Protection against overwork, guaranteed paid holidays, affordable health care, paid leaves of absence and reasonable work rules — these are just some benefits offered to graduate students through unions.

These benefits are offered to graduate students at the University of Iowa, Yale University and Rutgers University. The University of Iowa, which has a graduate student union, ranks in the top half of the Big Ten salaries. Its 2001—03 contract provides a four percent salary increase each year, and actions to improve child care support are in the negotiation process.

With the success of graduate student unions at other universities, graduate students at Iowa State are wondering if a graduate student union would be beneficial.

But the idea of a graduate student union on the ISU campus is still being discussed. Some believe a union would offer many benefits to graduate students, while others believe assistance from a union isn’t needed, and many can’t decide.

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate will continue discussions on the issue at its meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in the Gallery Room of the Memorial Union.

Discussion about the possibility of a graduate student union at Iowa State has been going on for years.

Jo Etzel, graduate and professional student senate parliamentarian, said at the annual GPSS Picnic this August, surveys were passed around to attendees, and results showed more than a handful of graduate students felt they were “financially strapped” and weren’t “100 percent happy with their workplace.”

“There’s a lot of stress about how much [graduate students] make,” she said.

Etzel, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, said the survey results produced questions about whether research regarding unions should be done.

“I argued that GPSS should not have a committee to explore unionization because not all the members of GPSS feel there should be a union, but I got out voted, and people wanted to get information about starting unions and the benefits,” she said.

Senators from the GPSS were asked to volunteer for part of an exploratory committee on unionization.

Bjorn Brooks, GPSS senator for geological and atmospheric sciences and member on the exploratory committee, said there were five volunteers for the committee who worked on finding basic information regarding unionization.

Valentin Picasso, GPSS senator for agronomy, said the committee did Web research and spoke with graduate student union representatives from the University of Iowa.

“We did mainly Web searches for graduate student unions, found out the basic information, steps to unionization and the benefits,” Picasso said.

Brooks said the committee researched information and presented to the GPSS at its last meeting Oct. 27.

According to the Educational Resources Information Center Digest, the debate about graduate student unions is heating up on campuses. Union representatives argue graduate assistants are employees of the university, while faculty and administrators debate they are students.

“A lot of graduate students are concerned about tuition, assistantships and fees,” Picasso said.

According to the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students Web site, www.cogs.org, the University of Iowa formed a union, the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, in spring 1993 to address the problem of overworked and underpaid graduate employees.

Campaign to Organize Graduate Students has been through three contracts since 1996, seeing results in salary increases, better health care for employees and their families, same-sex domestic partner health insurance coverage, higher minimum salaries and more.

Although Campaign to Organize Graduate Students has seen many improvements in graduate employee benefits, there are still issues that need to be discussed, including tuition waivers for all graduate employees, securing protection from overwork, securing protection from harassment, and discrimination and improving child care support.

Brooks said it’s a common misconception that a union would guarantee a salary increase.

“The union would help to ensure a baseline, which ensures we’d get paid no less than the baseline,” he said.

Although GPSS has formed a committee to discuss a graduate student union, Brooks said it cannot initiate a unionization.

He said the reaction has been positive among graduate students, even though they know it won’t affect them. He is convinced most graduate students would be part of the union.

Picasso said he believes the union would benefit the university and future students by having students who are paid fairly and would in turn be happy with their situations.

“It may take five to 10 years before a union gets started,” Picasso said. “No one working on a union now would benefit, but it’s being prepared to work for others in the future.”

Dan Devine, GPSS senator for economics, said he thought there would be split opinions on whether a graduate student union is needed at Iowa State.

“Most people are wondering how realistic it would be to start a union,” he said.

However, Devine said he believes the committee has done all the research they can.

“If there are enough graduate students that feel passionately enough, there is no reason they can’t get together and start working toward a union,” Devine said.