How tens of thousands of grad workers are organizing themselves

It's interesting to see this wave of organization. There was chatter in my cohort years ago about unionizing, it didn't really gain momentum because we were in a class of state workers who weren't eligible for collective bargaining.

I wish the article mentioned what the union has won for grad workers. The issues we had were:

• We had some insane taxes/fees on our healthcare. One month of pay a year was wiped out when all these fees and taxes hit.
• We had a front office worker who would annoy our chair until he'd make disruptive decisions for the grad student. The big one was when they decided to lock the break room outside of "business hours" which meant we lost access to our fridge and coffee station (she was mad about the occasional spoon being left in the sink). If you know anything about grad students, they're on campus late and need a place to store food for when they're burning the candle at both ends.
• Just some bad course coordinators (tenure track faculty) who pushed off their work onto grad students.
• Pay not keeping up with cost of living at all. We could make it work, but combined with the other issues this was more salt in the wound.