From the archives: Stony Brook teaching assistants rally for better wages

This story was originally published in Newsday on April 29, 2004

Teaching assistants at Stony Brook University enlisted the support of an iconic and controversial figure of black nationalism of the '70s when Angela Davis took up the bullhorn at their rally yesterday and said their demonstration for better wages and health care benefits was a "just struggle."

A cheer rose from the crowd of about 100 as Davis, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who for the past month has been a distinguished visiting professor at Stony Brook, began her remarks.

"This, of course, is a struggle that should not have to be fought," Davis said, "because everyone in this society deserves a living wage."

After she and others spoke, the rally moved inside the administration building, with protesters chanting, "They say give back! We say fight back!"

In a brief interview, Davis said, "I think it's extremely important to recognize the invaluable labor that graduate students contribute to the university ... particularly research universities like this would not function without graduate student labor."

Davis, who is co-teaching a seminar exploring theories of punishment with a Stony Brook philosophy professor, saw a link between graduate students' contract fight and the struggles of those of other "marginalized communities. ... You have a right to a just contract and your effort, it seems to me, will have a reverberation that will affect communities far beyond this campus," she told the students.

At issue for the Graduate Student Employees Union, which has 4,500 members throughout the State University of New York, union leaders said, is a contract offer from the state that they said would provide for a "meager" 1.5 percent salary increase, while copayments for most health care costs would jump significantly. For instance, a copayment for an emergency room visit would soar $15 to $50.

Billy Wharton, the chief steward for the union at Stony Brook, said the average salary, SUNY-wide, for a teaching assistant is $10,000 and the average at Stony Brook was $11,500, calling them "very low wages." Graduate students generally work 20 hours a week, said Hernan Pruden, the union's business agent at Stony Brook.

"I feel like I should have more pay," said Kimberly Smith, a teaching assistant enrolled in Stony Brook's PhD program in English. "It's very expensive to live on Long Island." She said she earns $600 every two weeks for her teaching duties, and while she does not have to pay tuition, she does have dorm costs, which she says "go up every year."

SUNY officials referred questions to the governor's Office of Employee Relations, whose assistant director, Craig Dickinson, said office policy was not to comment on contract negotiations that have not been concluded. The graduate student union's last contract expired June 30.