The UVA chapter of The United Campus Workers has long demanded that the university pay graduate students a living wage, which they currently estimate to be $38,173 a year. Recently, the union found itself fighting for the right to be paid anything.
“We’re hearing from multiple grad student workers @UVA that they haven’t been paid their stipends for December,” announced the official Twitter account for UCW-UVA on December 26. For many students, this was not the first time their pay was late.
“In the history department, we have been dealing with a delayed stipend and graduate teaching assistant wage payments since at least last spring—this is the third time this year that I’ve been paid late by a week or more,” one student anonymously told C-VILLE.
“We haven’t been given any explanation for these errors, which the department, SFS, and administration all seem to blame on each other. It is beyond insulting and degrading, especially when graduate students at UVA are already paid so far below a living wage for the crucial work we do for our students and departments,” the student said.
Laura Ornée, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department, says she knows of “multiple examples of individual graduate students, where something went wrong administratively with their stipend, and it was late. Every time we have to get together and do collective action because one individual saying their payment is late is apparently not enough.”
Ornée also serves as the elected Chapter Chair for UCW-UVA, and has advocated for a living wage, expanded health care benefits, and better terms of employment. “UVA has recently announced that starting next year, our stipends are going to go to 30,000 a year at minimum, but it’s still not a living wage,” she said.
“And there is no cost of living adjustments built in. So in four years, we’re going to be exactly where we are now. And we’re gonna have to fight and ask and demand again.”
Ph.D. candidate Oliva Paschal echoed these concerns: “We get paid scraps. And then sometimes we don’t even get paid the scraps.” She also mentioned some of the limits of organizing in a state without collective bargaining rights.
“If you don’t get paid, you can’t just stop working. I mean, you could, but you are forfeiting your job if you do that.”
Financial delays extend beyond living stipends, according to one physics student who said there have been issues getting reimbursed for travel and conferences in a timely manner. “I am owed thousands of dollars. And I realize now the only way I will get this money is if I go to the finance office, walk in there, and complain to them and say, ‘Let’s figure this out.’ It’s been months, I don’t see how else I will get this money.”
Bridge fellows—who are part of a program that supports students from groups that are underrepresented in their disciplines—were also affected. Crystalina Peterson reported to UCW-UVA that “the vast majority of the Bridge fellows currently enrolled are people of color, first-generation students, and/or from low-income families, and we do not have the ability to ask our parents for help when the university does not follow through on its financial commitment to us.” Another fellow anonymously told C-VILLE that two of their classmates had to leave the program last year due to financial struggles.
“I feel like that kind of says a lot about the Bridge program,” the fellow said.
A spokesperson for UVA told C-VILLE that the delay was caused by “a shift in the processing date due to UVA’s winter break” and that “stipends are now expected to arrive on January 3.” In an email sent to student leaders, provost Ian Baucom said the administration would personally speak to landlords and assist in covering late fees.
UCW-UVA started a Twitter storm on December 29, with graduate students, undergraduates, professors, and alumni alike tagging President Jim Ryan and demanding the university #cutthechecks. On December 30, the union announced that some of its members had received payment. Baucom agreed to meet with the union at 3pm on Tuesday, January 3.
