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Section: December 1997
Organizing Graduate Students
Grad student organizers are collecting bargaining authorization cards at Florida State University. The graduate teaching and research assistants want to become part of the United Faculty of Florida. They're part of a nationwide wave of organizing among grad students seeking to improve their salaries and benefits. Notes FSU English literature grad student Ed Lessor: "We also want to overcome the idea that what we do isn't actual work. We teach the courses."
Graduate student organizing is also taking place at the University of Minnesota, where the Minnesota Education Association and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers have begun a joint project to organize the university's 4,000 graduate teaching, research, and project assistants, who teach a high proportion of courses in many departments.
Education Support Personnel at Jefferson Community College are Ohio's newest higher ed members. Jefferson faculty have been bargaining collectively since the 1970s.
