While the students at UCLA have not received benefits like those at Ann Arbor or Wisconsin, they recently won a major legal battle when UCLA TAs and other graduate teachers voted to be represented by an affiliate of the UAW.

This forced administrators to officially recognize the union and immediately begin negotiations. Razza said similar elections would be held on the seven other UC campuses by the end of this school year.

The Road Ahead

However, while these organizations have made tremendous advancements in their fight to gain better working conditions, they are not satisfied to simply remain content with the victories they have made.

Instead, leaders of these graduate student organizations have said they will continue their struggle until graduate students are fully recognized for the contributions they have made to college education.

For graduate organizations which have already had success in their dealings with administrations, future goals are much broader and are aimed at improving graduate student employment conditions both locally and nationally.

"What we would really like to do is to drive towards a living wage for graduate student instructors," Olmsted said. "Currently, grad students [in Ann Arbor] don't get paid as well as public school teachers in the most impoverished school districts where they receive considerably more per hour than grad students. We feel that a higher level of compensation is merited."

Wehr added that he sees the graduate student labor movement as feeding into a larger, progressive labor movement.