NYU’s graduate student worker union started compensating over 650 teaching assistants for their hours spent attending lectures. The reimbursement, which covers TAs’ back pay since the fall 2022 semester, was a result of a collective grievance with the university that led to a $1 million settlement.
A student worker in the union, GSOC-UAW Local 2110, reported over a year ago that although they were required to attend lectures for their assigned course, that time was not accounted for in their paycheck. Meghna Yadav, a fourth-year Ph.D. student and GSOC member, said that after the union investigated the student’s complaint, it found that numerous TAs in the Graduate School of Arts & Science have faced similar situations.
“The union investigated this thoroughly with the help of all the rank and file, gathered a bunch of information, and had workers input their hours and calculate the difference in the pay that they were getting and what they should be getting,” Yadav said in an interview with WSN. “We found in our contract that you should be getting paid differentially if you’re being asked to attend lectures. On the basis of all of this, they were able to file a collective grievance, and we won.”
Jonah Inserra, a unit representative and GSOC organizer, said that all TAs receive an appointment letter detailing their job expectations and salary. Inserra said that following GSOC’s successful negotiations, NYU began sending additional letters to TAs who were mandated to attend lectures last spring, specifying that they would get paid for those hours.
The university provided GSOC with a list of TAs that have proposed unfulfilled compensations which outlines the amount that each individual is entitled to receive from the total settlement. Yadav and Inserra said that several TAs that are required to attend lectures are seemingly missing from this spreadsheet and that the list only states a portion of some student workers’ deserved back pay. In response, GSOC circulated a form online to communicate with affected TAs and compensate those with inaccuracies on the spreadsheet.
“We’ve had to do some work to make sure that people who were owed their money are indeed receiving it,” Inserra said in an interview with WSN. “A lot of people did get it in the first round of payouts, but a lot of people were skipped over for whatever reason.”
GSOC saw numerous other wins after filing over three dozen grievances with NYU in the last academic year. The union reported defending nine graduate student workers who were allegedly targeted for participating in pro-Palestinian speech on campus, uncompensated workers who attended a requiring training at the School of Global Public Health and others who performed the responsibilities of adjunct instructors without the title or benefits of the position.
“We want to make the grievances process stronger and more attuned to not simple bread-and-butter issues, but political speech and intellectual freedom issues that we’ve been running into quite a lot in the past year at the university,” Inserra said. “It’s about the money and it’s about the benefits, but it’s always also about the way that we are able to do our jobs — regardless of how we’re being compensated for them — and just wider issues of political solidarity. But it’s up to our members to make this decision.”
A university spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Contact Liyana Illyas at [email protected].
