the legitimacy of the professor-in-training identity by highlighting casualization and restructuring in universities and the academic labor market in Canada was a key strat-egy of union organizers and activists. Thus, like Chun’s (2009, 52) informal workers, our classification struggle was about “whose vision of the world should be recognized as authoritative.” The union and striking members made room for a new political iden-tity that was rooted in our lived conditions but was intimately tied to the social and economic conditions of casualization, as well as mounting debt, tuition, and cost of living faced by graduate employees. This research suggests that though the precarious worker may be a political identity tied to narratives of antiausterity and anticorporati-zation, it is also rooted in real economic conditions. Thus, to answer Frase’s critique of Standing, the precariat is both a political identity and one rooted in objective condi-tions. These conditions impact a variety of actors including graduate employees but also faculty and undergraduate students indirectly, and stressing that impact was key to mobilization. Contrary to what skeptics like Frase suggest, the fluidity of the pre-cariat identity can also be a strength. Interrogating the “professors-in-training” identity and developing an alternate political identity—that of the precarious worker—was key to our struggle. This was precisely because that identity was grounded in lived condi-tions but also extended to political claims about the impacts of austerity measures in universities and academic work more broadly, making the 2015 strike one where gains that were broader than bread-and-butter issues were made away from the table.

The point of this analysis is not to uncritically espouse the precarious worker identity—rather, it is to analyze how precariat identities, rooted in real economic conditions, can mobilize coalitions of actors to address these conditions collectively.

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Graduate employee funding at the university varies, with some doing more paid employment than others. Graduate employees in applied fields have different sup-port and prospects in the labor market, but pockets of solidarity existed and in inter-views, some engineers expressed support for union organizing on precarious work issues. Nevertheless, job and income insecurity were experiences familiar to gradu-ate employees, students, faculty, and media outlets appealing to broader publics.

The precarious worker identity may resound with workers who are highly educated, yet unemployed or underemployed who have been shifted into “the precariat.” Scholars should analyze other instances of work intertwined with training, like unpaid intern-ships and apprenticeships to examine their potential convergence and divergence with graduate employee issues and particularly classification struggles around workers, trainees, or apprentice identities. Building on the work of Ross (2003), we might examine how “no collar” work can be a site for exploitation, yet may also be a site for new and innovative forms of resistance.

This research also uncovers some of the reasons faculty members ally with gradu-ate employees against economic insecurity, particularly with regards to job insecurity and income insecurity in the academic sector. Further mobilization is possible among graduate employees and CAS members—who articulate similar struggles with pro-cesses of restructuring and casualization that have cut back full-time permanent employment in the academic sector globally. Graduate employees at private universi-ties and colleges in the United States may face similar classification struggles in orga-nizing campaigns. Tenure-stream faculty also have an interest in addressing precarious work in the academy, which is in part symptomatic of declining state funding and, as some have argued, threatens to deskill and disempower faculty (Ginsberg 2011; Levin and Shaker 2011; Rhoades 1998). However, as shown in this analysis, there are varied opinions among tenure-stream faculty about the role of graduate employees as train-ees, workers, or student-workers. Yet, there are reasons to cultivate solidarity among graduate students and tenure-stream faculty. In the United States, recent bids to elimi-nate tenure in Missouri and Iowa and the gutting of tenure in Wisconsin have raised concerns for the tenure system itself (Flaherty 2017) and concerns that precarious academic work presages an already existing decline in faculty power in universities (Ginsberg 2011; Ovetz 2015; Schuster and Finkelstein 2006).

The potential for graduate employees to align with precarious workers in broader labor movements should be further investigated. Future research should address what alliances can be made between graduate employees and other workers across global labor movements. At other universities, faculty against casualization and restructuring have made alliances with fast-food workers, emphasizing broader labor issues (Cadambi Daniel 2016), suggesting an SMU rooted in broader claims. This suggests a link between academic labor movements and antiausterity movements with respect to a downward mobility precipitated by a hollowing of the middle class noted by others (Collombat 2014; Newfield 2008; Rhoades and Rhoads 2003). Future research should also investigate how social locations of gender, race, ethnicity, and citizenship status align and intersect with precarious worker identities, particularly in the academic sec-tor, as it has been analyzed in other sectors (Briskin 2011; Chun and Agarwala 2013;

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Das Gupta 2006; Kelly and Lubitow 2014; Leah 1999). Crucial to these movements is how to use these intersections, along with precarious worker identity, to build coali-tions in broader struggles for economic security, equity, and social justice (Chun and Agarwala 2013; Collombat 2014).

Acknowledgments

Many union members said that during the strike, they felt a newfound sense of community and camaraderie with their colleagues at the university and made new friendships in the process. I extend my thanks to them, and to all who helped our efforts in the strike. Thanks also to Jennifer Chun, Yangsook Kim, and Yuki Tanaka, who provided helpful feedback on early drafts of this paper. Thanks to Bonnie Fox for her ongoing support of my research and activism. A special thank you goes out to my supervisor Cynthia Cranford for reading several drafts of the paper, and providing constructive feedback and support throughout the process.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1. Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902 organized graduate employees in 1975. Contract academic staff (CAS) who are not graduate students unionized in 2004 as Unit 3 of Local 3902. Unit 3 was not on strike in 2015. Tenure-stream faculty members at the University of Toronto are not unionized, but represented by the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA). The faculty association negotiates salaries for full-time fac-ulty but does not have union status, and, therefore, is not covered by the Ontario Labor Relations Act (OLRA).

2. I use the term “graduate employee” to denote graduate students doing paid employment as Teaching Assistants (TA) or Course Instructors (CI) at the University of Toronto in the 2014-2015 academic year. The exception is when I quote individuals who use the term “graduate students” or when I refer to graduate employees’ student status exclusively. The term “Graduate Student Instructor (GSI),” often used in the United States, is not commonly used in the Canadian context.

3. The minimum annual funding package encompasses both worker and trainee roles taken on by graduate employees. The funding package is a minimum annual sum of money to support the completion of graduate studies. It is composed of taxable employment income from teaching assistantships, course instructor work, and research assistantships, plus non-taxable scholarships or fellowships from both university and state sources. There is varia-tion in the way the funding package is composed for each graduate employee. Those who receive scholarships or fellowships are required to do less paid work than those who do not receive scholarships or fellowships. The graduate employees who do not receive scholar-ships or fellowships are required to do paid work such that their annual funding meets the minimum annual funding requirement.

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4. I use the term “contract academic staff (CAS)” to denote nonstudent university teachers who are not employed in the tenure stream. CAS are often referred to as sessional instruc-tors, sessional lecturers, and adjunct faculty members. As others suggest, to refer to CAS as “part-time faculty” is often misleading, since many CAS work full-time hours (Kezar and Sam 2011).

5. The University and College Academic Staff Survey or UCASS has only recently been reinstated and expanded to include part-time CAS—before, it only accounted for full-time CAS (see Samson 2016).

6. It is also true that some international graduate students return to their home countries to work, and Canadian graduate students work abroad, though data on geographical labor market outcomes are limited. More data are needed to precisely assess graduate student demand for academic jobs.

7. The literature on graduate employee unions shows a trend toward increased unionization and the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision in the United States may support this pattern, though there is some concern that if the decision is overturned in the contemporary U.S. political climate, this will have an impact on graduate employee organizing.

8. At the University of Toronto, in the 2014-2015 academic year, 53,881 undergraduate students were enrolled in Arts and Science programs, which comprise the pure sciences, humanities, and social sciences—while only 5,730 undergraduate students were enrolled in applied sciences and engineering programs (University of Toronto 2015).

9. Research completed per University of Toronto Research Ethics Board Protocol ID 29907.10. The recorded speech was uploaded to YouTube, which I transcribed and used with the

speaker’s written permission.

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Author Biography

Louise Birdsell Bauer is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Toronto. She researches nontenure-track faculty in universities and colleges in Southern Ontario, Canada, focusing on how working conditions marginalize nontenure-track faculty eco-nomically and professionally. Investigating the link between micro-level social relations and meso-level institutional arrangements, she intervenes in debates around precarious work by drawing on identity and boundary work theories. Other research looks at unionism and among racialized social service workers. The common thread in her current research is the differential impact of institutional arrangements on workers’ experiences, attitudes, and lives. Her work has been published in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Work, Employment & Society.