Graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees are essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California, especially as undergraduate enrollments rise. Given the escalating costs of living in California, 48,000 people in the UC system represented by three unions–UAW 2865, UAW 5810, and SRU-UAW–are coordinating their fight for living wages, affordable UC housing, greater support for working parents, sustainable transit benefits, equity for international scholars, and other improvements that would strengthen teaching and research across the University of California. A full list of their demands is available at fairucnow.org.
Negotiations for new contracts with the University of California have not been going well. The UAW has filed more than twenty Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) charges against the University of California, such as failing to respond to requests for basic information and unilaterally making changes to working conditions. The California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) has issued complaints against the university in at least three of those ULPs.
Now, all three unions that represent teaching assistants, tutors, readers, student researchers, postdocs, and academic researchers are voting on whether to strike in response to these ULPs. A strike authorization vote is taking place between October 26 and November 2; if approved, the UAW may call an open-ended strike to begin as soon as November 14.
The Council of UC Faculty Associations calls on the University of California to cease its unlawful behavior, resume good faith negotiations, and settle fair contracts with the unions. We support fair wages and working conditions for academic workers and hope a strike can be avoided. If not, we encourage all Senate faculty to support our fellow academic workers. We remind you of the power of Senate faculty solidarity last year in the UC-AFT lecturers union’s successful campaign for a substantive new contract that inspired academic workers around the country.
Sign on here to show your support for the union efforts and to urge President Drake to settle fair contracts immediately to avoid a devastating strike.
Should UCOP fail to engage in negotiations, The Council of UC Faculty Associations will offer guidelines on faculty rights in the event of a union-sanctioned strike along the lines of those we provided in the face of a potential UC-AFT strike in fall 2021. While the negotiations are ongoing, and before voting concludes, the UAW says faculty can support the student workers in the following ways:
- Contact University leadership (Chancellor, UCOP, etc.) and demand that they bargain in good faith (template letter available here)
- Donate to the hardship fund: https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw
- Discuss with undergraduate students the critical role that academic workers play in the everyday functions of the university
Other suggestions for supportive actions can be found here.
I call on President Drake to bargain in good faith with all of these unions!
UC Management must stop labor law violations and begin bargaining in good faith immediately.
We must support our hard-working graduate students with fair wages and working conditions!
I stand in solidarity with grad students and their demands for fair wages and benefits.
Systemic changes must be made to support our graduate students.
Housing costs are so high and have risen quickly in recent years. We need to support our graduate students and postdocs to ensure their educational and career goals can thrive on our campuses.
The UC system depends on graduate students for our research and teaching missions. As UC administrator salaries have grown, graduate student salaries have stagnated, fallen below competitor institutions, and failed to keep many grads safely above the poverty line, especially in the expensive markets around many campuses. Also, we are not competitive in salaries and packages for our lower-paid postdoctoral researchers and research staff – groups that are critical for maintaining the research funding that we need more and more as state support declines. I urge you to look broadly at all relevant economic trends, re-weight priorities, and quickly approve substantive – not just symbolic – increases in support for these groups.