Roughly 3,000 unionized Boston University graduate students went on strike Monday, with many saying their stipends aren't enough to meet the city's soaring rent and child care costs. The grad students, who help teach courses and conduct research, have been in negotiation for eight months with the BU administration.
SEIU Local 509, which represents the students, estimates their pay ranges from $27,000 to approximately $40,000 per year.
Meiya Sparks Lin, a second-year PhD student and teaching assistant in the English Department, was among the estimated 200 students picketing at Marsh Plaza on the university's main campus Monday.
“My rent was raised 350 dollars per month recently, and that means that I either have to save up several thousand dollars to move, or pay the rent raise of several thousand dollars,” said Sparks Lin. “I'm making a salary of just over 31,000 dollars a year, and I cannot afford that. So I think a lot of us are in a similar position where we’re sort of squeezed between the housing market...and our very, very paltry stipends.”
A BU official told GBH News the university has agreed to several terms. It is willing to increase stipends to just over $42,000 a year; raise the minimum wage from $15 to $18 an hour; and let full-time PhD students add children under the age of six to their health insurance plans.
Those conditions, however, have been deemed unacceptable by the union and the graduate students it represents.
“They're only offering 42,000 (dollars) for those who are paid for 12 months,” Sparks Lin said. “But some of us, like myself, are only paid for eight months. So their rates would amount to, like, 33,000 (dollars) for me, which is just, quite frankly, not enough."
Sparks Lin said by her calculation, BU's current offer would essentially mean "a seven or eight percent pay cut" for her, based on the climbing trajectory of Boston's cost of living.
In a statement emailed to GBH News Monday, BU administration said in part, “We are concerned about the strike’s impact on teaching, research, and the lives of thousands of other students, and we are working to minimize that disruption. We remain committed to improving the lives of our graduate students through negotiations and hope that process will bring the strike to an end quickly.”
The university also said it will continue to work toward solutions "through the collective bargaining process."
Pol Pardini Gispert, a graduate student in BU's philosophy department, was among those picketing Monday afternoon.
“We cannot afford any formal childcare, which means that I often need to take care of my daughter while I'm grading exams, while I'm preparing for my next class or when I'm working on my dissertation," he said. "And it always feels like I need to choose between being a good father or being a good grad worker.”
