Temple grad students end 6-week strike, ratify new contract that improves pay, benefits, working conditions

TUGSA members ratified a new contract that improves pay, benefits, and working conditions, ending a contentious and unprecedented labor dispute.

Los Angeles Review of Books

Temple University, Striking Grad Students Reach Agreement

Though graduate students remain on strike, a tentative deal could soon end the weeks-long walkout.

Open letter to Temple administration

[Please use the form below to append your signature. We will add names to the letter on a separate document when we receive them.] Dear President Wingard, Provost Mandel, Trustee Chair Morgan: We, the faculty and staff of Temple University, implore you and the administration to rescind the recent cancellation of tuition remission and health care benefits of graduate students and come back to the negotiating table with TUGSA in good faith. These unprecedented moves from the administration have caused Temple untold reputational damage. Both US senators from Pennsylvania and a host of state and local politicians have condemned these moves, as have the American Association of University Professors and leaders from a number of academic societies, including the Modern Language Association and the Society for Music Theory. Faculty from other institutions are circulating petitions saying that they will refuse to speak at or engage with Temple until the strike is resolved. This damage is likely to have financial consequences. We are now at the height of undergraduate and graduate recruiting. Already, admitted undergraduate and graduate students are declaring that they will go elsewhere because of the administration’s actions against TUGSA students. The appearance that the administration is refusing to negotiate makes it extremely difficult to recruit the best graduate students when these recruits are watching what is happening to the students already here. It will also impact Temple’s ability to recruit and retain the best faculty. An R1 (or even an R2) institution needs to show commitment to graduate education, which forms an important part of our educational ecosystem. Graduate students are of immeasurable help in providing guidance to undergraduate students; they also push the faculty to keep current and engage in discourse. Temple’s ranking in US News has already fallen from 103 in Fall 2021 to 121 in Fall 2022. As faculty, we would like for Temple to retain its excellence. Such commitment to graduate education should begin with compensation. We believe that TAs and RAs should be paid a living wage for reasonable work assignments. Paying TAs/RAs a living wage is a diversity, equity, and inclusion issue: working-class, first-generation, BIPOC, international, and differently-abled populations, among others, are often disadvantaged in financing graduate degrees and careers in research and teaching. If Temple truly values the perspectives of these groups, then it needs to fund students sufficiently, so that they can access higher education, feel they are treated with dignity in academia, and join the next generation of knowledge workers. Please negotiate with the students and resolve the strike in a fair and respectful way, so that we may return to fulfilling our mission in research and teaching. Respectfully,

TUGSA Strike Fund | TUGSA

Dispatches from the Picket Lines: All Out for the Temple Graduate Workers Strike - Left Voice

A Temple faculty member reports.