I am a striking grad student at a UC. These contracts are better than any offer we have gotten so far without a doubt, but they also fall short of what I and I think others were hoping and...
I am a striking grad student at a UC. These contracts are better than any offer we have gotten so far without a doubt, but they also fall short of what I and I think others were hoping and fighting for. The ASE contract in particular, while it includes substantial raises over the next 2.5 years, still leaves us short of our 2017 earnings in terms of real wages. Additionally, this contract would still leave a large percentage of graduate workers rent burdened according to the HUD definition, and there is nothing resembling a cost of living adjustment which has been a main demand of the worker movement here for at least the last half decade.
Don’t get me wrong, there are wins in here. Our bargaining team did what they thought was prudent, but I think many of the steps they took were misguided and sacrificed some of our leverage. But for the largest strike of academic workers in US history, this contract is not the transformative one I feel we could have gotten. I will likely vote not to ratify, but I expect that it will be ratified regardless.
Sad to hear it, a COL adjustment is definitely needed. I think the amount our university systems depend on graduate student labor goes largely unappreciated by the general population. Thanks for...
Sad to hear it, a COL adjustment is definitely needed. I think the amount our university systems depend on graduate student labor goes largely unappreciated by the general population. Thanks for the insight.
The COLA provisions was never something that was going to survive bargaining tbh. The UC system would never be OK with that kind of financial bomb baked into contracts, e.g if the CoL metric rose...
The COLA provisions was never something that was going to survive bargaining tbh. The UC system would never be OK with that kind of financial bomb baked into contracts, e.g if the CoL metric rose dramatically in a year, the UC campuses would have to rapidly fundraise - possibly to the point of campus shutdowns while financing is worked out (you can't just pull money out of endowments!). UC would rather the strike go on indefinitely than agree to something like that.
That would basically be the worst of both worlds. UC's caps that they would bargain for would be fairly close to the wage increases they offered here. UC is in the end a public, non-for-profit...
That would basically be the worst of both worlds. UC's caps that they would bargain for would be fairly close to the wage increases they offered here. UC is in the end a public, non-for-profit organization - personal "grifting", so to speak, would be done by hiring people who may not be necessary - with a inflexible budget and sources of funding. UC receives money from the federal and state government, tuition (which is highly lagging, not to mention causes student harm), and charitable fundraising. That is to say, once it's budgeted UC doesn't really care about paying it out or not.
They would need to budget the cap of the CoLA. In that case, it might as well just be a raise for the GSI/GSRs.
The University of California reached an agreement Friday with some 36,000 graduate student teaching assistants and other academic workers for increased pay and benefits that could potentially end a monthlong strike — the largest of its kind in the nation — at the prestigious state system.
The bargaining units said some workers could see raises of up to 66% over the next two years. The contracts would go through May 31, 2025.
"In addition to incredible wage increases, the tentative agreements also include expanded benefits for parent workers, greater rights for international workers, protections against bullying and harassment, improvements to accessibility, workplace protections, and sustainable transit benefits," Tarini Hardikar, a member of the union bargaining team at UC Berkeley, said in a news release Friday.
The pay hikes and boost in benefits could have an impact beyond California. For several decades, colleges and universities have increasingly relied on faculty and graduate student employees to do teaching and research that had previously been handled by tenured track faculty — but without the same pay and benefits.
The agreement comes weeks after the UC system reached a similar deal with postdoctoral employees and academic researchers who make up about 12,000 of the 48,000 union members who walked off the job and onto picket lines Nov. 14. That agreement will hike pay up to 29% and provide increased family leave, childcare subsidies and lengthened appointments to ensure job security, according to a statement from United Auto Workers Local 5810.
I am a striking grad student at a UC. These contracts are better than any offer we have gotten so far without a doubt, but they also fall short of what I and I think others were hoping and fighting for. The ASE contract in particular, while it includes substantial raises over the next 2.5 years, still leaves us short of our 2017 earnings in terms of real wages. Additionally, this contract would still leave a large percentage of graduate workers rent burdened according to the HUD definition, and there is nothing resembling a cost of living adjustment which has been a main demand of the worker movement here for at least the last half decade.
Don’t get me wrong, there are wins in here. Our bargaining team did what they thought was prudent, but I think many of the steps they took were misguided and sacrificed some of our leverage. But for the largest strike of academic workers in US history, this contract is not the transformative one I feel we could have gotten. I will likely vote not to ratify, but I expect that it will be ratified regardless.
Sad to hear it, a COL adjustment is definitely needed. I think the amount our university systems depend on graduate student labor goes largely unappreciated by the general population. Thanks for the insight.
The COLA provisions was never something that was going to survive bargaining tbh. The UC system would never be OK with that kind of financial bomb baked into contracts, e.g if the CoL metric rose dramatically in a year, the UC campuses would have to rapidly fundraise - possibly to the point of campus shutdowns while financing is worked out (you can't just pull money out of endowments!). UC would rather the strike go on indefinitely than agree to something like that.
Yeah but you could have a capped CoLA
That would basically be the worst of both worlds. UC's caps that they would bargain for would be fairly close to the wage increases they offered here. UC is in the end a public, non-for-profit organization - personal "grifting", so to speak, would be done by hiring people who may not be necessary - with a inflexible budget and sources of funding. UC receives money from the federal and state government, tuition (which is highly lagging, not to mention causes student harm), and charitable fundraising. That is to say, once it's budgeted UC doesn't really care about paying it out or not.
They would need to budget the cap of the CoLA. In that case, it might as well just be a raise for the GSI/GSRs.
Wonderful news :)