UAW 2865, the union representing UC Academic Student Employees (ASE), asks faculty to exercise their legal rights under the California Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) by “refraining from picking up the labor that we as academic students employees are withholding, including the evaluation of final exams and/or papers, and the submission of grades.”
In particular, UAW 2865 asks faculty specifically:
- Do not do struck work. That is, do not grade assignments yourself or otherwise do work that we would be doing. You have no obligation to do this under HEERA.
- Do not hire additional labor to make up for the labor that we are withholding.
- Do not change the format of your exams, cancel assignments, or otherwise alter your syllabus to circumvent our strike.
- Do not submit grades based only on assignments that have already been graded or otherwise insert grades that are not representative. In other words, do not give everyone an A because of the strike.
- Do not report any academic worker or faculty member who is participating in the strike or honoring the picket line by withdrawing their labor.
In its response to a December 1, 2022 email from Provost Michael Brown, the Council of UC Faculty Associations, representing UC faculty system-wide, writes that “Senate faculty are being told that if they do not pick up the struck work of ASE grading some undergraduate students will be harmed. We share the concern for students that depend on their grades to access financial aid, to earn scholarships, and who need their grades for other reasons. However, it is the university’s responsibility to make contingency plans that ensure these students are not impacted by the strike, and some campuses have already communicated to undergraduates that such plans are in place. They have the capacity, as they did during the pandemic, to be flexible about grades and deadlines.” Accordingly at UCLA, the Fall 2022 grading deadline has been extended from December 19, 2022 to January 2, 2023.
As another example, on November 22, 2022, Michael Miller, Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education at UC Santa Barbara, announced: “In the event that a final grade for a course is not recorded, we are developing contingency plans to ensure that this would not impact your financial aid, athletic eligibility, prerequisite requirements, and/or the completion of your degree.”
Grace Hong, Professor of Gender Studies and Asian American Studies, and Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, writes: “Faculty members’ decision to withhold grade submission is intended to cause disruption of university business-as-usual in order to pressure the UC administration to engage in fair bargaining. While grade withholding can impact students, faculty can consider various ways to mitigate and circumvent any harm, via special dispensation for select students. Students with an urgent need for a grade should immediately contact the faculty member with a request for a workaround. For example:
- For students who are applying to graduate school, or have an employment offer contingent on degree-completion, faculty can offer to write a letter to admissions committees or to prospective employers, letting them know what grade the student received in their course, and explaining the lack of a grade on the official transcript.
- For students who are graduating at the end of fall quarter, students on international visas, etc. whose statuses might be affected by missing grades, faculty can selectively choose to submit grades. Faculty can do so by letting the grading deadline lapse, at which point, all unreported grades will be assigned an NR automatically. Once that happens, the faculty person can go back and individually file grade change requests for specific students.
Please do not assign incompletes (which stay on a student’s transcript) or DR grades (which are for students undergoing disciplinary review).”
In an additional FAQ on grading, the Council of UC Faculty Assocations states: “Under HEERA, faculty do not need to volunteer to perform struck work that is outside our customary duties. The longstanding practice for courses with assigned ASEs is for them to grade course assignments, proctor exams, and maintain the records of student grades. . . . If you are asked to do this grading, you may respond by declining the extra work and communicating that you do not wish to volunteer to take up the struck labor.”