Today, science is a billion-dollar enterprise operating through governments, universities, and industries. But like every other productive activity under capitalism, it would not exist without scientists’ labor.
Recent waves of unionization campaigns have shown us that the only way to overcome precarity and oppression, which defines our everyday experience as workers in the lab, is through collective action.
In this collection of essays, written by and for student workers, union organizers, and radical scientists within STEM academia, we seek to understand the structure we set out to change, share strategies for building power through labor organizing, and inspire scientists of all career levels to enact an alternative vision of science.
Edited by Science for the People. Published in 2022 in the United States by People’s Science Network, PO Box 3817, Knoxville, Tennessee, 37927. Printed by Hemlock Printers, Canada.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Abstracting the Lab or: How I Learned to Become a Cog and Reproduce the System
Calvin Wu
Power Struggles: Material and Cultural
Iraj Eshghi
Building Power in STEM Requires Championing Broad and Local Goals
Shua Sanchez
Science Work and Service Work: Exclusion and Exploitation at the University of Iowa
Glenn Houlihan and John Tappen
STEM Organizing in Waves: A Macro and Micro View
Trent McDonald and Jewel Tomasula
Out from Under the Umbrella
Lizzy Karnaukh
Organizing from the Belly of the Academic-Industrial Complex
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Ruth Hanna, and Ki-Jana Carter
More is Stronger: Only Radical Bottom-up Unionism can Change STEM
Sam Bartusek, Paul Brown, Tess Jacobson, Claire Warner, and Avi Zeff
Postscript
Foreword
I’m a STEM worker: a graduate student, trainee, fellow, investigator—whatever the job title may be.[1] As someone who works in a lab, I am expected to work through the weekend and past my contracted hours in the week. I like the idea of science—it is exalted, useful, and interesting. Yet to be a scientist under a capitalist system I have to respect a hierarchy, publish or perish, and embrace long hours, low pay, and precarity that continues for years.
Appeals to institutional channels result in resorts to romance: “it’s a rite of passage.” Others tell me they can’t help me, because they are powerless: “the government hasn’t increased our budget, so I can only offer you a real-terms pay cut this year.” Some believe solutions are already forthcoming in the form of diversity initiatives, mentorship programs, and new rules; meanwhile, diversity initiatives initiate Black and Brown workers into hostile labs, and precarious mentors tell me that I’m lucky to be in the lab at all. Throughout, I train and work under the Panglossian myth that this way of science is the best possible science.
—
The word “lab” comes from the Latin laboratorio, meaning the place of labor. The connotation is clear: it’s a place where we toil. In a deeper, almost poetic sense, labor is the medium through which humans interact with nature, i.e., science. Yet, there is a third significance: labor gives us the power and leverage to challenge structures and change academic science from the ground up. It is this third significance that this edited volume roots its discussion.
How can labor be the key to it all? The answer lies in elucidating why academic science is the way it currently is: hierarchical, exploitative, and quite inhumane. Chapter 1: “Abstracting the Lab or: How I Learned to Become a Cog and Reproduce the System” situates us within the process of scientific production to understand the role of science in society, how society dictates scientific research, and class relations of workers within the lab. What the chapter concludes may not be surprising—that academia is integrated with and mirrored after capitalistic logic—but knowledge of labor being both the lock and the key to capitalism allows us to arm ourselves with the consciousness and strategic grounding to exert power.
All true knowledge must be put to action. Chapter 2: “Power Struggles: Material and Cultural” provides first-hand experience of two models of graduate student worker organizing. While appealing to institutional channels for modest demands of diversity and transparency is met with sneers and swift dismissal, collective bargaining through unions is responded to with fear and eventual concession. We thus see how power is exercised when “thousands of workers withdraw their labor.”
This leverage, moreover, is not only limited to gaining immediate benefits such as pay raise, health care, or improvements to working conditions. Chapter 3: “Building Power in STEM Requires Championing Broad and Local Goals” explains that economic goals are intricately linked to broader fights for social justice. Because the strength of a union is in its number and cohesion, the more a union takes care of the interests of its diverse members, the stronger the community, and the more likely the union will succeed in collective bargaining.
However, the path to power is treacherous. As Chapter 4: “Science Work and Service Work: Exclusion and Exploitation at the University of Iowa” forewarns, the owners of academic STEM (e.g., administrators, institution’s stakeholders) will fight us to the bitter end. They have historically deployed various tactics to undermine labor organizing, from restricting workers’ access to grievance procedures and dividing workers into separate categories to even redefining the meaning of “work.” Organizers need to be vigilant, and obtaining a historical understanding can go a long way to inform our present struggles.
Delving deeper into the history of labor organizing, Chapter 5: “STEM Organizing in Waves: A Macro and Micro View” presents a comprehensive survey of labor organizing in the United States—with a focus on STEM workers—dating back to the 1930s, through rises and falls of radicalism and changes in union structures. This history is then juxtaposed with an account of union organizing among biology workers at Georgetown University, where graduate workers negotiated an impressive first contract in May 2020. Every success is a model we can copy, and every failure one to avoid.
Perhaps a lesson of failure is more valuable, as alluded to in Chapter 6: “Out from Under the Umbrella,” which asks why with so much enthusiasm for unionizing, successes are so few. While the rightward political shift and the changing global economic structure have certainly played their parts to decimate unions, we must also take a critical look at the organizing models themselves as a reason for the folly. The majority of STEM worker unions are reliant on support from large “umbrella” organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers or United Auto Workers. They are structured rigidly and organized from the top down. In what ways do they aid or hinder labor militancy among STEM workers? Is there an alternative model more suitable in our time?
In addition to discussing organizing strategies, political economy, and history, the goal of this edited volume is also to inspire. In April 2022, one of the most powerful academic institutions, arguably the most “apolitical,” and certainly one most entrenched with corporate and state interest, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could not prevent its student workers from forming a union. Chapter 7: “Organizing from the Belly of the Academic-Industrial Complex” chronicled the struggle toward their hard-fought victory, having turned every structural obstacle into radicalizing opportunities. When workers rise up, even the empire trembles.[2]
Similarly, Chapter 8 “More is Stronger: Only Radical Bottom-up Unionism can Change STEM” details the buildup and aftermath of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC)’s ten-week strike in October 2021. In the end, Columbia University conceded to all of SWC’s contract demands, revealing once again the immanent power of a democratic, bottom-up union that represents the people. Riding high on the resounding victory, SWC declares grand visions for the future: changing departmental structures, addressing precarity of adjunct hires, eliminating funding disparity between STEM and humanities, and dictating how and which grants are funded. This is not wishful thinking. If history has shown us anything, it’s that positive change happens when the exploited resist exploitation. We do have the power to change academia—its structure, operation, culture, and even its social function—if we take collective action.
As Frederick Engels said, “history moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line.”[3] Changing science is a historical project. We can’t see the next twist and turn; the people make history one campaign, one demand, one strike at a time. The future is in our hands; it begins with labor.
The Editorial Collective
July 2022
Notes
[1]. The acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics was a relatively recent invention by the US National Science Foundation. The original usage in the 1990s referred to “science” broadly. As such, disciplinary boundaries between STEM and non-STEM remain fluid.
[2]. MIT and Imperialism (Boston: November Action Coalition, 1969).
[3]. Frederick Engels, “Karl Marx, ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political economy’ (Review),” Das Volk 16 (August 20, 1859), https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/review-political-economy.htm.
About the Contributors
Chapter 1
Calvin Wu studies the physiology of hearing at the University of Michigan. He organizes with the Ann Arbor chapter of SftP.
Chapter 2
Iraj Eshghi is working towards his PhD in theoretical biophysics at NYU. Besides uncovering the physical underpinnings of life, he is dedicated to dismantling the systems of injustice imposed on us all. In particular, he is passionate about labor rights and urban planning that strives for equality.
Chapter 3
Shua Sanchez is a physicist and labor organizer. Originally from Wisconsin, he has been active in political and labor organizing across the United States. During his PhD at the University of Washington, he served as an elected Bargaining Committee and Executive Board Member over five years with his union, UAW4121. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studies superconductivity and atomically-thin magnetic materials with potential applications for low-power electronics and energy technologies.
Chapter 4
Glenn Houlihan is a PhD student in American Studies at the University of Iowa (UI). His current research focuses on how elite sports institutions and teams are adapting to, or seeking to mitigate, the climate crisis. He is also Chief Campus Steward of COGS/UE Local 896, the graduate worker union at UI.
John Tappen is a PhD student in American Studies at the University of Iowa (UI) researching culture, labor, and the environment. He is a Teaching Assistant and member of COGS/UE 896.
Chapter 5
Trent McDonald is a New Jersey-based staff organizer with Rutgers AAUP-AFT, a member of the Interim Steering Committee for Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), and a past worker organizer with the WashU Undergraduate & Graduate Workers Union (WUGWU).
Jewel Tomasula is a sixth year PhD candidate in the Biology Department at Georgetown University and former president of Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees (GAGE)
Chapter 6
Lizzy Karnaukh teaches chemistry and math at an independent high school in Boston. She received her PhD in computational quantum chemistry at Boston University, where she studied the electronic structure of cytochrome c proteins in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. She loves integrating history and sociology of science into her teaching.
Chapter 7
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar is a graduate student worker in the MIT Media, Arts and Sciences PhD program and an organizer with the MIT Graduate Student Union.
Ruth Hanna is a graduate student worker in the MIT Biology PhD program and an organizer with the MIT Graduate Student Union.
Ki-Jana Carter is a former graduate student worker in the MIT Materials Science and Engineering PhD program and an organizer with the MIT Graduate Student Union.
Chapter 8
Sam Bartusek is an organizer of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC) and PhD student in Earth and Environmental Science, studying climate dynamics and extreme heat.
Paul Brown, SWC organizer and Chemistry PhD student researching on energy transport in materials.
Tess Jacobson, SWC organizer and PhD student in Earth and Environmental Science researching on climate dynamics and wildfires.
Claire Warner, SWC organizer and PhD student in Physics researching on ultracold atomic and molecular physics.
Avi Zeff, SWC organizer and PhD student in Mathematics researching on number theory and p-adic geometry.
Editors: Alexandra Adams, Calvin Wu, Camille Rullán, Chhavi Goenka, Claire Ramsay, Erik Hetzner, Harry August, Iraj Eshghi, Jo Meszaros, Leanne Loo, Lizzy Karnaukh, LM White, Manu Raghavan, Marco Baity Jesi, Marygrace Trousdell, Michael Shannon, Michelle Yuan, Nafis Hasan, Nikki Blazek, Nora Heaphy, Scott Sterrett, Vassiki Chauhan
Designer: Amy Saidens