UC Santa Cruz terminates 54 workers in pay-raise dispute

Some 54 UC Santa Cruz teaching assistants were set to be dismissed Friday for refusing to comply with a university-imposed strike deadline.

SANTA CRUZ — Some 54 UC Santa Cruz teaching assistants were set to be dismissed Friday for refusing to comply with a university-imposed strike deadline.

The graduate worker terminations come in response to teaching assistants refusing since December to turn in fall undergraduate students’ grades as a form of protest. In a notice of intent to terminate posted on the striking student’s website payusmoreucsc.com, the university cites “abandonment of job responsibilities” and insubordination as the action’s cause.

UCSC officials gave the teaching assistants until Feb. 21 to turn in their grades or face punitive measures, to which striking students responded with a vote to continue their protest efforts. University officials have repeatedly stated the institution cannot negotiate outside the systemwide teaching assistants’ labor union, the United Automobile Workers local 2865, contract.

However, last week’s deadline was effectively extended through Thursday of this week and a new offer was put on the table: a one-time $2,500 stipend for all MFA and doctorate students — not just those demonstrating a need — that would be retroactive to the 2019-20 academic year and contingent on teaching assistants breaking their strike by turning in fall 2019 grades. The university also offered two temporary housing assistance programs for graduate students.

Drastic step

In a release this week, UAW 2865 leaders gave limited praise to UCSC strikers’ success in obtaining this week’s stipend offer from UCSC administrators. The bargaining unit, however, questioned UCSC’s offers for their legal enforceability, limitation to UCSC workers and failure to go far enough in addressing housing cost needs. On Friday, UAW 2865 president Kavitha Iyengar issued a statement saying the union stands in solidarity with those who were fired at UCSC, announcing plans to continue seeking a negotiated pay raise for members.

“We are shocked by UC’s callousness, and by the violence that so many protesters experienced as they peacefully made the case for a cost of living increase,” Iyengar wrote. “Instead of firing TAs who are standing up for a decent standard of living for themselves, UC must sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate a cost of living increase.”

UCSC Graduate Student Association co-president Yulia Gilichinskaya said Tuesday, when 85 teaching assistants were still withholding grades, that those continuing to strike considered themselves fired already. As of Friday, the vast majority of the fall undergraduate grades had been submitted to the university.

“We care deeply about our graduate students, value their contributions to the campus through both through their scholarship and research, as well as their work as teaching assistants and graduate student instructors,” UCSC Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer wrote in a statement distributed campuswide Friday related to the teaching assistant terminations. “It is extremely disappointing to us that we have to take such a drastic step, but we ultimately cannot retain graduate students as employees who will not fulfill their responsibilities. While we have been able to successfully get 96% of grades submitted for the fall quarter, we cannot jeopardize our undergraduates’ education or put them in a position where they may not have the teaching resources they need to succeed throughout the spring quarter.”

Kletzer, however, said that while she “disagreed with the tactics the graduate students have used to communicate their concerns,” she did not want to “downplay the gravity of those concerns.”

Strikers are seeking a pay raise, saying teaching assistant salaries are too low to sustain housing locally. Specifically, graduate students are demanding a cost-of-living $1,412 monthly raise on top of their roughly $2,400 pre-tax income earned for nine months of the year. The protest is considered a “wildcat strike,” meaning it does not have the official backing of UAW 2865, which is in contract with the university through 2022.

The teaching assistant grading strike, predating a related teaching strike ongoing since Feb. 12, has earned national attention, including from presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont. Following up on a Feb. 19 post to Twitter urging the university to “stop threatening” picketing students, Sanders weighed in again Friday.

“This is disgraceful,” Sanders tweeted this week. “All workers deserve the right to bargain and strike for better wages and benefits. To Janet Napolitano and @UCSC: stop this outrageous union busting and negotiate in good faith.”

Labored disputes

Related to the UCSC strike, UAW 2865 and the University of California system this week traded unfair labor practice complaints against each other, filed with the Public Employment Relations Board. The Public Employment Relations Board is the state agency responsible for enforcing public collective bargaining laws. Monday’s UC complaint claimed that UAW 2865, which represents more than 19,000 student workers, failed to take steps required by its collective bargaining agreement to stop unauthorized wildcat strikes, according to UC Office of the President spokesman Andrew Gordon.

“UC’s four-year contract with the UAW, which has been in effect since August 2018 and expires in June 2022, includes fair pay and excellent benefits and addresses numerous issues including tuition, child care and campus fee remission,” Gordon said Friday. “The University has honored the contract, and we expect teaching assistants to do the same.”

UAW 2865 counter-filed Thursday, asserting that UC refused to meet and confer with the bargaining group to negotiate a cost of living adjustment while engaging in “unlawful bargaining” directly with individual graduate students and university-funded student organizations, such as the Graduate Student Assemblies and the UC Graduate and Professional Council.

“It’s clear that UC wants to create an appearance that it is respecting graduate student employees while avoiding true bargaining, where the law requires the parties to stand with equal footing and to act in good faith,” the union wrote in a release to press Friday.

UAW 2865 formally requested Jan. 15 that the UC regents office open negotiations for a systemwide cost-of-living raise contract update, according to a release from the group. The offer, the union said, was refused. UAW 2865 then launched a petition demanding the negotiations take place, a change.org petition gathering more than 4,600 signatures online as of Friday afternoon. Last week, UC President Janet Napolitano invited representatives from UC’s Graduate and Professional Council to discuss concerns.