[iak8god]

> I went to grad school at a unionized school

Me too. One time the department admins decided it was too expensive to have the restrooms in the grad student offices cleaned more than once a week. We're talking about a men's room with a single toilet and a single urinal, shared by a dozens of people pulling verrry long days (some were just sleeping in their offices). The restroom was already pretty gross when it was being cleaned 3x/wk. Predictably, the change to 1x/week cleaning made things much, much worse. Honestly, it was a health hazard at that point. The administration didn't care. Faculty didn't care. Everyone could see that it was disgusting, but no amount of griping by the people who had to use those facilities had any effect.

Someone finally had the bright idea to contact the graduate student employee union steward, who was himself a graduate student in another department. He came down, took one look, and walked over to have a chat with department administration. I don't know what was said, but they resumed 3x/wk cleaning immediately.