The UC System: Fighting for a Fairer Univised University and Struggling to Find a Job Outside the Labor Labor Market

With no academic workers, research at the UC system has largely stopped and many classes have been canceled as the university approaches its examination period.

Demonstrators allege that the UC system has used unfair negotiating tactics. The union has filed more than 30 unfair practice charges with the Public Employment Relations Board in California, accusing the University of not bargaining in good faith. The board has issued complaints in 15 cases. UC officials have publicly denied these allegations, and a spokesperson for the university says that the system “remains committed to continuing its good-faith efforts to reach agreements … as quickly as possible”.

Fighting for a fairer UC is important, says Stephanie Wankowicz, a structural-biology graduate student at UC San Francisco, but she worries that the strike could delay her graduation, which is currently scheduled for the spring.

For example, salaries for doctoral students in the biological sciences fall short of the cost of living at almost every institution in the United States, according to a survey this year. In the last decade, the frustration has led to a wave of graduate-student unionizations in universities, as well as the drive of researchers to seek jobs outside academia.

The academic workers had argued they couldn’t afford to live in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego and Berkeley, where housing costs are soaring, with the current salaries.

The California Universities Open Higher Education Student Labor Strike: Why the UC Strikes, Why Students Get Paid and How They’re Behaving

The university offers a salary increase of less than 10% for the first year and a 3% increase each subsequent year, which is not tied to cost of living or minimum wage.

Part of the disparity is because graduate students are classified as part-time workers who only work 20 hours per week, with the rest devoted to their studies. This doesn’t reflect reality for many. Ayad says that she had classes as part of her programme for only the first two years, and she’s been doing research full time for the past three. Ro Sandoval, a neuroscience graduate student at UC San Diego, says that every single graduate student they know works more than 40 hours per week.

Miranda started breeding a cohort of laboratory mice a few weeks before the strikes began. He says that the strike would probably set him back two months, because he would not be able to use all of the animals he had prepared. “We all have to make sacrifices to our experimental timelines, but people are striking because they feel what we’re doing here is important.”

The strike occurred at a time of increased labor action nationwide and a groundswell of unionization efforts among graduate student employees at other universities.

The raises in pay and benefits could be an impact outside of California. For several decades, colleges and universities have increasingly relied on faculty and graduate student employees to do teaching and research that had previously been handled by tenured track faculty — but without the same pay and benefits.

“These agreements will place our graduate student employees among the best supported in public higher education,” Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California, said in a news release Friday. The contracts will allow us to continue recruiting top academic talent from across the state and around the globe.

The 32-day UC strike was being closely watched around the country, in part because it is the largest strike of academic workers in higher education, said William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College in New York.

Just this year, graduate student employees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clark University, Fordham University, New Mexico State University, Washington State University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute all voted in favor of unionization.

“There’s a fundamental shift in who’s doing the academic work in higher education,” Cain said. Wages for graduate students haven’t kept up over time, he added, and many face increasingly tough competition for full-time faculty jobs.

The University of California Graduate Student Union (UCSD): Proposed Decay after a 40-Day Strike and Anomalous Pay

LOS ANGELES — Striking graduate students at the University of California approved a bargaining agreement Friday, ending an unprecedented 40-day strike that snarled classes at the prestigious university system.

Wages will increase up to 80% for some of the lowest-earning workers with increases for everyone else, according to representatives. The contracts also improve benefits to help workers cover child care expenses and health costs and will help intentional students, they said.

The agreements cover about 36,000 workers, many of whom make as little as $24,000 annually, a paltry salary for living in cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Berkeley, where the university system has campuses.

A tentative agreement was reached last Friday after the strike for a month had ended. Several attempts to reach a deal were made by the mediation efforts of the Mayor of Sacramento.

The minimum salary for teaching assistants will be at least $36,000 by the end of the 20th century, and higher pay for students in high-priced cities will follow. Graduate student researchers will make at least $40,000, according to union representatives.

A group of workers branded as “Strike to Win” urged workers to vote against the tentative agreement, saying it failed to meet demands of a $54,000 base wage, more financial support for international students, $2,000 a month for childcare subsidies and expanded protections for people with disabilities.