Membership + Dues

Where do my dues go?

When you pay dues, you are are funding our efforts to organize and advocate for all graduate students at UW-Madison. Our union is self-funded, meaning that dues from members are our only source of funding; we are not supported by the university.

When the union wins raises, your dues put money back in your pocket. The larger the number of dues paying members we have, the more power we have at the negotiating table.

Paying dues allows us to be affiliated with a national organization, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) that provides us with support we could not afford on our own, like a full-time organizer, administrative support (keeping track of financial documents, taxes, and membership lists is a lot of work for us to do alone), and a legal team.

TAA dues funded the organizing resources necessary to win six weeks of paid parental leave for graduate assistants in 2024. Dues ensured our affiliation and legal resources necessary for us to sue Act 10 in 2023. Dues pay for transportation expenses for the TAA’s diaper program. Many of the benefits we enjoy today, like tuition remission and health insurance, were won because TAA members paid their dues!

Your dues also allow us to bring more of our colleagues into the union, hold training and informational meetings about the union, rent an office space, organize social events. Your dues go towards local organizing efforts, new organizing efforts in Wisconsin, legal support, overhead, support for other AFT locals, a strike fund, and national and international labor solidarity. As a member, you have a say in how your dues money is used.