[rad-green] UC Santa Cruz Strikers to Lose TA Jobs

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/02/24/uc-santa-cruz-strikers-lose-ta-jobs

*Inside Higher Education*
*February 24, 2020*

UC Santa Cruz Strikers to Lose TA Jobs
*By Colleen Flaherty *

The University of California, Santa Cruz
<https://www.insidehighered.com/college/110714/university-california-santa-cruz>’s
ongoing graduate student strike over a requested cost-of-living adjustment
escalated late Friday, when many teaching assistants did not turn in
undergraduates’ fall quarter grades by a deadline set by Janet Napolitano,
university system president. A week prior, Napolitano said anyone who
withheld marks as part of a December grade strike
<https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/12/10/uc-santa-cruz-grad-assistants-strike-cola>
would
be ineligible for a spring teaching appointment. She also told those
teaching assistants on a current labor strike
<https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/11/uc-santa-cruz-grad-assistants-strike-living-wage-tough-rental-market>to
resume their duties.

In response, graduate students from some Santa Cruz departments pledged not
to accept vacated assistantships, as others said they wouldn’t take on any
assistantships at all if any of their peers lost jobs. The university is
“threatening to fire graduate student workers en masse for asking to be
paid enough to live where they work,” reads a memo from graduate employees
in the department of astronomy and astrophysics, for example. “We reject
the notion that our fellow workers at [Santa Cruz] should be threatened
with a loss of employment, ability to feed themselves and their families,
and likely loss of ability to continue in a graduate program, for demanding
to be relieved of extreme rent burden so that they can focus on the
university’s academic missions of excellence in teaching and research.” The
entire California system relies heavily on teaching assistants to deliver
undergraduate education and for research.

Graduate employees across the university system are unionized in
affiliation with the United Auto Workers. Santa Cruz has said its hands are
tied with the respect to the COLA demand due to the systemwide contract.
But Santa Cruz graduate employees insist that there are precedents for
amending their campus contract terms to accommodate their request for
$1,412 extra per month. They say they live in one of the most expensive
rental markets in the country, and that many of their rank spend about
60 percent of their pay on rent, leaving little left over for anything
else. They say the adjustment would mean that they could spend closer to
30 percent of their pay on housing, bringing them out of what’s known as
cost of rent burden.

The statewide UAW chapter on Saturday denounced Napolitano’s recent
announcement about holding a meeting with the UC Graduate and Professional
Council, and not the union. Kavitha Iyengar, president of the statewide
union and a Ph.D. candidate in jurisprudence and social policy at the
Berkeley campus, said the “time has come for UC to meet us at the
bargaining table so that we can work to resolve the issues that have left
so many student-workers economically insecure. Conflating COLA negotiations
with the [council’s] other advocacy efforts is an attempt to buy time and
deflate the energy of this movement -- and it will not work.” Graduate
students on several system campuses have also held solidarity rallies in
support of Santa Cruz student workers.

Scott Hernandez-Jason, Santa Cruz spokesperson, said Saturday via email
that “future employment as an academic student employee will be assessed on
a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration current disciplinary
actions and/or student misconduct.” Graduate students who met the deadline
will be eligible for spring and future teaching appointments, along with
the university’s new, five-year funding program and $2,500 annual housing
stipend. These students also will be eligible to serve on the Chancellor’s
Advisory Committee on Graduate Education to “help continue to improve the
support for graduate students.”

Asked how many graduate students withheld fall marks, Hernandez-Jason said
exact numbers were not yet available, but “we will respect all good-faith
efforts to turn in grades.”

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