of higher-education academic workers enters its third week Monday, with the crunch time of final exams just days away, fears are rising over long-lasting and unintended consequences to the University of California’s core missions of teaching and research.
As negotiations resume, the outcome will be a pivotal, high-stakes and widely watched moment for UC, as faculty and striking workers see a critical opportunity to address well-documented shortcomings in support for graduate students in California and beyond. “As long as this strike lasts, faculty across the system will be exercising their right to honor the picket line by refusing to conduct university labor up to and including submission of grades — labor that would not be possible without the labor of all other academic workers as well as university staff,” the faculty said in a statement. “We do this toward bettering the working and learning conditions of all students present and future.
The problems have been brewing for decades. Since 2000, no fewer than five university task forces have stressed the imperative to address the neglected needs of graduate students — “the soul of the university,” as one faculty leader described them. “If the only way we can have a world-class university is to pay poverty wages and have graduate students sleeping in cars, that’s not a sustainable or ethical model,” Malloy said.
As a result, Scott said, she has to apply for more grants to pay for her students, a task that has become a year-round scramble absorbing more of her time. To train one doctoral student during the generally five-year program, faculty in science, technology, engineering and math must raise $500,000, she said.
That could mean fewer teaching assistants, larger class sizes, less personal attention to undergraduates and more work for the remaining faculty and graduate students. UC has offered salary scale increases of 7% in the first year and 3% in each subsequent year for teaching assistants and tutors, and increases for postdoctoral scholars of 8% the first year, 5% the second year and 3% in subsequent years. UC said pay increases would amount to up to 17%, depending on the union.said in a letter
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