organizing graduate employees the new taking root in the old

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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
http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/


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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
http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/http://www.cgeu.org/


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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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