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Organizing Graduate Employees: The New Taking Root in The Old
Enku MC Ide
Graduate Student
Masters Candidate
The University of Kentucky
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
Submission to ASK Conference Jules Delambre Student Paper Contest
September 23, 2011
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INTRODUCTION
In reviewing the various and often conflicting approaches central to the sociological
subfield of social movements, several highly debated questions emerge. Primarily, theorists and
researchers continue to grapple with what constitutes a social movement as opposed to other
forms of group behavior. Karl Dieter-Opps review of this question sheds light on the current
cacophony of responses to this question: whereas some scholars focus primarily on protest
activity itself, others highlight beliefs opinions or affinities, and still others believe the answer
lies in organizations and networks (For an overview, see Dieter-Opp 2009: 34-36). Of the many
questions raised, Dieter-Opp is certain of one thing: unions are not social movement
organizations, but rather interest groups. Other scholars disagree with this assessment, but there
is a recognition that social movement sociologists have overlooked the labor movement. This is
understandable, as the largest unions and union federations have consciously sought to obscure
any view of themselves as social movement organizations (SMOs) since the 1950s, rather acting
as and presenting themselves as interest groups. (Fantasia and Stepan-Norris 2007: 556) It is
less clear why scholars have overlooked other labor movement forces. Dissident locals and
extra-union organizations and communities have operated as social movements, and have often
consciously thought of themselves as social movements. Much current social movement theory
falls under the broad term of new social movement (NSM) theory. Beginning during the
heightened wave of global protest activity in the late 1960s, many writers have distanced NSM
theory from the labor movement. In our current phase, it may prove fruitful to replant some
aspects of labor into the movement literature, using NSM theory where applicable to help
describe the trajectory of todays labor struggles both within and outside of the unions.
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In contrast to the functions of large and bureaucratic unions, for example, we can find
many graduate employee unions clearly engaging in practices outlined throughout the new social
movement literature. As such, these SMOs challenge conceptualizations concerning the scope
and activities of labor unions while sensitizing us to recognize the abeyant strain of social
movement unionism, which has been written about by some scholars but has been generally
overlooked by labor scholars and sociologists. Analyzing the labor movementas opposed to
simply the large unions may yield important insights into social movement dynamics.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY
Historic overview
Sociological social movement theory has undergone several shifts from the collective
behavior perspective that grounded much of this research and theory prior to the broad upsurges
that culminated in 1968. Resource mobilization and rational choice theories, challenging the
basic assumptions of collective behavior theories that assumed activists to be socially
malintegrated and characterized activism as a form of deviance, gained disciplinary prominence
in the 1970s. Since that time, other theories, often under the umbrella of new social movement
(NSM) theories have continued to sensitize us as researchers to many previously overlooked
aspects of movement dynamics concerning their emergence, recruitment practices, message
framing, outcomes, and decline. With the political process approach emerging in 1982 in
McAdams Political Process and the Development of the Black Insurgency 1930-1970 ,
sociologists began looking to the social and political opportunities external to social movement
organizations (SMOs) as a crucial factor in such movement dynamics.
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New social movement theories themselves represented one way in which sociologists
sought to distinguish their own subject of interest from the old labor and working class
movements that were central to the rise of the New Left of the 1960s. In a dialectical
relationship with the rise and fall of the New Left, new identity-based (including feminism,
LGBTQ, civil rights) and belief- or value-based (environmentalism, anti-war/peace) movements
came to the foreground of sociological research and thinking. We now find ourselves 43 years
past the 1968 upsurge. As we look back onto the rise of NSM theory and its cleavage from
class-based movements, we have now developed these theoretical approaches sufficiently to
question the new vs. old dichotomy (Buechler 1995: 447). Elements thought to be new at
the time are now understood to have existed historically through various movements, including
the labor movement. In an interesting reversal, many of the new social movements have
significantly declined and certain NSM SMOs have themselves become institutionalized,
especially through the Democratic Party. This has lead some writers to suggest that the
movements springing from the fracturing of the New Left were characterized more by an
upswing in activism during a specific crest in a global cycle of protest rather than by a distinct
break with previous movement traditions (Buechler 1995: 445, 448).
New social movement theories: framing, identity, and the comeback of class
With an appreciation of NSM Theories as a new way of sociologically studying social
movements rather than reflecting inherent newness to the movements under question, we can
turn our attention to the sensitizing insights ofNSM theories contributions to the study of social
movements. NSM theories have addressed the what and the how of social movements: both
the content of what researchers saw as most salient since the long 60s cycle of protest and the
processes by which movement actors mobilized.
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NSM theories reflected the cultural turn within sociology and other academic
disciplines and have focused on how ideas, including identities, grievances, frames, strategies,
and goals, are developed and deployed in the service of social movements. Beyond providing
new concepts to highlight and problematize previously taken for granted aspects of social
movement dynamics, particular NSM theories have helped researchers think through the nature
of social movements through looking at the concepts of resistance and democracy.
The idea of social movements as resistance movements is particularly clear with
reference to Habermas, whosepowerful colonization metaphor delineates a distinction
between an economic and administrative system which rules by power and money under a
systemic logic of commodification and bureaucratization (Habermas 1981: 36; Buechler 1995:
433) and a lifeworld governed by normative consensus (Buechler 1995: 455). For Habermas,
the new conflicts thus arise at the seam between system and life-world (1981: 36). One could
understand this dynamic as the constant dialectic of re-emerging spheres of social life. This
logic seems reminiscent of Webers concerns of an iron cage of rationalization or Marxs
observation that bourgeois colonization draws in all people, creating a world after its own
image. Habermas focus on lived experience outside of the logics of rationalization and
capitalism has sensitized NSM theorists to understand social movements emanating from a
mosaic of individuals and communities identities, concerns and beliefs, laying the groundwork
for many NSM theories. Social movements as conceived by NSM theorists work to sustain
collective identities, defend popular interests, and, crucially, create and defend autonomous
and democratic spaces for marginalized communities (Buechler 1995: 433).
In resisting social and cultural colonization and defending autonomy, NSMs are typically
described (ideally) as inherently democratic, following a prefigurative logic of modeling the
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change for which a group is fighting. Underlying the view of democratic resistance is an
essentially authoritarian tendency within capitalist and bureaucratic systems of power which
benefit elites. NSMs are seen to rely primarily on symbolic actions which defend against not
only the social and cultural colonization of powerful interests, but crucially to defy the basic
logic of those interests, which are often masked in a discourse of efficiency (Buechler 1995:
443). Autonomy and democracy, then, have become benchmarks against which some NSM
theorists have come to judge movements. The formation of autonomous and democratic spaces
can allow movements to take on both defensive and offensive characteristics. Democratization,
then, can be seen as resistance against systemic colonization while also taking a proactive stance
with respect to lifeworld rationalization (Buechler 1995: 449).
Dovetailing with this focus on cultural resistance was an analytic schema deployed by
Snow et al. (1986) concerning how movements frame issues of concern, describing both the
importance and functioning of collective action frames in political protest movements. Snow
et als1986 work, Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement
Participation popularized the framing perspective and delineated an early formulation of frame
alignment processes by which individuals come to accept the framing of a social movement
organization. Whereas grievances were previously assumed to flow directly from ones
structural location (often economic location), a framing analysis is based in the insight that
problems must be understood in specific ways if corrective action is to be successfully
demanded. Specifically, this framing or interpretive work is a collective and interactive
process by which misfortunesmust come to seemboth unjust and mutable (Snow et al. 1986:
466 emphasis added; Snow 2007: 384; Buechler 1995: 446).
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Movements therefore act as signifying agents as movement communities, networks,
and organizations develop and sustain meaning in a way that encourages action to purposefully
change (or resist change) in the social world (Snow 2007: 384). Although frame alignment has
generally been thought of as a micro, almost social-psychological process, more recently
scholars have recognized the role of framing at the organizational level in the mobilization of an
assortment of groups rather than an individual per se (Snow 2007: 387) Of framing processes
described by Snow et al., the most dramatic is termed frame transformation, through which
activities, events, and biographies that are already meaningful from the standpoint of some
primary framework are redefined in such a way that they seem by the participants to be
something quite else (Snow et al. 1986: 473). The inclusion of biography in the above
statement highlights the shifting and (sub)culturally-defined nature of identities, the construction
and maintenance of which are key to NSM theories. Whereas C. Wright Mills discussed how
historic social changes impact the biographies of individuals, we now appreciate that
resocialization into movement communities can transform ones subjective understanding of
events, grievances, and ones identity, a key process within a movements interpretive work.
The emergence and growing salience of an identity aligned to a social movement
community, or a collective identity, are both a major prerequisite and a major
accomplishment of the new social movements (Buechler 1995: 446). Although the class base
of NSMs has been described as the new middle class, this comes across more as a descriptor of
many identity-focused movements under consideration that does not necessarily disqualify
activists from other economic classes, especially those with contradictory class locations, as
being involved in NSM activity (Buechler 1995: 454). In fact, the creation and maintenance of a
class identity may be treated as other collective identities in social movement analyses.
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The new middle class in the United States came to prominence in the post World War
II period, as the GI Bill and Cold War development and research lead to a doubling of college
enrollment between 1945 and 1950. Universities became training grounds for new generations
of members of the professional managerial class and Cold Warriors (Aronowitz and Difazzio
2010: 41; Ciafone 2005: 5). Thisperiod of the embourgeoisement of the US population has
been described as the end of the working class (Walkerdine and Ringrose 2006: 3).
In reality, increasing security, upward mobility and living standards during the post-war
boom were coupled with an ideological fight against communism. Cold War sectarianism
marginalized social analyses that might have questioned utopian capitalism by focusing on the
operation of class within the United States, leading to the invisibility of class as a concept
(Skeggs 2002: 7). The new middle class were not the maligned bosses of the Marxist
imagination, but rather professionals within the government and corporate bureaucracies
which also doubled in the immediate post-war period.
Ideologically, this new designation so hegemonically permeated American life that even
labor leaders today, whose currently declining positions were forged in the post-war labor
contract with capital, continue to describe union factory workers as middle class. This new
class dynamic formed the material basisfor the American ideology of exceptionalism, and
particularly, the belief in mobility which would take central importance in the rise of neoliberal
ideology (Aronowitz and Difazzio 2010: 41). While many of these private sector professional
workers were still exploited, intergenerational living standards rose for this class of mainly
white, male workers. Academic prestige and higher levels of autonomy allowed the US
worldview to trumpet Weberian status-based arguments while maligning Marxian economic-
class analysis.
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Given that class identity formation, along with other identities, can be seen as the
intersections of the subjective, the group, and the structural, class identity can be studied through
NSM lenses initially developed to highlight other realms of identity. Like race, gender, and
sexuality, class identities must be stimulated, nurtured and even molded (Snow 2007: 381)
through collective processes if a movement is to challenge the common assumption that America
is homogenously middle class. While microsituational encounters can be seen as ground
zero for all social action structural inequality is based in a societys economic organization
(Stuber 2006: 343; Yodanis 2006: 343). Subjectivity, then, is constructed from positions within
social relations and structures (Skeggs 2002: 12). As Marx explained, Men [sic]make their
own history, but not just as they please The legacy of the dead generations weighs like a
nightmare upon the brains of the living. It may be helpful then for sociologists to describe the
dialectical relationship between these two levels of analysis, with a reminder that neither
structures nor beliefs are static and class can be seen as a process always changing and in
formation (Bettie 2003: 193). These insights reinforce the fact that, against structuralist or
economic-determinist viewpoints, changes in economic structure do not seamlessly lead to class
consciousness without the ideological intervention of those ready to advocate for a reformulation
of class subjectivity as enacted and performed daily on the micro level (Skeggs 2002: 6).
Although most NSM theorizing of identity has focuses on the internal culture of social
movement organizations and networks, Buechler notes that NSM theories also attempt to
understand the structural backdrop of movement organizing (Buechler 1995: 443). One
attempt to incorporate this backdrop is the political process/political opportunities approach.
These models can be fused with cultural models to highlight both political and cultural or
symbolic opportunities that determine what kind of ideas become visible for the public, resonate
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with public opinion and are held to be legitimate by the audience. (Kriesi 2007: 72) According
to Snow, such political and cultural opportunities can call current cultural frames into question,
giving space for social movements to perform interpretive work in the newly-opened cultural
space (Snow 2007: 385).
Political shifts can change power relations between social groups (often the elites and the
marginalized) with distinct interests. According to McAdam, any event or broad social process
that serves to undermine the calculations and assumptions on which the political establishment is
structured occasions a shift inpolitical opportunities. (1982: 41) Central to this analysis is
McAdams inclusion of long-term socioeconomic changes. Some changes, those which create
greater political opportunity of insurgent groups, can simultaneously improve the bargaining
position of a population while also hindering elites abilities to suppress mobilization (McAdam
1982: 42-43). Activists insurgent potential springs from their location in various politico-
economic structures (McAdam 1982: 37). However, this potential will likely not be realized
when lacking previously-mentioned framing processes. It is through this specific frame
alignment, described as cognitive liberation, that social actors come to recognize and act upon
this increase in structural power (McAdam 1982: 50). This process is only likely to occur when
organizations or networks contain sufficiently strong interpersonal connections among members
as to facilitate (as a group) such framing (McAdam 1982).
The above discussion highlights theoretical themes that will be salient to the following
analysis of graduate employee unions. Rather than seeing each of these theories and their related
conceptual tools as variables for movement emergence and participation, I will be focusing on
the dialectical relationship through which the political opportunity structure impacts groups
decisions to form unions (as opposed to other activist organizations or none at all), and how
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those labor organizations utilize framing. This analysis gives special consideration to social
movement unionism, a closely-related field of action to graduate employee unions which is
highly congruent with NSM theories.
ON THE LABOR MOVEMENT: BUREAUCRACY vs. SOCIAL MOVEMENT UNIONISM
As noted earlier, the labor movement has had a tenuous relationship with current social
movement theorizing, with the bureaucratic and interest group pole of the labor movement
capturing the imagination of many observers. Whereas it is accurate that many unions have not
acted as SMOs in the second half of the 20
th
century, researchers have overlooked the diversity
within the movement that includes elements of radical, and even new social movements
(Fantasia and Stepan-Norris 2007: 556). Recognizing this dynamic, we can speak of two souls
of the labor movement, with new social movement elements acting both outside of and within
(and often against) the bureaucratic tendencies and hierarchies of many unions.
Bureaucratic unionism
The bureaucratic model of unionism has been termed service unionism or business
unionism reflecting a tendency to concentrate power in the union hierarchy, cooperate with
management to discipline and regulate the workforce and discourage democratic tendencies
within the union (Parker and Gruelle 1999: 24; Moody 2007: 184; Clawson 2003: 42). This
tendency within many unions is characteristic of the interest group model of unionism, and
clearly does not act as a social movement. Business unionism became entrenched and
institutionalized in the post World War II accord between business and labor. For example,
union staffs expansion quickly outpaced rank and file member growth in the period from 2949 to
1970, signaling a power shift from union members to expert and professional union staff
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(Clawson 2003: 32-33). This is clearly seen in the history and organization of the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) which organized white, male workers beginning in 1886 partly to
pull American workers away from the more radical Knights of Labor, which at the time counted
over 700,000 members (approximately 10% of the American industrial labor force), including
male and female, white and black workers outside of the South (Fantasia and Stepan-Norris
2007: 561).
Social movement unionism
The often-overlooked radical pole of the labor movement, a central branch of which is
termed social movement unionism, is characterized by labor organizations and networks which
provide a radical vision and employ internal union democracy in the struggle on the shop floor as
well as broad progressive struggles for the working class and oppressed communities (Moody
2007: 236). Fantasia and Stepan-Norris succinctly lay out one history of social movement
unionism, tracing their analysis to the above mentioned Knights of Labor in 1886 (2007: 563).
The basic formula for social movement unionism is laid out as union + community + issue
campaign (Moody 2007: 236). The community in this formula may be local or global. Such
social movement unionism often also relies on internationalism, making it highly congruent with
current global flows of both workers and capital. Moody, for example, includes organizations
such as COSATU in South Africa as well as transnational ties between US unions and their
counterparts abroad (Moody 2007: 236-239). These dynamics are particularly well suited to
produce a convergence of theories that explain both old and new social movements (Carty
2006: 239).
Further, organizations are not static, but can vacillate between poles with changing
conditionsboth internal and external to the movement, such as shake up internal elections and
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campaigns. In the decline of the union movement, however, social movement unionism has been
given increased opportunity to organize within the traditional union movement and alongside the
unions themselves. Todays social movement unionism recognizes many forms of organizing in
the support of workers and alliances in an overall struggle for justice (Carty 2006: 242). The
social movement wing of the labor movement can be seen in the rise of several organizations and
networks. Workers Centers, for example, operate on a community-basis and often organize
immigrant labor and other labor pools historically overlooked by unions. These non-profits are
organized locally and networked through groups including the National Day Laborer Organizing
Network and Interfaith Worker Justice. Community-labor partnerships such as Jobs with Justice
use social movement tactics in support of labor causes. Extra-union organizations and networks
also facilitate social movement unionism by promoting internal union democracy while helping
to highlight the broad field of labor and community-labor struggles. Two prominent
organizations in this regard are the Association for Union Democracy and Labor Noteswhose
express purpose is putting the movement back in the labor movement.
Groups internal to the union movement also organize within the social movement union
frame: reform caucuses within unions, such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union, raise
questions about internal union democracy while groups like US Labor Against War, the Labor
Network for Sustainability, and the Congress of Rank and File Educators advocate around
central social movement issues from a labor perspective. The United Electricians, the
independent, rank-and-file union, gives a union organizational form to social movement
aspirations through a commitment to internal democracy and building international solidarity
with workers in Mexico, China and the Philippines. Central to this study, student-labor solidarity
organizations have strengthened social movement unionism over the last two decades. Gaining
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resources and strategic support from unions, student groups have fought for an international and
community solidarity approach to workers rights, with student-labor alliances being seen as a
clear example of social movement unionism (Carty 2006: 244). These groups include United
Students Against Sweatshops, the Student Labor Action Project, and the Student Farmworker
Alliance.
Whereas the previous discussion of current social movement unionism groups is not
exhaustive, it should give pause to sociologists who would discount the labor movement as
simply a bureaucratic hold-over of an earlier age or an interest group. One might question why
such diverse SMOs have been routinely overlooked within the discipline, which has favored
(while simultaneously discounting) the official labor movement. Part of this may be the
institutionalization of labor studies and industrial relations programs. These programs have
likely overlooked the radical wings of the labor movement that are often critical of the large
unions and labor federations which supply crucial support to labor studies in the decline of
public funding. As relations between labor-oriented SMOs have not been holistically studied,
these groups are at times looked at through the lenses of other movements. For example, a
review of peace activism (see Coy, Whirley, and Maney 2008) may mention labor-oriented
SMOs such as US Labor Against the War. Without a coherent study of labor SMOs addressing a
gamut of social issues, operating with varying degrees of relations to unions, a full understanding
of labors place in the social movement literature is lacking.
Although the AFL has been the main labor federation in the US for over a century, social
movement unionism has continued to resist both business and business unionism throughout this
period. Most notably, the early phase of the CIO included many communists, socialists, and
other labor radicals. Left-lead unions continued the social movement unionism tradition with a
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looking into LMONs is the study of graduate employee unionism. These organizations display
many features of social movement unionism and serve as linkages between the traditional labor
movement and the new social movements in which university students often play several roles
(Carty 2006: 239). With the recent upsurge in graduate employee unions, their willingness to tie
their workplace struggles to fights of collective consumption, the important role that university
settings have played in many social movements, and the possibility that the rapid turn-over in
graduate employment may undermine bureaucratic tendencies, graduate employee unions seem
uniquely suited to begin an investigation of social movement unionism, thus reinserting labor
into the discourse of NSM theory and research.
GRADUATE EMPLOYEE UNIONS
Graduate employee organizing is a timely topic, with some scholars suggesting that the
campaigns have grown to the point that we can talk of a graduate employee union movement
(Dixon et al. 2008: 379; Rhoades and Rhoads 2003: 176). Although early attempts at graduate
employee unionization were closely tied to the New Left in the 1960s (with the University of
Wisconsin at Madison recognizing the first union in 1969), the movement remained small for
twenty years (Dixon et al. 2008: 376; Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 247). Labor protests picked up
on university campuses in the late 1990s, however (Dixon et al. 2008: 375). An analysis of the
Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions (CGEU) website shows that only seven graduate
employee union locals were recognized between 1969 and 1989, whereas twenty-three were
recognized between 1990 and 2009 (http://www.cgeu.org). Given that many of these newer
union locals cover several campuses within one system (including the University of California
and the State Universities of New York), this organizing uptick between 1990 and 2005 swelled
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the ranks of organized graduate employees by 175%, from 19,900 to 40,000 (Rhoads and
Rhoades 2005: 284). Since 2005, five graduate employee unions have won recognition,
indicating that this number is considerably greater today. These locals tend to be located in the
Midwest (48%) and the Northeast (29%), with each local residing in a state that allows collective
bargaining for public employees. The legal recognition of the right to collectively bargain
impacts the likelihood that unions, such as the UAW, AFT, or UE, will support organizing on
campus, increasing the odds that these international unions will gain a return on their
investments of capital and energy (Dixon et al. 2008: 382).
Each graduate employee local is affiliated with a national union or labor organization,
with a slight majority of locals being affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
and almost 26% being affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) (http://www.cgeu.org).
As the UAW covers several system-wide locals, however, in 2005 they represented 42% of all
graduate employee unionists while the AFT represented 24% (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 248).
Again, these percentages have likely changed since 2005, as the AFT picked up three locals
since that period and the UAW has not added any locals in the last six years. Regardless, the
high representation percentages by the UAW, as opposed to the AFT, a union of professionals,
indicate both that graduate employees identification as workers, may play a role in their
organizational affiliation.
Political opportunities in academia
Sensitized to political opportunity and political process orientations within new social
movement theories, an analysis of graduate employee unions would be incomplete without a
review of the shifting structures and cultures within the academy. While the university system
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played a central role in the formation of the new middle class after WWII from which NSMs
are thought to emanate, current shifts in the academic workplace in the last three to four decades
bear directly on the current organizing drives and may have wide implications for the class
composition of American society.
In the economic expansion beginning in 1945, the rise of the professional class was
directly related to vast expansions of the university system and bureaucracies throughout both
government and corporate structures, facilitating the belief of relatively easy class mobility and
class fluidity (Aronowitz and Difazzio 2010: 41). In the 1970s, massive divestments began
through public higher education (Etin 2005: 26). Correspondingly, university administrators
turned to private funding sources, including increases in student tuition and corporate research
funding. These funding needs dovetailed well with corporate investment interests of the time.
With decreasing material production within the United States, corporations sought investments in
other arenas of social life. According to Castree and Sparke:
Businessmen are flocking to education, bringing with them a flood of dollars. They
say they will turn the $700 billion education sector into the next healthcarethat is,transform large portions of a fragmented, cottage industry of independent, nonprofitinstitutions into a consolidated, professionally managed, money-making set of businessesthat include all levels of education (2000: 225).
This flocking could be understood as a capitalist colonization of the lifeworlds,
creating new channels of previously unproductive labor power to generate private profits within
public social services, including the communal space of academic freedom that is the
educational ideal (Castree and Sparke 2000: 223). According to Foucault, this is not a
dichotomous clashing of systems, but rather an outgrowth of complex power relations that
influence both organizational structure and the ideological underpinnings of their functioning
(Ouellette 2008: 233).
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Researchers and activists have described these structural changes, with union organizing
being understood primarily as a reaction to changes in university labor conditions (Dixon et al.
2008: 380). These shifts have been described as the de-professionalization and
proletarianization of academic work (Etin 2005: 73; Aronowitz and Diffazio 2010: 221). This
proletarianization includes the demand for increasingly flexible labor (with less stability and
fewer benefits), decreases in work autonomy (with an intensification of hierarchy and increased
power of managers/administrators), and an inability to control labor supply (Aronowitz 1998:
161-162; Slaughter 2000: 73). Whereas some professional associations have historically been
able to control entry into the fields of medicine, law, engineering and accounting, these
associations are now undermined by the internal business needs of professional schools. Across
these sectors, increasing numbers of credentialed workers is likely to lead to increases in
unemployment (Aronowitz 1998: 162).
This de-professionalization has not occurred evenly across disciplines and activities,
however. The university has shifted from a liberal arts core to an entrepreneurial periphery
where increased proportions of both private and state funding are moved into economically
productive fields including business, engineering, physical sciences and law (Rhoads and
Rhoades 2005: 251). Injections of market capital into research further alienates workers.
Under market logic, research directed by autonomous and curious, morally charged scientists for
the sake of long-term social and scientific significance is undermined to make increasing room
for research that is assessed as potentially profitable (Castree et al. 2006: 763). Corporate
funding schemes also alienate researchers from one another, with patent concerns taking central
importance over the open and cumulative search for knowledge. Contemporary funding systems
have not only impacted the size and activity of programs, but have translated into a devaluing of
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work, particularly teaching, in the humanities and social sciences. Teaching assistants (TAs) in
these fields earning an average of $5,000 less than their research counterparts in the physical
sciences (Dixon et al. 2008: 379).
Perhaps most important implication of changing funding schemes in relation to graduate
employee unionization is the percentage of undergraduate teaching performed by flexible
labor, including teaching assistants, part-time instructors, and other non-tenure-track faculty.
The use ofnonstandard employees has been described as a major cause in increased organizing
efforts (Dixon et al. 2008: 380). Whereas past cohorts had reasonable expectations of receiving
tenure track jobs after the completion of a PhD, today 75% of new appointments are not tenure-
track (Etin 2005: 27). This coincides with a decrease in tenure track positions of 10% since the
late 1990s and an increase in TA positions of 40% (Dixon et al. 2007: 377). Non-tenure-track
faculty members, then, teach the majority of undergraduate students in college campuses and
(when including for-profit, private and public institutions) account for 70% of all faculty
positions (Dixon et al. 2007: 380; Etin 2005: 26). Culturally, this decline in the size of tenure-
faculties has created a power vacuum of university governance which has been filled by
increased administrative and managerial power (Etin 2005: 73). These wide economic,
structural, and cultural changes within higher education can be seen as a historically specific
social formations which is the structural backdrop for graduate employee unionizing
(Buechler 1995: 443).
These changing structures within higher education pose a paradoxical issue for graduate
employees and other non-tenure-track faculty. With a solidifying of power among
administrators, individual non-tenure-track educational workers are at a disadvantage. In fact,
the increase in contingent teaching (described by Etin as a two-tier labor system in higher
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education) is undermining the ability of graduates to find tenure-track jobs, purging the system
of the very jobs that many graduate employees expect to receive (Etin 2005: 73). However, the
sheer amount of teaching work done on college campuses by these workers allows for a great
amount of structural power when struggled for collectively. According to McAdam, long-term
socioeconomic changes can impact the amount of structural power of different groups,
accounting for improved bargaining positions (1982: 42-43). This increased political leverage
may thus be described as a political opportunity within universities, which can become a
cultural opportunity if graduate employee unions can effectively foment collective liberation
among academic workers. This seems to be the case, as research has indicates that the graduate
employee unionization movement is primarily a reaction to changing labor conditions within
the university (Dixon et al. 2008: 380).
Framing: When work and collective goods meet
The changing structure and cultures of higher education described above are often
credited with the rise in graduate employee unions. The inclusion of these details in much of the
analysis concerning (and coming from) unionists and their supporters represents one aspect of
the interpretive work offraming: highlighting these facts function to organize experience and
guide action (Snow et al. 1986: 464). Within this framing, the above changes are often labeled
neoliberalism, academic capitalism, or the corporate university by unionists and
supporters. Perhaps the most important task of graduate employee unionists, then, is frame
amplification by which particular elements of the structure are highlighted and problematized.
Through belief amplificationand value amplification (Snow et al. 1986: 469) unionists may
frame such changes as dire threats. This seems to be happening, with much of the criticism
framing an assault in which a hostile takeover by an external enemythreatens the basic
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values of the academy (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 252). Unionists have also displayed
attempts at value amplification, elevating concerns about democracy, shared-governance,
workers rights, social justice, and protecting education from this corporatization. Together,
these processes reflect an attempt on the part of activists to foment cognitive liberation as
discussed by McAdam (1982).
Whereas expanding political opportunities and increases in structural power build
structural potential for social movements, SMOs must translate such potential into a campaign
(McAdam 1982: 44). This translation is mediated via framing. Whereas framing can be seen in
messaging, by using terms like academic capitalism or identifying as graduate employees
rather than graduate students, the organizational response of unionization, as opposed to other
forms of organizing, can be seen as a symbolic action in itself. Rhoads and Rhoades found that
union organizers see unionization as both a symbol of and challenge to the corporatization of
the American research university (2005: 246). NSM theory, being concerned with such
symbolic action, is therefore well suited to address this movement (Buechler 1995: 442).
The structural changes described above closely follow the logic of capitalism: the logic
of accumulation, commodification, profit-maximization, competition. (Wood 1997). By
viewing structural and cultural changes within higher education in this way, we may describe
them in Habermasian terms as the colonization of the lifeworld of higher education. Graduate
employee unions and individual activists have been highly consistent on this point, defining their
organizing as a resistance to a corporate-driven economic logic in the contemporary university
(Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 252).
To the extent that graduate employee unions resist these changes by defying both
capitalist logic and the administrative-centric power structure, we can think of these movements
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as resistance movements against such colonization. This formulation places graduate
employee unions unambiguously within the realm of NSMT, with a focus on resistance to a
systemic logic of commodification and bureaucratization (Buechler 1995: 433). Research has
indicated that this is the case. Graduate employee unions both seek to alter the distribution of
power within the academy through collective bargaining and challenge the market-driven
aspects of the university (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 243). Researchers have predicted that this
colonization may push graduate employees toward identifying as workers (Rhoads and
Rhoades 2005: 270). It is here, at the seam of the lifeworld of the university and what is seen
as encrosion by corporate-driven economic logic that graduate employee unionists framed
their struggle (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 252).
Although Habermas sees such resistance as purely defensive, to the degree that such
LMONs in higher education actively construct democratic spaces and facilitate the emergence of
lifeworlds within a colonized system, we can recognize the potential for progressive and
radical elements within the movement. Studies of graduate employee organizing indicate that
democracy is a central theme among these organizations and activists. In portraying the
consolidation of administrative power as antidemocratic, graduate employee unions have
highlighted the connection between democracy and collective bargaining (Dawson 2007: 93).
It has also been found that graduate employee union websites regularly focus on democratic
discourse, with a strong theme of participatory democracy and challenge the commodification
of the knowledge commons by decrying the erosion of autonomous governance (Dawson
2007: 92). Although NSM theory focuses more on promoting autonomy and self
determination than on maximizing influence and power, these unions see the struggles for
democracy and for increased power as synonymous (Buechler 1995: 442). Concerns about
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democracy are another indication that these LMONs are within the realm of social movement
unionism, as also signified by their willingness to take on broader issues than the rights of their
members as workers.
Along with concerns of democracy, both social movement unionism and other NSMs
are deeply concerned with justice and building cross-movement alliances. One NYU graduate
employee activist describes how the union has created committeesto embrace activism on
issues as varied as academic freedom, environmentalism, [and] peace (Dawson 2007: 98). The
NYU organizing campaign operated under the banner Another University is Possible. This
slogan is a play on the theme of the social forum movement: Another World is Possible,
indicating that activists constructed their message in a way as to highlight their connections with
widespread social justice concerns. A review of graduate employee union websites also shows
that concern for social justice, particularly affirmative action (Rhoades and Rhoads 2003: 177).
In framing their struggle as one against corporatization, graduate employee unions are not only
working to protect their members, but education more broadly. The protection of the public
good, as well as the possibility that such defensive maneuvering can sow the seeds for proactive
struggle, has been described in heroic terms by Bourdieu:
If one can retain some hope, it is that in state institutions there still exist forces which,under the appearance of simply defending a vanishing orderwill in facthave to work
to invent and construct a social order which is not governed solely by the pursuit ofselfish interests and individual profit. (Dawson 2007: 91)
The defense of public goods, then, is seen as embodying a resistance from the
universality of capitalist logic, while holding ground within the lifeworld from which a
counterattack can be mounted. These demands are in line with NSM theories emphasis on
demands concerning collective consumption provided by the state (Buechler 1995: 433).
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Protecting education, specifically, is well-suited to concerns of NSM theorists, who see NSMs as
being concerned about cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization, all processes
central to the educational experience (Buechler 1995: 446). Graduate unions have consistently
raised the theme of protecting public education from the commodifying impacts of academic
capitalism. These grievances, as raised on graduate employee union websites, concern class size
and available training for graduate employee teachers (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 247, 252).
These grievances can be seen as instances of frame bridging and laid out by Snow et al.
(1986). This interpretive work refers to linking ideologically congruent but structurally
unconnected frames (Snow et al. 1986: 467). In taking on issues of collective consumption,
graduate employee unions are able to gain support among unmobilized sentiment pools of
undergraduate students, their parents, and other supporters of quality education, thus building
their support base.
When interviewed, graduate employee unionists have described the devaluation of their
work as teachers indicates a lack of concern for undergraduate education on the part of
administrators. Administrations profit-maximizing strategies have thus been described as
assembly line undergraduate education which undermines both educational quality for students
and working conditions for teachers (Rhoades and Rhoads 2003: 176). This issue of the pride in
ones work ties together materialist grievances of pay and benefits with postmaterialist concerns
of dignity and respect. Academics, as both teachers and researchers, are socialized to care
deeply about their work. This indicates an emotional quality to framing among graduate
employee unions.
Whereas concerns for institutional democracy and shared governance, social justice, and
educational quality are pertinent to graduate employee unions framing and grievances, the
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graduate employee unionizations main concerns are wages, benefitsprotections[and]
health care insurance (Rhoades and Rhoads 2003: 176). While some administrators have tried
to dissuade unionization by indicating that such a movement increases the business model of
education, union activists are unambiguous that their actions are a response to a corporate
course that has already been charted by university administrators (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005:
269). The increased incursion of capitalist logic into the lifeworld of the university may then be
seen as an opportunity for that unfashionable thing called class struggle (Wood 1997).
Indications that graduate employees see themselves as workers are evident in the union
movement. For example, unionists organized under the slogan the university works because we
do indicating not only their identities as workers, but the centrality of their labor to the
educational system (Dixon et al. 2008: 276). According to common framing of these SMOs,
exploitation is inherent to corporate logic and the increased use of graduate assistants and part-
time instructors is an exploitative practice as more teaching labor power is extracted from
workers who can be paid less and the wages and benefits of high-level administrative staff is on
the rise (Rhoads and Rhoades 2005: 252, 262).
Identity: Marginalized Workers
Through framing, particularly cognitive liberation and frame amplification, graduate
employee organizations have sought to influence how graduate employees understand the
changing structural spaces within the educational system and their roles within them. Through
this interpretive work, social agents construct public meaning systems which are both the
basis and the object of real social practice as well as the material for identity formation
(Bettie 2003: 54; Ortner 1998: 10). The re-formulation of graduate employees as primarily
workers can be described as a frame transformation, a process ofredefining activitiesand
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biographies that are already meaningful from the standpoint of some primary framework, in
terms of another framework such that they are now seen by the participants to be something quite
else (Snow et al. 1986: 473). This frame transformation is not only a shift from professional
or apprentice to worker, but more specifically to marginalized workers with low pay, few
benefits, and low security (Rhoades and Rhoads 2003: 176). Clifford Geertz notes that
graduate employees refer to themselves as the pre-unemployed (Moser 2001: 6). This cynical
outlook is reflected in Freemans assessment of graduate employment as transient temp jobs for
the new education industry (2000: 251). It is this identity as marginalized workers that has
become a uniting, collective identity among graduate employee unionists (Rhoades and Rhoads
2003: 175).
Arguments against graduate employee unions often suggest that graduate employees are
primarily student apprentices and not workers. If we look historically to earlier phases of
capitalism, the transformation of apprentices to factory workers was met with organizing
and resistance, laying the groundwork for todays unionization. An increase in market-logic in
higher education undermines the conceptualization of graduate employees as apprentices in a
guild. Recognizing that they lack a guarantee of entry into the profession many graduate
employees have thus rejected the apprentice identity (Rhoads and Rhoades 2003: 175). The
apprentice theory has also been questioned on the grounds that teaching assignments are often
designed to fill the needs of a department over the training needs of graduate employees
(Dawson 2007: 92) and on the basis that shrinking pools of tenured faculty often cannot provide
the appropriate mentoring relationship that the apprentice label would imply (Freeman 2000;
253). As we saw earlier, the devaluing of labor in higher education is not consistent across
fields and roles, with non-market-oriented activities being relegated to the lowest rungs of the
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changing academic division of labor. Those most devalued (teaching assistants in the
humanities and social sciences) have been found to be the strongest supporters of union activity
(Dixon et al. 2008: 379).
Bourdieus framework may help explain this devaluation process. Whereas educational
attainment is understood as harbinger of cultural capital, this form of capital can only generate
social power, and subsequently economic capital, through social legitimating or transference via
symbolic capital (Skeggs 2002: 8). Symbolic capital legitimates other forms of capital and
therefore make them transferrable into economic benefit or increases in social status, but this
conversion can become blocked by structural power and ideological discourses (Skeggs 2002:
11). Such blockages delegitimize cultural capital, limiting its social power. Even if such capital
still holds significance for the individual, it cannot be traded as an asset (Skeggs 2002: 10).
Class positions are closely related to the degree by which cultural capital is legitimated and
therefore able to generate economic and social benefit. While the cultural capital of the middle
classes can offer substantial rewards in the labor market (Skeggs 2002: 10), delegitimized
capital ceases to promise such rewards. As economic structures change, such rewards can be
made null.
Changing structures in the academic workplace has created increased political
opportunities for graduate employee unions to organize and operate, and we have seen a
dramatic increase in such organizing since the 1990s. These organizations frame their
grievances and outlooks around a discourse of resistance to corporate incursion into the
academy, which impacts working conditions, the autonomy of research, and the quality of
undergraduate education. As such, graduate employee unions have organized around both
materialist concerns for wages and benefits as well as postmaterialist concerns for the public
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good of education. Central to this framing has been capitalizing on the identity of teaching
assistants and other graduate employees as marginalized workers. This has been strongest
among the social sciences and humanities, within those disciplines that have been the most
devalued as resources are moved toward the logic of capital.
CONCLUSION
This essay is an attempt to come to terms with a particular deficiency of contemporary
social movement literature: the exclusion of discussions of radical and progressive LMONs,
through looking at both the history of social movement unionism and its current organizational
embodiment in graduate employee union organizing. LMONs are ripe for sociological analysis
and can help to sensitize researchers within both sociology and labor studies to the nuances of
social movements by incorporating the labor movement into the realm of new social movements.
In order for NSM theory to fully understand the gamut of current organizing, more holistic
research into LMONs will be necessary. One avenue for exploring these LMONs, as discussed
above, is the study of graduate employee unions. Focusing attention on the political opportunity
structures within which these unions operate and the framing content of their organizing
campaigns and internal education, this essay has demonstrated a significant congruence between
new social movement theory and graduate employee unions. While this essay has attempted a
broad review of NSM theory themes as they may apply to graduate employee unions, more
research is needed into each area.
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