Edhat Staff
UCSB students strike on Monday sending a message to UC Regents President Janet Napolitano (Photo: UCSB 4 COLA / Twitter)
By edhat staff
Approximately 54 UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) graduate students were fired on Friday as UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) graduate students continue to strike.
Two weeks ago, UCSB graduate students agreed to join in solidarity with UCSC graduate students who were holding a wildcat strike, meaning a strike by unionized workers without union leadership approval. UCSC students were in a monthslong campaign for a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in raises for teaching assistants who state they cannot afford the cost of living in Santa Cruz.
UCSC students were threatened with termination by UC Regents President Janet Napolitano if they didn’t turn in the grades for the classes they were assisting. Napolitano penned an open letter stating the UC Regents have offered benefits to Teaching Assistants in a collective bargaining agreement through June 30, 2022.
After the threat of termination, UCSB graduate students joined the cause and demanded their own COLA of $1,807.51 a month. They have since held a series of strikes and rallies in the past week and occupied Cheadle Hall, UCSB’s main administration building which houses Chancellor Henry Yang’s office, and is now demanding the fired UCSC students be reinstated.
we occupied the UCSB visitor’s center for an hour as we heard from speakers about class consciousness, the Reagan admin’s dismantling of CA higher ed funding, and of course #COLA#COLAStrike pic.twitter.com/JpJWmSb7xa
— Megan Newsome (@ItsMeganNewsome) March 2, 2020
UCSC officials gave students until February 21 to turn in their grades for the Fall semester, which were due in December, or face termination. The University continued to state they are unable to negotiate outside the teacher’s labor union contract, United Auto Workers Local 2865. Their last negotiated contract was in 2018 that included a no-strike clause.
However, UC Regents extended the deadline to February 27 and offered a one-time $2,500 stipend for all MFA and doctorate students and two temporary housing assistance programs as long as the teacher’s turned in 2019 grades. On Friday, 54 UCSC students received termination letters citing abandonment of job responsibilities and insubordination.
UCSB students gathered at Storke Tower on Monday afternoon and will hold a general assembly at 6:00 p.m. to discuss their next steps.
An open letter has been signed from students and department chairs representing over 50 colleges nationwide including Harvard, Stanford, and Rutgers expressing their support for the COLA strike.
Graduate students and teaching assistants at UCSB do not intend to suspend their strike.
— UCSB 4 COLA – ON STRIKE (@ucsb4cola) March 2, 2020
It seems that the difference is that UCSC students did a wildcat strike without Union approval, whereas UCSB students have union approval? Or is it because they did not withhold grades?
Life Lesson #1: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Life lesson #2: Be of value to your employer and your employer will value you.
I am very interested in how the recent supreme court decision in the Janus case will impact these strikes. The article indicates the university is claiming it cannot negotiate outside the union contract. However, union membership is no longer legally required and it follows that employees now have as much right to negotiate as the union does. There could be some fascinating unresolved issues related to the Janus decision that have yet to play out.
This March 3 primary election, there are 231 tax and bond measures on local ballots. Virtually all of them are diguised attempts to back-fill public employee pension obligations. Not a good time for UCSB strikers to demand even more assaults on tax payer dollars. Be sure to turn your current ballot over and make sure you see what new tax demands the education industry wants to impose on you. Odd ballot placement for this latest school tax measure, as if they did not want you to see this so they could “harvest” only the dedicated yes votes in order to get to their necessary percentage threshold.
OptOutoday.com makes it very easy for any public employee to get an instant raise – opting out of their prior forced union dues after the SCOTUS Janus ruling. Freedom Foundation has all the steps needed, that puts your earned money back into your own front pocket; not the unions back pocket. No more games having to wait until the end of your contract, or confined only in a very narrow, high barrier window of time. Opt Out Today.
It’s a reasonable assumption that most of the striking students are working on degrees ending in the word “studies.”
I don’t know about UCSB PhD students but UCSC PhD students make $2400/mo (pre-tax) plus free tuition. Santa Cruz is like Santa Barbara, cost-of-living wise. Studio apartments are $1600/mo or more. Tough to live on $2400.
The tenured professors that are supposed to be teaching are too important to actually teach classes. So we must hire teaching assistants to actually teach the undergrads.
and likely will be until someone forces them out into the workplace…it’s called time to get a real job!
Since they can’t make ends meet here, maybe they should move.
“… teacher’s labor union contract (with) United Auto Workers Local 2865.” Auto Workers Union is the teachers union? Really? What connection is there between teaching in a public university and building automobiles? Something very basic is wrong with this picture beyond the obvious strike issues.
Message from U.C. Regents:
We don’t care about a livable wage.
Be a good debt slave, or you will be
kicked to the curb.
Despite the fact that yesterday a published article stated UCLA has a
$5.49 billion surplus from donations.
UAW destroyed the US auto industry so they had to look elsewhere for new union members. UAW is right up there with AFT, NEA and CTA trolling the education industry workers for more union dues..
Two can easily live in a studio, just like a college dorm room. $2400 is more than enough to support a few years of “grad studies”, along with getting free tuition. Learn to budget, plan long term, appreciate the values of frugality and sacrifice, and for goodness sakes pick an economically viable course of studies.
I had to pay the UAW in order to get a job at UCSB years ago. I always resented that and felt it was unfair and corrupt. Thankfully public employees now have a choice.
UCSB followers of Marx fired for engaging in monkey business.
UC PROFESSORS AND ADMINISTRATORS ARE WAY OVERPAID. The argument goes ‘If I were in private sector, I would be making $XXX,XXX. ‘ My response is, then go make that dollar amount. You’re working for a public institution. You are a public servant. The UC Regents should be ashamed of themselves for making public education utterly un-affordable. They can take their tuition hikes and hike them where the sun don’t shine.
Why should graduate students be paid a salary, provided with subsidized housing, provided with subsidized health coverage, and be provided with subsidized tuition? That must all add up to thousands of dollars per month. Why should taxpayers be forced to pay for that expense? Who decides who is worthy of such a subsidy and who isn’t? Why should someone who was denied admission into a graduate study program and has to work a private sector job be forced to pay taxes to subsidize a grad student who got into the program? What benefit does society get from taxpayer funded universities? Is it fair to give an elite group of graduate students such a massive subsidy at taxpayer expense? Could the money be better spent elsewhere? Is there a sufficient benefit to society to justify taking this money from those who earned it to subsidize graduate students? I think it’s time to give some serious thought to public colleges and universities. What are they supposed to do? Are they doing it? Are students and taxpayers benefiting from it? Should the government continue its involvement in higher education?