What is work-to-rule? Historically, work-to-rule means interpreting a labor contract in a way that is strictly to the benefit of the workers. Following the Cambridge Dictionary definition, work-to-rule is “a form of protest in which employees do exactly what is stated in their contracts, and nothing more, in order to slow down production.”
Our approach to work-to-rule does not entail the withholding of work. It implies not doing work that is typically expected and done for free, for example, preparatory work prior to the start date of a contract.
Why Work-to-rule? Why now? UMass works because WE work. Without graduate student labor, the university’s operations would grind to a halt, and cease to generate revenue. Work-to-rule is not a refusal to perform labor; it is a refusal to do anything more than what we are contracted to do. If this upsets our bosses, there is a simple solution. PAY US FOR IT.
UNPAID LABOR
The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear just how much unpaid labor graduate student workers already do on a regular basis, and it has led administrators to demand even more. Further, it has exposed how little the University is willing to bargain fairly with us when disaster hits: they denied us our paid vacation and ordered us to overwork during and after Spring Break, refused summer pay for research (a pandemic response even Columbia was willing to commit to), and even tried to union-bust in the middle of negotiations. While we were indirectly commended for aiding in the smooth and sudden transition to remote learning in emails from the Chancellor to the UMass community, we were never paid for the work we did. Likewise, the university’s plan for reopening in the fall depends on our willingness to work more without any consideration for hours or increase in pay.
…AND EVEN MORE UNPAID LABOR
More broadly, we are expected to balance our teaching with many other forms of unpaid labor we already do that have been intensified by the pandemic: for instance, the unwaged work of childcare. We are expected to fulfill our duties at the same time as we navigate uncertainties about housing, immigration status, visas, and our future employment—uncertainties caused, in some cases, by the university’s reluctance to pay us a living wage.
RISKY WORKING CONDITIONS
In addition, many of us are still required to report to work on-campus. We have to risk our lives without hazard pay, and without any guidance from the university as to what they will do to protect us in the likely event of a spike in COVID cases when undergrads return in the fall.
We are expected to do all of this in a climate of increasingly open racism and xenophobia, which has only worsened since the onset of the pandemic, and which raises serious concerns about the safety of graduate workers on and off campus. Our bosses have decided that their bottom line is worth the preventable loss of human life. They have put their profits before our livelihoods, our futures, and the continuance of our research for UMass and academia.
As UMass administrators follow the lead of the Trump administration and seek to normalize the everyday inhumanity of acceptable death, work-to-rule is a way for us to refuse to normalize this state of affairs, and to demand that the University fairly compensate us for our labor and meet our basic health and safety demands.