On February 8, striking graduate workers at Temple University, a public institution on Philadelphia’s North Side, received notices that their tuition remission for the spring semester would be removed, “as a result of your participation in the TUGSA strike.” The Temple University Graduate Students’ Association, an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) local comprising 750 teaching and research assistants, has been on strike since January 31. With the revocation of a benefit that can be worth as much as $20,000 — workers were notified that they have until March 9 to pay the balance if they seek to remain enrolled in classes — the labor dispute has taken on a new tenor.

The administration has also shut off strikers’ health insurance benefits, a move some TUGSA members only learned of when they tried to fill prescriptions at pharmacies. Such retaliation in a higher education strike is far from the norm: while other administrations have threatened to withhold benefits like health insurance to strikers, none have gone as far as Temple.

TUGSA will seek a legal challenge to the administration’s actions; the university has defended its actions as legal, stating that students were warned that taking part in the strike and not showing up to work would cause them to lose their full compensation package, which includes tuition assistance and free health care insurance.