A new Twitter account — @UCSF4COLA — launched early Sunday morning, with a singular post that urged UC San Francisco graduate students to show up to a Wednesday rally “to show that we are united in our fight for accessible higher education.”
But the post, and the creation of the account, marked more than just the launch of another cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) movement, which have been rapidly spreading across the UC since December. With the launch of a COLA group at UCSF, all 10 UC campuses now have rumblings of COLA organizing on their respective campuses.
And they’re determined to make the university listen.
Jonathan Sloboda / Daily Nexus
Two campuses, UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara, have launched full strikes. UCSC graduate students have been on strike since early February, and UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive dismissed at least 54 of them from their Spring Quarter 2020 appointments last Friday, sparking outrage across the UC system.
UCSB graduate students began their own full strike last Thursday; at UC Davis, graduate students began a grading strike on Feb. 27, meaning they are withholding Winter Quarter 2020 grades. They will continue to strike until their demands are met, according to a statement posted to the movement’s Twitter account.
COLA movements on other campuses are planning a one-day, full work stoppage “blackout” strike on Thursday, March 5, in solidarity with the dismissed UCSC graduate students. At each campus, COLA movements are urging faculty to cancel all classes and undergraduate students to walk out of any classes that professors didn’t cancel. Organizers are also asking participants to wear all black.
“There is an ever growing number of students who are ready to strike and who are prepared to strike,” Zak Fisher, UC Los Angeles’ Graduate Student Association president, told the Nexus. Fisher attributed this sentiment not only to the COLA movement at UCLA but also to the firing of the UCSC graduate students, noting that participation in COLA organizing has “increased exponentially.”
UCLA graduate students voted Monday evening to join the Thursday “blackout” strike.
“I think people are just fed up … the [UCSC] firings brought a lot of attention from people who weren’t really paying attention before,” he said, adding that hundreds of people have attended UCLA COLA rallies.
Fisher, as GSA president, said he presented the UCLA COLA demands to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block on Feb. 21. But beyond that, he said he hasn’t seen much of a response from the chancellor.
“Why is it that it’s the ‘number one public university,’ in the country, [and] the leader of the university won’t come out and publicly address concerns?” Fisher said.
Similar to at Davis, UC San Diego organizers are leaning more toward a grading strike rather than a full strike, according to Syed Muhammad Abbas Yousuf, an ethnic studies doctoral student, and Avaneesh Narla, a physics doctoral student.
The two said that a recent UCSD COLA movement vote showed that around 200 graduate students were willing to strike in some capacity, although there is a “strong leaning toward holding a grading strike rather than a full strike.”
“I think people are just fed up.”
During Week Nine, UCSD graduate students scheduled a number of events aimed at educating undergraduates about the movement and gaining support across campus for the movement; they will be joining the “blackout” strike by holding a walkout around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.
UC Berkeley graduate students also voted to join the one-day “blackout” strike, according to Tara Phillips, a UCB COLA organizer. UCB’s strike will last from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sproul Plaza in the center of campus.
The UCB COLA movement also voted Tuesday to create a departmental organizing structure and will begin asking different departments to hold meetings to discuss and vote on strike-readiness, according to a resolution passed by the movement.
“Once we’ve reached 10 strike-ready departments, we will call a General Assembly to vote on strike escalation on our campus,” an email sent to supporters of the UCB COLA movement said.
At UC Riverside, graduate students plan to join the UC-wide “blackout” strike with a rally at 11:45 a.m., according to the movement’s Twitter account.
The movement has also released a petition to the UCR community, asking students to stand in solidarity with the UCSC strike.
While graduates at some campuses are taking steps toward a vote to strike, others, such as UC Irvine, haven’t decided to go on a full strike but are still organizing for a COLA in other ways.
UCI COLA organizers Nalya Rodriguez, a sociology doctoral student, and Courtney Echols, a criminology law and society doctoral student, said that UCI COLA organizing began on Feb. 20, when over 200 UCI graduate students and supporters rallied in solidarity with the UCSC strikers.
In response, UCI put the administration building Aldrich Hall on lockdown. During the rally, campus police arrested UCI alumni Shikera Chamndany after she entered the building while attempting to obtain her transcripts. Chamndany, who was reportedly not involved with the COLA movement or participating in the rally, was “handcuffed and tackled,” the New University reported.
The arrest drew backlash both on campus and across the UC system.
“We firmly believe that this [is] indicative of the anti-Blackness that pervades not just UC Irvine, but the UC system as a whole,” Echols said. She said that the following day, the university put out a campus-wide statement “trying to illustrate that they cared about UCI graduate students.”
“But we know that if they actually cared, they would immediately send these issues of unfair wages and unjust housing costs which disproportionately affect Black and brown students,” she said.
The UCI COLA movement held a sick-out on Monday and Tuesday, during which graduate students called in sick and did not show up to work.
“The average Irvine graduate student spends 43% of their income on rent, and some students report spending as much as 90% of their income on rent here in Irvine,” Rodriguez said.
Along with a COLA, UCI graduate students are demanding that the officer who arrested Chamndany, Sgt. Tricia Harding, be fired, and that the campus police be abolished.
Jonathan Sloboda / Daily Nexus
UC Merced UAW 2865 unit chair Anh Diep explained that even though UC Merced is the “cheapest” UC campus in terms of cost of living, students have been supportive of the UCSC graduate student strikers and have begun advocating for administration to address graduate student needs.
“A lot of people think that Merced would be the campus that doesn’t care … since it’s so new and it’s built in the Central Valley where real estate is cheapest,” Diep said.
“But we do feel rent burden here, and we have seen this dramatic increase in the last few years. We’re especially cognizant that the time to act is now, the time to be proactive is now, because we have a chance to stop this in our own city and prevent further rent burden and further rent hikes before it gets as dramatically bad as it has gotten in the other campuses.”
Diep said that UAW 2865 leadership, along with general members, met with UCM Chancellor Nathan Brostrom on March 2 to discuss graduate student struggles, and that they plan to meet sometime next week for a follow-up meeting. Diep emphasized that the discussion focused on broader needs and did not focus on the specific TA contract currently in place.
There has been no formal UC-wide response to the COLA movements to date; organizers across the UC system emphasized that negotiations need to happen through UCOP instead of at individual universities.
The UC Regents filed an Unfair Practices Charge against UAW 2865 on Feb. 24, alleging that the union has failed to take action to end strikes at UCSC. In response, UAW 2865 filed two separate Unfair Practice Charges against the UC; the UAW 2865 bargaining unit also voted on March 3 to hold a union-wide vote whether to go on strike due to unfair labor practices. All union members will vote on this in April.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the March 5, 2020 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
Is logical inference an ability that has been waived for UC graduate student admission?
it doesn’t show fed up it shows entitled and unrealistic
Can’t wait for them to get fired like those at UCSC! I give it a week tops.
One can only hope. It might be awhile longer, when grades are due for the quarter.
Can’t come fast enough!
UC created these whining overgrown entitled toddlers who have only been taught to throw tantrums and cry racism for every little thing instead of using logic and reason like the adults they should be.
They sure did. The UC Chancellors need to grow some balls and put an end to this BS! They are crying that they want to live where they wor!? Well guess what kids so do I! But reality is none of us can afford to live in SB! Most of us who work on campus commute 30-60 minutes each way! I made a choice to work here just as they did to attend UCSB!! Stop the coddling and get rid of them so the rest of us can get back to work!
Their behavior is utterly disgusting. Why are my tax dollars going to these obnoxious brats?
How come they don’t mention all the undergrads that are getting hurt by the strikes?
Undergraduate students are being harmed by the administration, who have effectively made grades more important than the quality of undergrad education. When grads who do the bulk of grading and teaching must take on another two or three jobs to afford to live in the area where they work. Undergrads know. They live in these same conditions. This is why so many are in solidarity – they understand a cola for us is the beginning of their own negotiation. Grad working conditions are undergrad learning conditions & COLA for all was started by grads who saw the negative effective University… Read more »
Well the quality of our undergrad education is 0 when our wildcat-striking TA’s refuse to hold section or help us understand the material. It’s more than just grades…
And there are hundreds of ways of doing it vastly superior than blackmailing the UC with undergrad grades in hopes that the UC will hike undergrad tuition 3-4k/year to pay the grad students demands. Any TA unable to see that is providing the UC a just-cause for dismissal as being soundly unqualified for the job of instruction.
Your appreciation of cause and effect is sorely lacking. The mantra — “well undergrads are hurt by the administration policy of not compensating us for work we voluntarily agreed to take on, so we will compound their plight by not doing any work” is truly pathetic.
If this is how you tackle serious issues I can only conclude we are not doing our job at admission.
Pretty certain the rest of SB (if not the entire state of California) is “tired, hungry, rent-burdened, and unable to afford necessary medical care.” Nothing new here.
I don’t support the strikes and I’m sick of them using the undergraduates as a bargaining chip. We never consented to be used as your leverage and frankly if they’re not going to work, then fire them. A breach of contract is a fire-able offense.
You moron, it’s the education that *we* give you that is withheld.
The education that *you* are contractually required to give is withheld, moron. Get your ass back to work so my grade won’t be withheld and I can graduate. Oh yeah, you don’t give a #^&* about me or other undergrads, just yourself.
You only care about yourself you piece of shit! Why dont you blame the administration you coward! They are the ones damaging us not the TA’s! I support my TA’s and for a COLA!
Because it’s the TAs, are the ones that are fucking me over. That’s why. They signed a contract, they knew their salaries, they knew the prices of housing around here, and here they are. No sympathy from me. And I’m glad you support them, I wish I could see the look on your face when your tuition goes through the roof.
“you piece of shit” You are clearly a master debater. Your UC “education” has served you well.
Wow, what a self-entitled arrogant comment. Well by your logic, it should make perfect sense that the *pay* you were promised in return for your contracted work is withheld if you don’t hold your end of the deal.
You do realize what the point of a strike is, right? The labor that the TAs have to withhold (which is what the point of a labor strike is- to withhold one’s labor) is teaching/grades. If anything, this shows just how essential they are to the university, since if they were as non-essential as some claim, then the strike wouldn’t cause any disruption.
It wouldn’t be a problem if grad students didn’t have a union already bargaining on their behalf, and the union already signed a contract promising that the grad students are okay with their pay during the duration of the contract. That’s why this strike is considered illegal and their union can’t take any real action. My experience with my union is that they are pushy and angry people who are much too interested in collecting part of our pay, which isn’t a lot thanks to their poor bargaining tactics. I hope at some point, the students will look around and… Read more »
I mean, that’s one of the functions of a wildcat strike- to pressure the union to hear their grievances, and it’s clearly working in this case, as the grad union is going to vote soon to officially ratify the strike. The issue is that this one union encompasses grads across every UC. This whole strike started at UCSC because the most recent union contract was passed despite having only around 15% support from UCSC (due to the exceptionally high COL in Santa Cruz). Individuals from the union have supported the strike from the beginning.
Pushy, angry and sleazy…I’m quite certain my union is lying to me more than the actual UC is. And boy, they really love their dues, those money-grubbers…
Fine. Now that you have identified one problem, deal with it (e.g., work to make profs do their share). Instead, you see an answer as disrupting the “innocent” (undergrads need their grades; the profs do not) and determine that throwing money at a symptom is a viable solution.
We credential folk well beyond their intellectual merit.
How are grad students supposed to “work to make profs do their share?” Don’t you think that if they had that kind of pull in the academic food chain that they would have done that? I wouldn’t say that profs don’t need grades as well, as it makes the department look bad to have all that data missing, and they’re the ones who ultimately submit them at the end of the quarter (after being handed them by the TA). Also, since the beginning, any undergrad merely has to ask their TA for their grade, and they will get it no… Read more »
All undergrads should be pissed and demanding their grades.
And what about career staff at UCSB? Career staff at UCSB are amongst the lowest paid off all UC campuses in comparison to cost of living. Who is going to give a shit about the career staff who have to process payroll? Grad fees? Budgets and finances? Purchase orders? Etc and all that it takes to get work done? The staff administration staff are also suffering financially. Some staff don’t have enough money for groceries. Nearly 60% of our paychecks go to rent. We to have expenses and family to take care of too. UC path has cost nearly 1… Read more »
Cola has staff involved in the organizing and planning – they welcome staff to join the strike. We cannot tell staff what to do or what their demands will be – but we can listen to staff concerns and help/act in solidarity.
“Cannot tell staff what to do”? It seems like you were telling them plenty when you blocked their way to their workplaces and wouldn’t let them pass, and screamed at them, and intimidated them…no staff in their right mind would want to have anything to do with this mob mentality.
Yes, staff are underpaid, and it is shameful. We should be organizing with them, too! We live in a society that pits us all against one another. Denying graduate students a cost of living adjustment/housing stipend/etc. will not improve the material circumstances for staff. But, a cost of living adjustment/housing stipend/etc. for graduate students may improve the bargaining position for staff in future negotiations. The UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate resolution passed during the meeting on February 19, 2020 explicitly supported “graduate students’, lecturers’, and staff’s need for higher wages commensurate with local cost-of-living increases.”
I mean, you could organize your own movement to rally for these things. I think everyone in COLA is aware that others in the UC system are similarly underpaid and rent-burdened, but ultimately this particular strike has been organized by grad students and is addressing their situation, since they are most qualified to speak on their own experiences. I think it’s too much to ask that grad students alone are somehow supposed to organize on behalf of everyone who is exploited by the UC. It’s just unrealistic. Organize your own movement, talk to your union, even talk to the COLA… Read more »
As career staff too, I feel everything you said. Everything. But I think it will take more than increased pay. California taxes are just too high. Every paycheck, I’m shocked at how much is taken out in return for so little in way of government services. It’s not just UC, California is being run without transparency of where all our siphoned money goes. Often the overworked underpaid staff are the ones who care most about the students, and then there are the ones who do the bare minimum and still get the same percentage of raise as us who put… Read more »
The ucsc students wanted a 70% COLA. Mention that in the article!
Go to school somewhere else then
Yes! Working taxpayers are fed up with you.