The “Invisible” Exploitation of Student Labour

By Thomas Colbourne, YCL-LJC member in Ottawa

For many students, especially graduate students, labouring for the university is a necessary component of their academic activities. This labour is often required to meet the financial burdens of pursuing an education and completing a degree. Many masters programs in Canada, for example, do not provide direct financial support for their students, and so university employment, either in the form of T.A. positions, R.A. positions, jobs as invigilators or tutors, etc., provides a much-needed source of income for students. For those who want to pursue a career in academia, acquiring work through the university is necessary for professional development and to ensure that one has a competitive CV for future applications. There is thus a two-fold necessity for students to take jobs provided by the university: they need these positions to sustain themselves materially, and they need these positions if they are to continue developing their careers. Like with all forms of wage-labour, this necessity is exploited by capitalist structures so that the bourgeoisie profits while the working class makes barely enough to reproduce their labour. You need to work to eat, you need to work to “advance your station in life,” and so you are willing, if not necessitated, to take on work that is exploitative. 

I should acknowledge that many of these labour positions are, when compared to other available work, good jobs to hold. The average pay for T.A.s is around $29.00/h in Canada, which is far greater than the $11.00/h minimum wage established by the Federal Government. Even if this is offset somewhat by the fact that most students do not have the time to work a full-time position, most students feel fortunate for being able to acquire a position at the university. This produces another incentive to work for the university, since other available positions often appear less appealing in comparison. An old colleague of mine once asked me, in response to T.A. strikes at Carleton University, “…why do T.A.s want to strike when they are already so well off?” The answer is that, even with the comparative financial benefits, student labour is nonetheless a form of wage labour, and as such it is necessarily exploited by universities for their own profit.

Having been a T.A. at various Canadian universities for nearly 8 years, I would like to speak to some of the less obvious forms of exploitation that take place. First, it is common for T.A.s to work directly for their thesis supervisors, or for those directly tied to their academic well-being. As a result of this, T.A.s are hesitant to push their labour rights or to resist being overworked: because a T.A.’s academic career is determined often by a good reference letter or a good grade, T.A.s often agree to work more hours than they are being paid in order to ensure that those who hold the reigns of their academic career stay happy. Although T.A.s often find themselves overworked, that is, working beyond the hours for which they are compensated, most do not keep track of their hours, since they implicitly recognize that their academic fates depend on remaining silent. Better to work more and remain in the good graces of the course supervisor, than to risk their wrath by asserting one’s right to compensation. In effect, this allows the universities to hire fewer positions and to compensate T.A.s for fewer hours, since there is a tacit recognition that to be a good student employee one needs to simply do what is asked, regardless of whether or not you are being compensated. Moreover, I have found that when T.A.s do insist on respecting their contracts, i.e., insist on not working more hours than what they are compensated for, they are treated as being “difficult.” It is very telling that workers insisting on fair compensation for their labour are often treated as combative, as something to be resisted and suppressed by capitalist institutions. Finally, since departments often have the discretion to assign students outside of the priority pool to T.A. positions according to their whim, speaking against overwork or unfair conditions risks having that T.A. barred from future access to employment. These are only a handful of the many ways that the double position of student-employee is manipulated by the university to extract more profit from student labour.

Universities operate on the back of the working class and cannot function without student labour. Despite this fact, student labour is systematically exploited while the higher-ups bank exorbitant paycheques. Students are in the unfortunate position of being made to feel happy, or appreciative, or lucky for having received these positions at the university. They are, as it were, told to take pleasure in their own exploitation, to view it as a boon to their life and career bestowed on them by a magnanimous patron. This abuse of student labour often goes unseen and students are made to feel as if their academic career rests on their silence. Unfortunately, this is not something particular to student labour and these forms of exploitation happen universally in a capitalist system. We must work by necessity in order to fulfill our material needs. Capitalists rely on this necessity, and in controlling the means of production (including intellectual production), they systematically exploit the labour of the working class for their own profit. But, not only is the working class routinely exploited, but we are constantly pressured to remain silent about our exploitation — we are implicitly told that this silent exploitation will eventually better our material conditions. It will not. And we are told to take joy in our exploitation, to view it as a great privilege rather than a form of subjugation. The working class will not, nor cannot, remain silent forever, and eventually our feigned joy will give rise to honest outrage.   

Students should become active in the student unions and labour organizations that operate on their university campuses. While union activity cannot provide the ultimate solution to the exploitation of labour under capitalism, it is an essential means for workers to alleviate and lessen the harshness of their working conditions. However, the effectiveness of the unions in advocating for students and agitating the university crucially depends on the active participation of its members. The union is in more of a position to place pressure on the university the more they have the active support of their membership. At minimum, this requires that members become aware of their collective agreements, of their rights and responsibilities, and of the corresponding rights and responsibilities of the university.  A union, after all, is a group of workers acting collectively to advance their working conditions, and the strength of a union depends on the energy and activity of those who comprise it.

While this is not to disparage the hard work of our comrades in student unions who struggle tirelessly on behalf of their fellow workers, there is a limit to what unions can do. For instance, while the union is able to grieve violations of the collective agreement, often the “soft pressure” described above exerted by course supervisors prevents students from actively opposing overwork and expectations of supererogatory tasks. Thus, even if the union is in a position to file a grievance against the university, a student may avoid having the union intervene for fear of falling from the good graces of their course supervisor. 

The YCL-LJC maintains that we must reduce and eliminate apprenticeship and tuition fees, and that everyone must have access to a free, accessible, quality, emancipatory, and democratic education system. Further, students should receive a living stipend to ensure that education is accessible to all and to recognize that the activities of students are unrecognized forms of labour in themselves. If we were to achieve these demands, then there would be no opportunity for the above mentioned ill-treatment of students to arise: if we all had access to university, and a means to support ourselves during our education, then we would not need to sell our labour to the university, or to other employers, so that they can extract profit while the youth accrue debt. We must also remember that the struggle of student labour is not detached from the struggle of other workers. Students workers must stand in solidarity with their comrades both near and far, the other labour groups exploited by the university, workers from other economic sectors, and workers from around the world. Workers everywhere must unite in their struggle against the bourgeoisie if we are to overthrow capitalism.