LETTER: Grad Workers deserve insurance and a living wage

I’m not currently a graduate worker, but I’m an alum and I had to put off an eye surgery for years because the University of New Mexico doesn’t offer vision insurance or a living wage. Let me say that again: UNM employs a bunch of nerds and provides no eye insurance. Seriously, what?

In 2017, I got into UNM’s creative writing program. I was working retail at the time and had health, vision and dental insurance, so of course, I scheduled as many appointments as possible before school. I went to get an eye exam and my doctor said, “something’s going on with your corneas, but we’ll just keep an eye on it. Come back next year.”

But I wasn’t able to go in the next year because I’d have to pay for the exam (and a new prescription if I needed one) out of pocket. On $14.5k a year, even $125 for a vision exam is really hard to come by. Fast forward to 2019, and I’m going for an eye exam because the situation has become untenable — I can’t read up close. My eye doctor says, “okay, you know how we said to keep an eye on your corneas? Well, they’re deteriorating. You need surgery.”

I couldn’t think about surgery. I had to keep thinking about school, about a summer job: how was I going to pay rent or feed myself if I didn’t keep working?

I graduated mid-pandemic in 2020. I couldn’t even get an eye exam for a long time. And this summer, when I finally couldn’t read up close at all, my eye doctor said, “you really need this surgery. Honestly, you should have gotten it done a long time ago.”

I tried to think about when I could have gotten an eye surgery that would leave me out of commission for a month — forget the winter intercessions, I used most of my off-time lesson planning, catching up on my dissertation or reading for the next semester’s classes.

Maybe during the summer? But grad students didn’t get summer funding: how would I keep a roof over my head if I wasn’t working from May through August? We don’t even have health coverage over the summer. A lot of us just cross our fingers that nothing bad will happen to us during the summer, or during the regular school year for that matter. Who will cover our classes? Meet with our students? Pay our rent? Take care of our families? ourselves?

And while I was reading and writing and grading my eyes into dust for a pittance of a wage, whoever makes those decisions, about who gets to have insurance, who gets a cost of living increase, I can guarantee they didn’t have to put off surgeries or appointments or even deny themselves vacations or country club memberships. They are respected enough by the University for it to pay (for) them.

I see now how little UNM cares about its student workers. UNM’s continued reluctance to bargain and persistent union-busting tactics show that the administration would much rather let student workers go blind, cold or hungry than provide a living wage or sufficient health benefits.

So we’re not going to look away — we deserve insurance and better pay.