The 2023 Temple University strike was a labor dispute between the Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA), a graduate student employee union that represented roughly 750 graduate student employees at Temple University, and the university administration, led by President Jason Wingard. The strike began on January 31, 2023, and lasted until March 13, when union members voted to ratify a tentative agreement brokered between the negotiators for both parties.
In early 2022, the existing labor contract between the union and university expired without a replacement. While the two parties disagreed on several issues, including bereavement and parental leave and the grievance policy, the main point of contention regarded wage increases. The union sought an increase of 50 percent in the first year and 6 percent increases in subsequent years, but the university countered with annual wage increases of no greater than 2 percent. As an agreement was not reached, union members voted to authorize a strike, which began on January 31 of the following year. Over the course of the strike, TUGSA members held multiple rallies and demonstrations across Temple's campus and attracted support from both local and national politicians. On February 8, the university announced that they would be rescinding the tuition remission granted to graduate student employees, a move which provoked public criticism of the university and led to the union filing an unfair labor practice charge against the university with the National Labor Relations Board. On March 9, a tentative agreement was reached that was voted into effect by the union on March 13, bringing an immediate end to the strike. Terms of the contract were generally considered a compromise between the two side's initial proposals and saw first-year pay increases of between 30 and 40 percent for workers, amongst other changes regarding policies such as grievance procedures and time off.
Following the strike, President Wingard resigned from his position, with several publications indicating that his decision was due at least in part to criticism over his handling of the strike. Additionally, several publications noted that the Temple strike and its settlement were viewed positively by student labor activists at other nearby universities. In general, the strike has been viewed as being part of a broader nationwide labor movement amongst graduate student workers in the United States.
Background
Graduate students' union at Temple University
Temple University is an American public university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2022, roughly 750 graduate student employees were members of the Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA) Local 6290, a labor union which had been established about 20 years earlier and was an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). These graduate students were employed by the university as either teaching assistants (TAs) or research assistants and as such had multiple responsibilities that included helping in conducting research, grading classes, and teaching introductory and general education classes. The union represented approximately 60 percent of the graduate student workers at Temple, with the total number of graduate students at the university numbering roughly 10,000.
Labor contract negotiations In February 2022, the labor contract that existed between the union and the university expired without a contract, and that same month, the two sides began negotiations on the terms of a new contract. By November, despite months of negotiations, the union and university had not come to an agreement regarding a new contract.
The union was requesting an immediate wage increase of roughly 50 percent for the first year of the new contract and subsequent 6 percent annual wage increases for the next three years. Additionally, the union wanted changes to the employees' grievance procedures, improved bereavement and parental leave policies, and health care for the family members and dependents of graduate student employees, in addition to some other requests. At the time, graduate student employees at Temple were earning an annual stipend of between $19,000 and $20,000 on average, below the living wage level for Philadelphia, and the union justified their proposal, which would have raised that average to about $32,807 in the first year, by stating that it would constitute a cost of living adjustment. According to reporting from The Temple News, the university's student newspaper, graduate student workers had been affected acutely by the then-ongoing 2021–2022 inflation surge in the United States.
The university's counterproposal was for a 2 percent wage increase in the first year, 1.75 percent wage increases in the second and third years, and a 1.5 percent increase in the contract's fourth year. In a statement, the university noted that the graduate student workers were officially part-time employees who worked an average of 20 hours per week for nine months of the year, with the current stipend equating to an hourly wage of about $25, and received full benefits for the entirety of the year. Additionally, the university pointed out that graduate student workers also received free tuition, which the university said was a value of approximately $20,000 per year. A member of the union's negotiating committee also expressed disappointment with the university for only being willing to negotiate with TUGSA on matters regarding wages. Speaking later about the situation, President Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon of the faculty senate stated that the university was in an awkward position due to an overall 6.4 percent decline in enrollment at Temple, which she said had made operations at the university more difficult.
Move towards strike action On November 11, 2022, a majority of TUGSA members participated in a vote and, with 99 percent in favor, authorized the union's negotiating committee to call for a strike action if they felt it was necessary. The vote did not establish a trigger date or deadline for calling a strike, and as the university and union had another negotiation session planned for November 17, it was unlikely that the strike would be called before that date. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that a strike at that time would be disruptive due to how late in the semester it was, but the university released a statement saying that they had plans in place to lessen the disruption that a strike would cause, including having faculty members, professors, and some undergraduate students fill in for striking graduate students. The strike would be the first in TUGSA's history and one of the first at the university in over a decade. The last major strike at the university involved nurses at the Temple University Hospital in 2010, while the last strike involving faculty at Temple occurred in 1990.
This move towards a possible strike action was part of a larger wave of labor disputes and organizing efforts at universities that had been occurring since 2021, with labor historian Heather Ann Thompson saying that the upsurge in unionization efforts, despite a broader long-term decline in unionization in the United States, coincided with an increased reliance from universities on the work of TAs and adjunct professors. A January 2023 article in Bloomberg Law reporting that, in 2022, there were 15 strikes conducted by graduate students, professors, and other academic workers in the United States, with the most notable being a strike at the University of California system that involved about 48,000 workers. In addition to the strikes, many universities had instituted substantial wage increases for their graduate student workers, with the University of Pennsylvania (also located in Philadelphia) agreeing in December 2022 to raise its minimum wage for doctoral students from $30,547 to $38,000—the largest single increase in the university's history.
Course of the strike
Start of the strike On the morning of Tuesday, January 31, 2023, after about a year of negotiating, the union announced the start of the strike. Striking graduate students began picketing and distributed pro-strike flyers to other collegians, some of whom expressed support for the strikers. At around 2:15 p.m., before a scheduled meeting of the Temple University board of trustees, the union held a rally outside of the university's Charles Library that was attended by about 100 strike supporters. Pennsylvania State Senator Sharif Street was a speaker at the rally, where he voiced his support for the strike and led the protestors in a chant demanding higher pay. The picketing lasted until about 4 p.m., and the union announced plans for further picketing throughout the rest of the week. The strike ultimately caused the university to cancel some affected classes.
Union leaders stated from the beginning that the strike would be open-ended and indefinite, lasting until the union and university came to an agreement that they found satisfactory. At the time, the university's counterproposal to the union included 3 percent annual wage increases that would raise the average pay to $22,000 by 2026, in addition to one-time payments of up to $500. With regards to other points of contention, the university was offering to increase the number of parental paid leave days from 5 to 10, while the union was requesting 45. Additionally, in a statement from Provost Gregory Mandel, the university stated that they would "provide additional bereavement and provide healthcare benefits coverage" to graduate students. While health care coverage was available for free to graduate students, they had to pay for dependents' coverage, which the union said could amount to up to 80 percent of a graduate student workers' salary and was especially difficult for students from outside of the United States, as they were required to have their family covered in order to remain in the country.
Strike continues into February
On February 2, TUGSA held a rally on Temple's campus that included supportive speeches from local politicians and national labor leaders, including former Philadelphia city councilmember and then-mayoral candidate Helen Gym and AFT President Randi Weingarten. Additionally, in a statement to The Philadelphia Inquirer, President Jeffrey Doshna of the Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP), the university's faculty union, said that, while the union could not officially participate in the strike, many faculty members were supportive of the graduate students' union and were declining to take on additional work as a show of support for the strikers.
On that same day, strikers were notified by the university that if they did not tell the chairperson of their academic department that they would return to work then they would lose their income, their benefits, and their free tuition. A union representative responded by saying that they were disappointed but not surprised by the announcement and that the union had been preparing for this. By the second week of the strike, Temple stated that roughly 80 percent of the university's graduate student employees were continuing to work, saying that 550 graduate students were continuing to work while roughly 120, mostly from the College of Liberal Arts, were the ones striking. However, this number was disputed by a representative for TUGSA, who said that the actual number of strikers was at least twice that and continuing to grow. That same week, the two parties entered into mediation. Around that same time, fliers began to be circulated around campus advocating for a general student walkout on February 15 in support of the strikers.
Temple rescinds free tuition