Graduate student union set to receive $160,000 from Temple

The Temple University Graduate Students’ Association is set to receive roughly $160,000 from Temple following a 10-month grievance process about students working outside their job descriptions as described in TUGSA’s March 2023 contract, the union’s president told The Temple News. 

The grievance process began in February 2024, said Jesús Fernández Cano, TUGSA’s president. The union came to the agreement through meetings with the head of labor relations and deans of the College of Education and Human Development and College of Public Health instead of going to arbitration.  

Six students were involved, most of whom have since graduated. They will receive up to $30,000 each on Dec. 20, The Temple News confirmed.

The affected students were master’s students hired by CEHD and CPH in various graduate student worker titles. The students were working outside of their job descriptions as graduate research assistants without receiving the appropriate hourly pay, tuition remission or healthcare benefits, Fernández Cano said. 

“Since this classification required a different level of pay and benefit, the university ensured that students were appropriately compensated for the work they had done and would continue to do,” a university spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Temple News. “Unions, employees and supervisors often ask HR to look at positions to ensure that they are appropriately classified or compensated.  If there is an error, the university always corrects it. This was no different.”

TUGSA’s contract, ratified in March 2023, established new workload guidelines with Temple’s human resources department, added new bereavement leave rules and eliminated the tiered pay system in favor of base-pay equity depending on the college in which a student works until 2026. It also added a meeting with the dean of their respective college within 15 business days after a grievance occurs, which helped to speed up the process. 

“This was a great win for [the graduate students] and for us,” Cano said. “I will encourage every grad student to talk to us and keep engaged with TUGSA, because we are the organization that can keep protecting graduate student workers.”