Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
Stratton Georgoulis, student researcher and strike captain, stands with hundreds of University of California graduate workers and supporters as they continue to strike, December 5, 2022, in Sacramento, California.
Finals week has arrived at the University of California, but there’s hardly anyone around to administer and grade the final exams. And it sure doesn’t look like UC is in the final week of the strike by 48,000 teaching and research assistants, postdocs, and academic researchers. (Leaders of the latter two groups have tentatively agreed to a proposed contract, but those two groups have pledged to stay on the picket line until the administration agrees to a contract that includes a living wage for its TAs and RAs.)
Coming to terms with the 12,000 postdocs and academic researchers appears to have been an easier lift for UC’s administrators than presenting adequate terms to its grad student TAs and RAs, as much of the funding for the former—but not the latter—comes from federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health. The proposed postdoc contract included increases that would raise the postdocs’ yearly pay to more than $60,000, which in the apocalyptically pricey coastal California housing market at least guarantees a roof over one’s head. But the offers thus far to the TAs and RAs don’t raise their wages—which currently average about $20,000 to $25,000 a year—to anything like what’s required to live within commuting distance of any of the UCs, with the sole exception of the Merced campus (well, possibly Riverside as well).
One of UC’s most stellar academic researchers, now ensconced at the university’s Berkeley Labor Center, is veteran union organizer and negotiator Jane McAlevey. In a recent dialogue (which you can view here) with UC Santa Barbara history professor Nelson Lichtenstein, the de facto dean of American labor historians, McAlevey argued that the union leaders need to alter their strategy if they’re to win an acceptable contract for the grad student employees. As things now stand, various members of the university’s board of regents have privately told union leaders that they support their demands, and a number of state legislators have discreetly voiced similar sentiments—but none of these prominent California liberals appear to be pressuring UC President Michael Drake and the other UC muck-a-mucks whom they directly oversee (the regents) or, more important yet, fund (the legislators) to agree to a living wage for the TAs and RAs. On-campus picketing may be well and good, McAlevey said, but the picketers should really move on to occupying the regents’ and legislators’ offices, since ultimately, it’s these folks who are the decision-makers and, accordingly, it’s they who should be made to feel the heat now largely directed at UC administrators.
And, of course, as I’ve noted before, the ultimate MIA figure in all this is Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appoints the UC regents and whose office is currently drawing up the new state budget from which UC will derive its customary multibillion-dollar share. At minimum, strikers might want to consider putting pictures of the well-coiffed Gavin on milk cartons or sending out search parties. UC’s workers, as well as its students, currently unsure about what to do with their term papers, need him.
