Since April, MIT’s bargaining team and its graduate student union (GSU) have held multiple meetings to negotiate a second collective bargaining agreement, reaching tentative agreement on three of 26 proposed articles. The original contract expired on May 31, leaving around 5,000 graduate research assistants, teaching assistants, and Instructor-Gs working under the terms of the expired agreement. After months of stagnant bargaining, the GSU launched a pledge on September 9 to strike if necessary. In a press release dated Sept. 11, 2026, the union announced that over 1,000 graduate workers have signed. It is not clear when exactly the GSU is planning to strike, but the last bargaining session in the month is planned for September 25.
Now back in my day, mid 60s, you never would have time for this.We were all to busy on our research. We all got the same salary, $400 per month, plus MIT Health Service. You survived, barely and worked 24 by 7! If you were lucky, as a junior faculty, you got a day a week for outside consulting, and that could be $125 a day. You could double your salary. But it still was 24 by 7!
More than half of these folks are foreign students, getting free tuition, and almost $5,000 per month! Plus they want full health care. Many may need complex medical care, costly as well.
Just the site of this massive group, in my opinion, of proto-Marxists, is terrifying (namely the appear to be class oriented, Grad Students vs the Institute). So do we have a problem with higher education, you betcha!
But the bottom line in the "old days" was that you tried to be better, more creative, ahead of the crowd. The last thing you sought was group compliance. Frankly you tried not to be equal as a group. You tried to be better as an individual. Unions, as I have experienced, are possibly good if the class of people are doing the same task. Say a bus driver, chicken plucker, garbage collector. But an MIT Grad student is doing a one of a kind, research, pushing the frontier forward.
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