[Yesterday, unions representing 48,000 graduate student workers in
the University of California system went on strike. Jacobin spoke with
striking workers at UC Berkeley about their demands and the organizing
leading up to the strike.]
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THE BIGGEST ACADEMIC STRIKE IN US HISTORY IS UNDERWAY AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA  
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An interview with Vikram Nagarajan, Katie Coyne Emiko Gardiner
Gabriel Woolls
November 15, 2022
Jacobin
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_ Yesterday, unions representing 48,000 graduate student workers in
the University of California system went on strike. Jacobin spoke with
striking workers at UC Berkeley about their demands and the organizing
leading up to the strike. _

Around 48,000 union workers across the University of California
system have been on strike since Monday, November 14., Brittany Murray
/ MediaNews Group / Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

 

On Monday, November 14, four different unions representing forty-eight
thousand graduate student workers and academic researchers across the
University of California system went on strike. Organizers are saying
it’s the biggest academic strike
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in US history, and it’s one of the biggest strikes, period
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in the last few years.

Academic workers say they’re striking against the UC’s unfair
labor practices and its refusal to bargain in good faith over new
contracts. In negotiations for new contracts, workers say, the
university has refused to agree to wage increases that keep up with
California’s skyrocketing cost of living. On Monday, _Jacobin _spoke
with workers on the picket line at the University of California,
Berkeley, about their demands and their experience organizing for the
strike.

Monika Chao
Why is everyone on strike today?

Emiko Gardiner
It’s a combination of four bargaining units on strike: the postdocs,
the academic researchers, student researchers, and student employees.
All four of them have been in bargaining for over a year now to earn
new contracts with the UC system.

Vikram Nagarajan
We are striking over UC’s unlawful practices at the bargaining
table. We’ve filed over twenty unfair labor practices with the
Public Employee Relations Board, and UC has failed to rectify pretty
much all of them. As a result, we just said, “Enough is enough.”
We have to go on strike to resolve this.

Gabriel Woolls
Consistently, the UC has been committing unfair labor practices at the
bargaining table. It’s pretty clear to everyone that UC is just
blatantly breaking the law and bargaining in bad faith. So we’re out
here until they decide to bargain in good faith with us.

Monika Chao
What has the organizing been like leading up to the strike?

Vikram Nagarajan
Last year, the graduate student researchers were not even unionized.
So that effort took a lot of work. We only won that union recognition
by having a strike authorization vote among just the researchers,
which was a big success. And as soon as we had that, UC caved pretty
much immediately.

But even after that, we knew that we were building toward something
big beyond that, knowing that the student researchers [still didn’t
have a contract]. The teaching assistant and reader and tutor contract
was about to expire, the postdoc contract was about to expire, the
academic researcher contract was about to expire — we knew that we
had to do something big. So it was a lot of one-on-one conversations,
a lot of tough organizing.

Katie Coyne
A lot of departments have become politicized pretty quickly. There’s
been a lot of rank-and-file efforts, and a lot of grad students are
united around trying to win better working conditions.

Emiko Gardiner
I’ve been really appreciative of how much say anyone who wants to
[has been able to have] in it. I’m a first-year graduate student, so
this is my first time here. I just signed up to be a union rep; it was
a volunteer thing.

So then I was going to all the astronomy organizing committee
meetings, and then we always got these invitations for the grand
organizing committee meetings of the entire school. And I decided to
just start showing up. I immediately was able to have a voice and help
in the planning and figuring out what’s going on. So I was
appreciative of how much of a grassroots effort it has been.

Monika Chao
What do you hope to gain from the strike?

Emiko Gardiner
The [immediate goal of] the strike is to get UC to halt its unlawful
practices. It’s trying to make unilateral changes without going
through the union, which is illegal, as well as withholding
information. But ultimately, we want fair contracts that are going to
give us fair compensation that matches the value of the work that we
do. We do most of the teaching and research in the UC system. Our
wages right now don’t reflect that and are causing a huge rent
burden.

Katie Coyne
One of our biggest demands is for a cost-of-living adjustment. The Bay
Area is one of the most expensive places to live in the United States,
and many of us don’t make a living wage. I also hope that academic
workers start to think of themselves as workers more.

Vikram Nagarajan
We want to be able to get UC to bargain in good faith and rectify the
unlawful labor practices. But we’re also aiming to win a fair
contract for every worker. That means a livable wage; it means transit
subsidies and bike subsidies; it means childcare; it means equity for
international scholars. It means all of this, because that’s the
only way a just workplace is possible.

I’ve had several encounters with other student researchers who have
been in tough workplace situations; they’ve had a principal
investigator who was not good to them, who was bullying them. I’ve
had student researchers who have experienced sexual abuse, sexual
harassment, and they’ve had almost no recourse because we don’t
have a contract that we can enforce. That’s been a recurring theme.
Once we have that contract, we can actually resolve things on par with
UC instead of these issues being handled unilaterally by the
university.

Gabriel Woolls
Zooming out a little bit, I want to see that workers can come together
in this setting, in an academic setting, and run this place, or at
least have a say in how this place is run. We do the work, we produce
the value, so we should be making some decisions here.

Monika Chao
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Katie Coyne
One of our lines is that our working conditions are our students’
learning conditions. I think that’s really true. I’ve noticed that
the times that I’m the best teacher are ones where I’m in the best
financial place.

Emiko Gardiner
I’ve been really happy to see how many community members that
aren’t part of the union are out here striking today. So, a big
thank you to all of those people — a lot of undergraduates and just
other community members that are joining us on the picket line.
That’s been really great to see.

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* University of California Academic Strike
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