The task force on graduate education met again last week to discuss graduate worker compensation, according to an email from IU Bloomington Provost Rahul Shrivastav Thursday afternoon. Shrivastav said he expects the task force’s initial recommendations by the end of the month.
The task force was created in response to ongoing organizing by graduate workers for better compensation, benefits and grievance procedure, among other goals. Administration said the task force will “ultimately craft a vision for the ideal graduate experience.” The taskforce, which includes one graduate worker on its eight-member coordinating committee, can recommend policy but has no authority to enact it.
In his email, Shrivastav invited the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition to meetings next week with Dean of the University Graduate School James Wimbush. Still, the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition and the IU Bloomington American Association of University Professors have claimed that their guidance was previously cited by administration, but not heeded. The two labor groups say the administration’s contingency plans “threaten academic freedom and shared governance.”
Ben Robinson, IU Representative for the American Association of University Professors, doesn’t believe the current committee is working with faculty and graduate students in good faith.
“It’s being chaired by faculty who don’t hold representative positions, and in that sense you’re listening to an echo chamber,” Robinson said. “You’re not listening to what faculty are actually trying to say.”
Read more: Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition votes to suspend strike until the fall
Katie Shy, a member of the Graduate Workers Coalition, said that her group is accepting the invitation from Wimbush and is sending a representative.
“We’re ready to talk about talk about all the issues that are being put before the task forces, before the committees,” Shy said. “But we’d like to have that conversation as a union.”
Despite support by the City of Bloomington and majority of IU faculty, the Board of Trustees refused to recognize the graduate student union requested by during their strike in June.
While the provost’s office lacks the authority to recognize the union, Shrivastav has been criticized by graduate students for impeding meaningful negotiations. The Graduate and Professional Student Government voted “no confidence” in the provost in April.
The office of the provost could not be reached for comment.
