Hey y'all,
I'm advocating for the members of UAW 2865, the student workers at UC.
We negotiated and ratified a new contract earlier this year after about a year of deadlocked negotiations and then a 6 week strike after the UC admin committed a myriad of unfair labor practices, mostly around bad faith negotiation bargaining.
We were mildly happy about the contract, not all we asked for but some important improvements to quality of life working in the university system. Not just for pay, most of us are underpaid enough to be at around 50-70% rent burden, but also issues such as bullying and harassment, protections for international workers, better health care, better transportation options, etc….still lots to improve but a relatively victorious battle. (check some of my post for highlight pics from strike earlier in year, fairUCnow.org for more info)
Now that it's been half a year since the signing of new contract, most of what we've seen from the university admin has been refusing to follow the terms of the new contract, dragging of feet, and even retaliation against workers for going on strike and trying to enforce our new contract
There are stories from all over the state since most of the nearly 50k workers in UAW 2865 experience these issues, the basic heuristic is that UC admin doesn't want to change their behavior, including not increasing budgetary allocations for new salaries so some of their responses:
-hire workers to do the same work but with lower 'percentage' so pay less for essentially no reason. This is more or less a form of covert wage theft
-reducing hiring of new graduate students by large %, for example physics in UCSD proposed nearly 50% cut in new grad hires for this upcoming year. We see this as a form of layoffs, and explicitly increases the load on workers since the same amount of work needs to be done with far fewer workers to share load. For example 1st semester physics grads typically have hundreds of students to grade which can take multiple dozens of hours per week, while having 3 grad physics courses they need to maintain good grades in. This was already BARELY manageable wrt time and stress even before the layoffs. Bad for grads, bad for students, bad in long term for uni
-removing summer positions so many grads have found themselves without any job over the summer, with insane cost of living already driving many people into homelessness and debt even before the strike. These summer positions used to be more or less guaranteed, they had so many summer students to teach that we hired from outside our department to fill all the TA positions, now even our own people don't get jobs. Bad for grads, bad for students, bad in long term for uni
-Bad for grads, bad for students, bad in long term for uni
-not implementing the new grievance procedure to resolve grievances in timely, equitable manner. Most grievances still get stonewalled and pushed into arbitration
-not dealing with serial abusers such as UC Davis campus which has been dealing with sexual harrassment of grad student workers by their advisors
-etc……again many workers all over state have their own story which I can't capture all the complexity of so I encourage readers to ask your friendly neighborhood grad student how this contract enforement stuff has been working on their end
Something which seem tangentially related but is a huge issue for us and speaks to a wider trend we want to combat is that the UC admin have adopted strategies to bust up the union and retaliate against workers
-use the office of student conduct as a cudgel to sanction workers and put them on probation, trying to instill fear in our members with the threat of expulsion or deportation for doing things such as direct action protests to address a grievance.
–Example 1: In ucsd physics we had a professor who gave a 'unsatisfactory' grade to a worker during the strike. The class the worker was in wasn't really a class, it was 298/299 which are essentially filler credits when a grad student is doing research work. This ammounts to retaliation against a worker for going on strike, which is literally illegal. This 'U' grade threaten's that student's status at the university wrt being able to continue studies, despite the student performing duties fine up until the strike happened. We filed grievances to rectify this situation, sent letters, networked with department, went through all the 'proper channels' to resolve issue with ZERO MOVEMENT. After this, we saw the only way to produce the progress we wanted was to show up and protest. We showed up at a class where the professor was co-teaching, asking to have a moment of his time to resolve the issue while other professor led class. He refused so we protested to show the issue was not going away until he simple changed 'U' to 'S' in gradebook, rectifying his illegal retaliation. Many UAW 2865 workers from this protest then received charges from the office of student conduct which have been followed up by probation and mutliple tasks to 'get workers in line', make sure we never dissent again. Needless to say we find the whole process to be a kangaroo court type of situation, we don't even believe the code of student conduct applies to us when we are taking part in actions as WORKERS. (direct action protest had clear union organization, clear beginning and end wrt timeline of events in which we were acting as protesting workers protecting one of our own, clear and reasonable intent, entirely peaceful protesting barring the use of our protected speech). This is one of the key battle lines of the contract: UC wants to treat us as students or workers depending upon what's best for their bottom line, we have reasonably clear lines between the two modes of activity. Note that most graduate students after their first couple years are more or less employees of the university doing most of the legwork with regards to teaching and research. For example in my 3rd year in phd I took only 1 4 credit class, with the rest of my credits being research credits where I was simply doing labor as a graduate student researcher. About half of our salary is automatically taken to pay tuition despite many of us taking very minimal resources from uni in the form of taking classes, at least after first year or so.
–Example 2: A large group of students attended a fundraising event on May 5 in La Jolla to protest the behavior of the university wrt contract alignment. We peacefully filled the stage of the event and made clear why we were there, to fix the issues the university refuses to address through 'proper channels'. Yet again the UC used the office of student conduct despite us acting as workers standing up in solidarity with each other in this scenario. We assume the UC will follow through in similar way: kangaroo court process to threaten and intimidate workers into never protesting or enforcing our contract again.
This is not just a threat on the workers from these two protests, this is a threat on all 50k workers across the UC system. This is explicit violation of constitutional protections to freedom of speech, expression, assembly, labor activity. etc… by a unviersity heavily connected to the power of the state. This is an authoritarian crackdown on labor rights
Now they've gone even further. Multiple students have now been ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH FELONIES over CHALK ON SIDEWALKS AND ERASABLE MARKERS ON WINDOWS down at SIO…………
…….just imagine the level of soulless authoritarianism required to retaliate in these ways, this is what all 50k workers in UAW 2865 face as the UC admin refuse to follow through on a negotiated, ratified contract
There is a difference between physical violence and economic/legalistic/career violence, but neither is acceptable. We find that we must stand up in solidarity for each other and fight back however we can
The UC admin are trying to make a pattern of this process as a cop-out for following our contract, trying to change office of student conduct rules so that NO PROTESTING OR DISSENT IS ALLOWED AT ALL without retaliation from UC admin
TLDR: UC admin retaliating against workers engaging in collective action to enforce our ratified contract
Call to action (UC student/parent): talk to professors, grad students, and others about this situation since it affects the quality of your education and the environment on UC campuses. If UC had their way they would take the same tuition from you while hiring fewer grad students to teach you, grade you, help you start doing research. Upholding a police state of indentured servants in their company town. Advocate for progress. Spread the word
Call to action (UC student worker): Talk to your union steward if you have experienced any contract misalignment or other grievable offense, come to organizing committee meetings in your department, campus, or statewide. Talk to your coworkers, lab-mates, and advisors about how this issue affects you. Come to collective actions or protests to let your voice heard. Protect each other, take on some role to help the effort
Call to action (general, San Diego/California): Show up to protest at the arraignment hearing for the workers charged with felonies, what we know so far is that it'll be downtown San Diego courthouse near trolley stop, July 10th (next monday) at 12-2pm. Call your state senator about passing AB 504 in CA congress so solidarity strikes are protected as one would expect they should be under standard constitutional protections and labor protections
Call to action (general): stand up against abuse in your own workplace, spread the word, relate these issues to your own career & the people around you. Don't send your kid to UC or send them donations until they hold to their word regarding fair treatment of workers such as alignment with current law and negotiated contracts. Take what UC admin says with a grain of salt, they drip honey out of one side of their mouth while spitting doodoo out of the other side, gross.
Thanks for reading
Solidarity Forever