This autumn it will be decided whether more than two years of intensive preparations and a structured organising-summer-semester will lead to a TVStud Collective Agreement.
Onto the streets in autumn 2023!
For the improvement of the working conditions of student assistants and tutors!
It is up to us. This can be the semester in which we together push through a collective agreement for student employees (assistants and tutors). We want more pay, longer contract terms, more time off and a voice in staff councils (Personalrat), in short: we want recognition and appreciation for the indispensable work we do in research and teaching.
The fact that the regional governments are avoiding a collective agreement for student employees is a socio-political scandal. The state, as the largest employer of students, was once considered a positive role model in the world of employment, but now instead it exploits us students as cheap and flexible labour with numerous legal exemptions. In this way, we are supposed to maintain the underfunded university system. This ignores the fact that good teaching and research are only possible under decent working conditions.
Enough of this – we are fighting back!
And we have already been successful. The blockade of the regional governments is crumbling: a majority is now in favour of improving student working conditions. But we all know that promises made during election campaigns count for very little once the elections are over. Therefore, during the collective bargaining round in autumn 2023, it will be up to us to protest and strike to remind our regional governments of their election promises and to put further pressure on the other governments to stop blocking the improvement of our working conditions.
We are still feeling the massive wage loss we experienced in our wallets last year in the wake of the energy and inflation crisis. We demand living wages instead of wage loss. We demand long-term secure contracts instead of one insecure short-term contract after another, semester after semester. We demand real participation rights instead of exclusion from the staff councils. Let’s fight for what we are entitled to: let’s talk to our fellow student works, build networks in the unions, protest and strike when our unions ver.di and GEW call on us to do so. In 2023, we will push through a collective agreement for student employees – the TVStud! It also depends on you!
Powerful visual impressions of the #Hochschulaktionstag, our decentralized strike day in November 2023, can be found here.