
Berkeley's $5M Glitch - scott_s
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/arbitrator-says-uc-berkeley-owes-its-computer-science-tas-5-million
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Ivoirians
Here's my high level summary, as a former instructor.

1\. Berkeley offered tuition remission as a benefit to grad student
instructors essentially as a stipend/subsidy of living.

2\. The union representing instructors negotiated tuition remission for
undergrad instructors doing the same job as grad instructors, primarily to
protect grad students from being short-changed by departments trying to hire
cheaper undergrad instructors over the grad instructors who had greater need
for the income.

3\. CS class sizes increased, and the CS department lacked the funds to hire
both enough grad and undergrad instructors to properly staff, so they offered
8-hour positions to undergrads as an alternative.

4\. Undergrads were more than happy to take these positions, spend a few hours
a week teaching, earn some income, and get close to professors. As 20-hour-a-
week instructor, I still felt like it was an incredibly cushy and privileged
job.

I wouldn't argue that the union is to blame here. It seems that only the CS
department (as opposed to other departments) has hit this budgetary issue of
being unable to afford enough instructors to staff its classes--the solution
to me is that the university should look at the massive growth in the
department and allot commensurate funding for instructors. Instead, the
department took a (fairly reasonable) alternative solution which apparently
has run afoul of some labor agreement.

Also, as someone who knows some instructors who stand to benefit from this
decision: almost no one is happy about it. No one gains except these
instructors--the department, future students, and future would-be instructors
are all getting screwed (unless the department gets much more funding as a
result of this).

~~~
emilfihlman
>Also, as someone who knows some instructors who stand to benefit from this
decision: almost no one is happy about it. No one gains except these
instructors--the department, future students, and future would-be instructors
are all getting screwed (unless the department gets much more funding as a
result of this).

This is just nonsense and is applicable to anything that takes money from the
department. No, the department and future students wont be screwed because
they have to pay back money.

~~~
Ivoirians
To be more specific, they're being screwed because the department is now
unable to add new (8hr) positions. Class size pressure will increase because
the price of instructors has gone up, and fewer students will get to have
cushy teaching jobs. The last point is what most of the former instructors
feel: they felt privileged to work 8hr positions and now those opportunities
are eliminated.

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jedberg
When I worked for Berkeley our bosses made it very clear: they can’t stop us
from billing more than 39.5 hours in a week, but if we did, they’d have to let
us go and stop offering the service we provide, because they just didn’t have
the budget.

It’s not like we were providing essential services. We were doing things to
make the other students’ lives better, and we were all fine with the
restriction.

We were also learning a lot ourselves in the process, and valued the work
experience far more than the few extra dollars.

~~~
mietek
In 2018, UC Berkeley’s endowment was valued at $4.3 billion. It’s not too late
to learn not to allow others to take advantage of you.

~~~
jedberg
I worked there over 20 years ago. The work I did there prepared me for a very
lucrative career and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, especially not a few
more dollars.

Also, the endowment isn’t unlimited use. Most of it is earmarked for specific
uses. When someone donates $500M to build a building, the money can only be
used to maintain the building. When they endow a professorship, that money can
only be used for that professors salary and research.

$4.3B is pretty small for a university the size of Berkeley.

~~~
kick
Question: were you financially supported by your family during that time? "a
few more dollars" seems diminutive, but according to the union, there are
multiple people who are owed $20,000 or more.

~~~
jedberg
No I paid for college myself with a combination of work and loans.

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HeavenFox
Ironically Berkeley undergraduate TAs are among the best-paid. $30/hr +
tuition remission for undergrads is incredibly generous.

I was paid $10/hr @ ~5 hr / week as an undergraduate TA at an Ivy League
university.

~~~
what_ever
I was paid $7.75/hr IIRC for UTA as a master's student with no tuition
remission.

~~~
kick
How many years ago?

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ethanburrell
Thought I'd lend my 2 cents here. I'm a current Berkeley EECS undergrad.

These 8hr a week TA positions are very difficult to get and coveted by many
students for (1) relationship to a professor which helps in such a large
department and (2) the considerable amount of weekly pay.

Did the EECS department potentially ruin their short term future by not paying
full tuition? Maybe.

They also do lean heavily on academic interns (unpaid students who work 1 or 2
hours a week), and I see this group increasing greatly in numbers after this
decision is ruled.

Please ask me questions! I'm a past TA myself have a lot of friends who TA.

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yizzlez
Terrible decision. The Berkeley EECS department is already cash strapped while
serving an ever growing CS student body. This probably will lead to massive
decreases in class sizes, as it is not worth it to appoint 8h TAs (incredibly
common in CS classes across the board). As a result, the CS GPA cap to declare
will probably go up to 3.5 or even 3.7, and CS education will be denied to
many students.

Speaking from personal experience, as an 8 hour TA for 3 semesters, I think
the current wage ($30 an hour) is more than fair. Usually 8 hour TAs just hold
a 1 hour weekly discussion and OH session, along with some grading -- tuition
remission sounds a bit excessive.

~~~
fluxem
Did you meant to say EECS department is a cash cow. How many students at
Berkley are at Berkley because they major in CS? Each of them pays 13-40k a
year! Maybe the university should allocate resources where the students are?
Like hiring more professors and TAs. I know, it's a crazy idea. Yeah, paying
$30 an hour to teach 20+ students who already paid their for education is
absurd.

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maxwellg
Calling this a "glitch" is disingenuous. It (is/was) an open secret for my
entire undergrad. There were plenty of professors who would encourage students
on 8-hour appointments to work 20~30 hours/wk with no overtime pay. Professors
control access to valuable research positions and grad school applications so
if you wanted to have a career in academia there wasn't anything you could do
about it.

~~~
mehrdadn
This comment is greatly exaggerated. I've never heard of 20-30h for 8h TAs,
and even milder overworking (like 10 instead of 8) gets resolved when it's
brought to people's attention. The professors I know actually do care about
offloading work and not overworking people beyond their hours. I don't know
how many such extreme experience you might've had personally, but the
description doesn't seem to paint an accurate picture of what's been happening
overall.

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mehrdadn
Worth noting that the union is yelling at everyone on Twitter and grossly
misrepresenting what actually happened in the "ECCS" (???) department:
[https://twitter.com/BerkeleyUAW2865/status/12171616914078474...](https://twitter.com/BerkeleyUAW2865/status/1217161691407847424)

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dbjacobs
This is a great example of a union doing its job. Why should the TAs be the
ones to get less when there is a budget problem. Why not hit the president's
salary for the shortfall or any of the other many line items on the budget.

We constantly see people complaining about wealth inequality. Applauding
unions for improving workers wages is one of the ways that it gets improved,
one small step at a time.

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jldugger
Am I missing something? Berkley isn't arguing they accidentally underpaid
people, but that they intentionally sought out more 8 hour positions. That
sound in no way like a "glitch"

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fortunateham
This problem is endemic in all academic research, even in the private schools
and even for non-students. I worked for Stanford as a LSRP (read, research
assistant in the biosciences) and there were some interesting hoops that were
conditions on my employment.

1) My position was changed from salaried full time to hourly full time in
order to avoid paying the needed minimum for salaried employees. 2) Told
explicitly that I had to log all my hours but that I could NOT claim overtime,
they simply didn't have the money for it. 3) Expected to work more than 40
hours a week because that's what you do in research

I was laid off at the end of a grant cycle because we ran out of funding and
the professor thought I wasn't hard working or dedicated enough even though I
was pulling 50+ hour weeks and working 6-7 days usually.

Now I work as an hourly consultant for a biotech startup and bill by the hour.

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virtuous_signal
>In negotiating the 10-hour threshold for tuition remission during contract
negotiations, the union says it understood that eight-hour appointments would
be used only sparingly. And they were used that way for about a decade. Since
2015, however, non-remission-eligible appointments have surged from about 2
percent of assistantships to 12 percent.

It appears that it all comes down to whose understanding about the final
contract was right. I understand these are legal documents. Was "sparingly"
defined there, and did increasing the number of 8-hour appointments exceed
that threshold?

Either way it's bad that the trend always seems to be towards decreasing
instructional staff pay and benefits. It's a nice windfall for these TAs
whether they were expecting it or not.

~~~
GavinMcG
> it all comes down to whose understanding about the final contract

This isn't entirely correct. There are things that are explicitly part of the
Collective Bargaining Agreement that both parties put in writing, and there
are all sorts of other things that are "past practice".

Even if it's not codified in the agreement, a company must bargain with a
union when it wants to make a change in working conditions.

~~~
virtuous_signal
Thanks, I hadn't heard of the term _past practices_ before. I guess I haven't
experienced being unionized, and just take it for granted that an employer can
make my life worse if it wanted to. Sort of boggles my mind that a union can
negotiate things with the employer in vague terms, and the understanding is
that things will always be "just as good" unless explicitly spelled out.

~~~
kick
As the old labor movement song goes, there is power in a union!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_Power_in_a_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_Power_in_a_Union)

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jeromebaek
i was an undergraduate 8-hour TA at UC Berkeley for six semesters between 2015
and 2018. i was also part of the union. i'm surprised few of the comments are
mentioning the main issue: union contract stipulates that 10-hour or more TAs
receive tuition fee remission, but even 9.9-hour TAs receive zero remission.
(there was at least one 9.9 hour TA, though not in the EECS department.) in
2015 when the 8-hour TA position was implemented there were initially not very
many of them, and there were more 20-hour TAs, mostly graduate students. but
between then and now Berkeley's CS program grew exponentially. so more and
more 8-hour TAs were needed. what started as a clever hack was beginning harm
other departments' workers by setting a precedent (ex, the 9.9 hour TA in
chemistry). so the union fought and won.

Berkeley's undergraduate CS education is a unique self-sustaining juggernaut.
there are not only TAs officially hired and paid by the department, but also
numerous volunteers tutoring, lab assisting and otherwise helping each other
out. it would be a tragedy if the bureaucracy destroys this beautiful self-
sustaining machine through this decision. but i trust Berkeley will find a way
as always to teach the most with the least resources.

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bhk
"It’s akin to employees accusing an employer of keeping them just below the
threshold of full-time work in order to avoid having to give them full-time
benefits."

... which is akin to accusing a motorist of remaining just below the speed
limit in order to avoid paying fines for speeding.

~~~
bluntfang
Are you saying that providing living wages and healthcare are "fines" that
companies undertake?

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amluto
One thing I find very odd about this: it’s in both parties’ interest to gave
as much tuition remission as possible and as little pay as possible: tuition
remission is not taxable. The deal should have been that tuition remission
depends on hours and the hourly pay goes way up after there’s no tuition left.
Maybe this violates the Fair Labor Standards Act?

When I was a TA, the effective hourly pay was in excess of $70. It was an
amazing job!

~~~
Gunax
$70 per hour is incredible, almost too good. It makes me think it's like
department store prices though: charge deliberately inflated prices knowing
most students will never actually pay the sticker price.

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RobLach
Funny how these “glitches” always tend to underpay everyone.

~~~
ladberg
The title is bad. It isn’t really a “glitch” and no one received payment lower
than they were expecting or agreed to.

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musicale
Imagine the unthinkable: hiring more full-time faculty!

Too bad no university has a budget for that.

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ladberg
I don’t really understand why Berkeley has to retroactively give $7500 to
students who were never expecting it in the first place. When the minimum wage
is raised, should employers have to compensate employees for previous hours
worked below the new minimum wage?

~~~
cortesoft
Because they broke the labor agreement that they signed with the union.

~~~
cperciva
I'm not buying it. The labour agreement allowed for students working 8
hours/week. This wasn't even an oversight -- it was specifically considered
during contract negotiations and the (lack of) benefits such students would
receive was agreed upon.

~~~
GavinMcG
Past practice has force as well – the written agreement is only one part of
what binds the parties, and Berkeley made a change to working conditions
without bargaining over how that would affect workers. That's unlawful.

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barakgila
my take:
[https://twitter.com/barakgila/status/1217206089403359233?s=1...](https://twitter.com/barakgila/status/1217206089403359233?s=19)

tl;dr: the merits of the labor dispute notwithstanding, TAs were well-
compensated relative to other schools and the core problem was a mandated pay
structure with a cutoff at 10hr week for tuition fee reimbursement.

