By Zach Weigel
HF 291, better known as the collective-bargaining bill, was signed into law Feb. 17 by Gov. Terry Branstad after being fast-tracked through the Republican controlled State Legislature. Unless you are one of the roughly 184,000 public employees whom this bill affects, chances are you could care less. However, there is reason for current and future graduate students to be concerned.Personally, I can attest to why the passage of this bill upsets me. I am currently a senior finishing up my last semester as an undergrad and am also in the process of deciding where to go to graduate school. When selecting where to attend grad school, there are many things that weigh into the equation, such as prestige of the program, location, and research interests to name a few; but perhaps the most salient factor inevitably boils down to economic considerations.
For those unfamiliar with how a graduate student fits in as a public employee and could consequently be affected by this bill, let me lay it out for you. Typically, a grad student receives a funding package consisting of a tuition waiver, stipend, and other benefits such as health insurance and reimbursement for travel expenses in exchange for working as either a teaching assistant or by assisting a faculty member with research. Also, typically graduate students belong to a union that allows them to collectively bargain with their employer (the university). But with the passage of HF 291, the graduate-student union faces a significantly diminished capacity to negotiate contracts. Specifically, the bill curtails the negotiable parts of contracts to only include wages, eliminating the ability of unions to lobby for other benefits such as health insurance. Thus, HF 291 gives the employer the upper hand when it comes to negotiating the particulars of contracts for graduate students.
So if the University of Iowa now has more power when negotiating contracts, what’s to stop it from being thrifty and cutting benefits? Seemingly, the only thing that would prevent the university from maintaining or increasing benefits for graduate students is altruism, and it may be rather naïve to believe the university is in a position to be kind at a time when pressing budgetary cuts must be made.
With a loss of $8 million in state appropriations for the next year, murmurs have already surfaced that the university is seriously considering dropping health insurance for graduate students to offset part of the budgetary shortfall. Moreover, because the university now has the power to do so, it appears quite likely that this rumor could very soon be an actuality, seeing as the current agreement between the university and the graduate student union expires this summer.
Now, would I blame the university if it were to cut health-insurance benefits for graduate students? No. I can understand that tough decisions have to be made, and somebody is inevitably going to get the shaft. But as a future graduate student, I can assert that I will be much less likely to attend graduate school at an institution that doesn’t cover health insurance and other supplemental benefits. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to deciding on where to go to grad school, the cliché “money talks” really does apply. If I could go to school A and get a better deal than school B, why would I go to school B?