We talked with Abbey Farison, Elayne Stecher, and Rebecca Smith, members of the faculty liaison committee for the union members at the Bunche Hall picket, to share information and discuss organizing ideas. Afterward we walked to the Inverted Fountain picket and got to see the roving bicycle picket!
On November 29, 2022, the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA issued a statement saying that “As the end of the Fall quarter nears, please know that if the state-sanctioned strike continues beyond the deadline to submit grades, we will be in solidarity with strikers and we will not submit grades.”
On November 29, 2022, Prof. Sherene H. Razack, Chair of the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA, announced: “This message is to inform you that if the graduate student workers strike continues beyond the deadline to submit grades, in solidarity, instructors of Gender Studies courses will not submit grades until the strike ends. We look forward to UC administrators resolving the strike and bargaining in good faith.”
Today we attended the Rally Against Retaliation, starting at the Inverted Fountain and marching to Bruin Plaza. The focus of the rally was to call out UC intimidation tactics, including notifying workers in Life Sciences that their research work in the lab are part of “course credits” rather than employment and threatening grading penalties. We marched to the office of the Dean of Life Sciences to deliver a notice of unfair labor practices.
Diego Ayala applied for PhD programs in Sociology, to start in 2022–2023, and gave permission to post the financial offers he received from various programs, summarized in the table above. This table focuses on offers for the year 2022–2023, but offers from some schools vary over year, and this variation is shown in the table. As you can see, UCLA’s total financial support is much lower than those offered by competitors, which offer in dollar terms 15 to 78 percent more, with only Wisconsin offering less. (Click on the following links to view the offer letters from UC Berkeley, Brown, University of Chicago, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, Northwestern, University of Wisconsin, and Yale. The $25,000 figure for UCLA in the table is from César Ayala, who served on the graduate admissions committee for UCLA Sociology.) When adjusted for cost of living, UCLA offers by far the lowest, and UCLA’s competitors offer from 25 precent more to more than double. Even considering only the “base” stipend or salary (in the third column of the table), UCLA’s offer is much less than offers from private universities. The UC’s statement that its current wage proposals ($24,874 for beginning Academic Student Employees) are “on par with top private universities” is far from true.
Candace Hanson reports that UC has engaged in intimidation tactics, including notifying workers in Life Sciences that their research work in the lab are part of “course credits” rather than employment and threatening grading penalties in associated placeholder courses. Please join the march starting at 1:30pm on Monday, November 28 at the Inverted Fountain.
We are seeking faculty signatories for a letter from UC faculty to Governor Newsom, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, and California State Senate and Assembly representatives calling for the UC to bargain in good faith with the UAW strikers and for the State of California to reinvest in the UC. We believe that state government leaders do not fully appreciate how crucial graduate student and academic workers are to the UC’s mission, and we need to help convince them. Anna Markowitz and Graeme Blair here at UCLA drafted the letter, and we would love to have as many signatures from UC senate faculty and lecturers as possible, so please read the faculty letter and sign here! Please circulate the letter widely to your friends and colleagues throughout the UC, at https://forms.gle/bo2wnXkCU3iKuio3A.
Today we joined the strikers for a holiday potluck meal (we brought pies!) in Dickson Court South, just north of Schoenberg Hall. We tried putting up the banner on some tripod stands but they fell over a lot in the wind! Shannon Speed, in Gender Studies and Anthropology, and director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA, spoke to union members as part of the program.
Another beautiful day at the picket at Bunche Hall, meeting new friends and calling for livable wages for UC graduate students and postdocs.
Today we participated (roughly fifty of us!) in the All-UC Faculty Solidarity Rally and joined in with the Los Angeles Entertainment Unions Solidarity Picket with UAW UCLA Workers at the Inverted Fountain.
This memo by UC law faculty Noah Zatz (UCLA), Sameer Ashar (UC Irvine), Veena Dubal (UC Hastings), Catherine Fisk (UC Berkeley), and Leticia Saucedo (UC Davis) demonstrates that “Senate faculty engaged primarily in research and teaching (including while department chair or the like), and not in full-time administrative roles, likely enjoy HEERA protection if they choose to respect the picket line by withholding their labor from the University.” Thanks so much Noah and colleagues for your expertise and commitment!