This week, teaching and research assistants will decide whether to unionize. There has been a good debate on campus as to whether unionization is good for graduate students and the University as a whole. We feel it is.

A union is likely to lead to better compensation for graduate student employees. This will require the University to allocate more resources for their compensation. But the University should be able to leverage this to better recruit the best and the brightest teaching and research assistants. It’s up to administrators, professors and admissions staff members to maximize the benefits of unionization.

In theory, we could have higher-compensated research and teaching assistants but fewer of them. If there are overstaffed departments, a more efficient use of graduate student employees is positive. Further, this has not been the case at the University of Iowa, a similar institution whose graduate student employees unionized. In the end, departments will allocate their resources based on the needs of their professors.

Undergraduate students rely heavily on teaching assistants. Any future strike would bring learning to a halt, which would harm undergraduates most. But this is a reason to call for both Graduate Teaching and Research Assistants Coalition United Electrical Local 1105 and University of Minnesota officials to deal with one another in good faith, not to oppose unionization. Nothing in the current unionization drive suggests we will see a labor stoppage in the future.

At the end of the day, answers to labor issues rely heavily on one question: Is the work force in question compensated fairly for the work it does, given market conditions?

Our research and teaching assistants are not paid consistently with the market. Their average wage is ranked 10th out of 11 Big Ten schools. If the University of Minnesota wants to improve itself, as the recent strategic-positioning proposals indicate, this is not going to work. If we want to improve our University of Minnesota, one clear way is to improve its marketability to potential graduate student employees. A union for such workers will likely achieve that end.

A teaching and research assistants’ union is merited, given current compensation. If the effects of the unionization are properly leveraged, they will benefit the University as a whole in the long run. We hope graduate student employees take the first step this week and are confident administrators, professors and admissions staff members can take it from there.