Mission
MTR is a group of graduate employees at the University of Maryland. We are working together to address our concerns through collective action.
We believe that the University of Maryland has failed to address the needs of its graduate students. For example, stipends for FY2008 increased 4.55%, but rents for some units at graduate housing went up over 9%. Is this progress?
Teaching Assistants are paid for 20 hours of work per week, but work on average 29 hours a week. And currently, there is no means for a TA to seek redress for this problem.
There is very little housing for the 10,000 grad students at the University. Graduate Gardens and Graduate Hills house roughly 600-700 grad students at any given time, and currently the waiting list is 150 people. It is very difficult for graduate students to find affordable housing near the University, and the University has been very slow to address this housing crisis.
We believe that the best way to address these and the many other concerns facing graduate students is through collective action. Together, graduate employees can ensure that the University addresses our needs.
The University reguarly compares itself to its five peer institutions (University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, UCal Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina). Of these five, four have graduate employee unions, the exception being UNC. Michigan and Berkeley are arguably the best public graduate schools in the country, and their graduate employees benefit from unionization.
In fact, many grad schools across the country have graduate employee unions. Since Unions have achieved higher stipends and better working conditions, schools with unionized grad students are able to compete for the best graduate students.
Graduate employee unions at our peer institutions
University of Michigan Graduate Employees' Organization
University of California System Graduate Employee Union (includes UCLA and UC Berkeley)
Graduate Employees Organization at UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)