MLA Statement Supporting the Right of Graduate Student Workers to Organize
In May 2022, the Executive Council approved the following statement, which was prepared by Nicholas Devlin, a PhD student at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, working in the MLA Office of the Executive Director.
The Modern Language Association of America endorses the right of graduate student workers to organize unions that will represent their members and their interests to university administrations. The labor of graduate students is essential to the mission of higher education, and we believe that employees should have the right to decide if they want to advocate for improved working conditions through union representation and collective bargaining.
Given the importance of graduate student labor for funding packages, scholarly training, and the home institutions of students, it is critical that working conditions and wages should be determined ethically. In the 2020 Report of the MLA Task Force on Ethical Conduct in Graduate Education, the MLA emphasizes that departments and individual faculty members “should in no way impede graduate student unionization efforts.” The freedom to organize plays an important part in fostering an environment for academic collaboration, academic training, and the advancement of scholarship.