#ucsc strike

[voicesfromthepicket]

Tomas, Politics PhD Student, UC Santa Cruz

"As the president of the GSA [Grad Student Association], I have heard a plethora of horror stories from students barely making ends meet. I’m on strike because, to put it quite bluntly, UC admin does not believe that we struggle as much as we do and they refuse to help. My colleagues and I on the GSA have worked endlessly to communicate with upper-level administrators about students living in cars, staying with abusive partners to avoid paying higher rent, parents being unable to care for their children, and other such situations.

Administrators try, but they often don’t listen. I am a first generation graduate student, and even my low salary is more than both my parents make. I send them money to help them with their mortgage bills. One time, I ran out of money to make rent because my landlord increased the rate and I had to ask my parents to send me money. This incident left me with a deep sense of shame, because I felt like it was my job to be helping out my parents financially, not for them to have to be worried about helping me.

I work on campus and I teach classes at a community college to make ends meet. When bringing up problems with money to admin as the GSA president, their only solution is to refer students to slug support. This is a great campus support program that gives out amounts between 50-800 dollars to help students meet their basic needs. Slug Support is great, but it is not going to help bail out a grad student who can’t make a monthly rent of $1,400-$2,500 dollars. In addition, there have been issues where the UC ’s payroll system doesn’t distribute paycheck money on time, which is a situation that happened to me this past summer when I was employed as a GSR [Grad Student Researcher] If we win a decent contract, many first generation and POC students have the most to gain, as statistically speaking, especially at this campus, they remain the most economically disadvantaged group of graduate students.

What I enjoy the most about the picket line here at this campus is the sense of community. For many of us, graduate school is a bit of a solitary pursuit - you do your own research, you visit with your advisor on your own, you write your dissertation alone. The picket line here is such a wonderful source of community and a way to let each other know that we have one another’s backs, that we will support each other emotionally even in tough times. We are, to different extents, going through the same tough economic struggles and the mental pain that comes with that, but being together with one another gives us the ability to hope and work towards more. 

#politics #DEI concerns #ucsc #uaw on strike #cola4all

[arysthaeniru]

I will never stop being angry about how UC Berkeley, UCLA and UCSF screwed the rest of us in the bargaining deal, because they got extra money because of their 'elite status' despite the highest COLs actually being in UCSC and UCSB. They royally screwed over the rest of us for their special big boy money, and being able to put 'successfully negotiated the largest teacher's strike in America' on their resume, and I am still angry and won't forget.

Sometimes, your union leadership isn't on your side. Sometimes they're opportunist or cowardly or too willing to give up. So be careful this hot strike summer! Make sure to keep your union leadership accountable to y'all!!! Learn from our mistakes!!

#personal

[genesisdelasolas]

Im in grad school at UCSC and it's fully funded. I'm about to apply for more grad school and I feel confident I won't end up in more debt bc of funding and being able to work, and my work will be unionized.

The fact I get equatable education and get workplace protections but only by having my finances ruined by my undergrad education is a SCAM. I'm actually pissed for the Undergrads I TA for. I'm mad how much they have to work, pay rent and pay into the UC system that started as being free education. Also not every undergrad can maintain stressors for 4 years, so they need to leave or quit.

The youngest people of the institution are literally the breadwinners for all staff and faculty. I'm praying for an all out UC Undergrad Strike.

#AbolishUC

[fightmeyeats]

Rethinking “Inclusive Excellence”: A Critical University Studies Approach to COVID-19, the UC COLA movement, and Inequality in the University

If there’s one thing we know about power, it’s that it is most effective when it is obscured; we do not question what we cannot see, what we take for natural. This is something which the UC system depends on, positioning itself as a space of accessible education and “inclusive excellence” while refusing to engage with the way that the very infrastructure maintaining the UC is inherently antithetical to these goals. Wildcat strikers and organizers for the COLA4ALL movement currently sweeping through the UC system have done much to excavate these oppressive systems and contradictions foundational to the UC through the fight for a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) and the simultaneous refusal to disconnect this specific goal from the need to address the broader violence of the institution.

For those unfamiliar, the movement initially started at UC Santa Cruz. UCSC graduate students, like nearly all UC graduate students, are rent burdened. During the Fall 2019 quarter, graduate student instructors began a wildcat grade strike, calling attention to the contradiction between the university’s dependence on graduate student labor to function and the university’s refusal to provide graduate students with a reasonable standard of living through a refusal to submit grades. The movement quickly spread, and now spans all 10 UC campuses (many of which are on a full or partial strike). COLA4ALL’s overall vision, taken from the inter-campus website StrikeUniversity.org, centers free and accessible public education for everyone (without student debt), critical thinking and skills that are not bound to the imperatives of the market, replacing competitive models with communities of care and shared struggle, brilliance that refuses hierarchical models of “experts,” and the decolonization, democratization, queering, and abolishing of the university.

The UC has responded to COLA organizers with violence which is deeply revealing of the anti-black, carceral power foundational to the entire system. Militarized police presence has been prevalent at COLA picket lines, walk outs, and other organizing events. During a COLA rally on February 20, 2020 at UC Irvine campus police officer Trish Harding tackled and arrested a Black alumna who was not even involved with COLA and simply on campus trying to pick up her transcripts (please sign the UCI Black Student Union’s petition demanding accountability). UC-wide, many students have been harassed, assaulted, and arrested for daring to tell administration that they cannot survive under “business as usual”.

Recently a student in one of my classes asked the professor about their stance on UC graduate students organizing for a COLA; the professor said that it was up to us as their students, asking if we would be willing to have our grades withheld. Framing the issue as one of undergraduate willingness to go without grades fundamentally misrepresents what is going on. None of us want our grades withheld. Many of us cannot afford to have our grades withheld. But the consequences of having our grades withheld only exist within the context of institutional intransigence, not graduate students going on a wildcat strike.

It is imperative that graduate students be paid fairly and the university reevaluates the oppressive model it is currently operating under.

One of the things that stands out to me in the way that COLA4ALL is discussed is the emphasis put on the fact that the strike is illegal because UAW 2865, the graduate student union, has not voted to strike. As those of us who have critically engaged with criminality and the construction of “illegal”, part of the discourse surrounding illegality is an undermining of the value and contributions of those who are positioned as “illegal.” This is something which is, of course, multiply impactful to those who are already criminalized, as we can see clearly in police response to Black alumni existence on campus. The law is so often unjust and frequently sides with those who hold power and money. Why is it illegal for workers to organize outside of a singular union? Why is it legal for the UC system to put union busting measures into their contracts? Why do we talk about the wildcat strikes in terms of legality instead of engaging critically with the University as an institution?

The extraction of wealth from students is central to the current operation of the UC. This is evident in the high cost of tuition and the rate of student debt, and further heightened through the multitude of ways in which the UC system profits off of its students; while we can think about this in the insane cost of parking, the use of work-study to maintain a labor force of minimum wage workers, the denial of sick pay to undergraduate student workers, the tokenization and marketing of students, and the obviously inflated prices at on-campus stores like The Hill or Zot-n-Go, no where is it more apparent than in housing. Focusing on graduate students, since COLA4ALL is currently focused on improving pay and labor conditions for graduate students, not only are the majority of students extremely rent burdened, but many are living in “subsidized” campus housing, paying large portions of their paychecks back to the very institution already underpaying them and exploiting their labor. It very much feels like company scrip.

Under the social distancing/remote learning model being deployed in response to COVID-19 many of these already untenable circumstances are only being heightened. Housing insecurity, a major problem for many undergraduate and graduate students alike, is significantly increased through the rise in un-and-under-employment resulting from shelter-in-place closures; meanwhile, the UC system is encouraging students to leave campus while doing nothing to assist those who live in off-campus housing who are now not only rent burdened and frequently living in highly crowded living quarters during a pandemic, but given no option to break their lease without penalty and are still required to somehow continue paying rent despite changes in their ability to work.

Similarly, while some campus employees are now able to telecommute to work the administration obviously has no intention of allowing those working in food services, maintenance, custodial services, etc to “conference in”, leaving them at continued risk while prioritizing the safety of those in higher wage positions. Additionally, graduate students and professors without access to the technology needed to teach from their homes are being encouraged to continue to come to campus and teach from classroom spaces. What this means is that those with the resources (stable housing, internet access, a computer with a webcam and mic) can work safely from home, while the most marginalized (those most in need of a COLA) will have to risk exposure.

Furthermore, many telecommuting workers are being told they must sign a contract which includes the provision that employees are “responsible for establishing and maintaining a safe, ergonomically sound, and secure work environment. The employee will establish a functional workspace, including appropriate computer and communications equipment within their telecommuting worksite.” Forcing workers to sign this contract creates a situation where the UC is not obligated to ensure students/workers have access to either the tools they need to work remotely or paid leave, and further establishes that the UC is not responsible for work-related damage to the health and personal equipment of workers. It also makes it possible for the UC to fire those who are not able to independently establish and maintain said work environment.

The level of exploitation and discriminatory violence on this campus and in the UC system is unethical and untenable. The fact that a billion dollar institution would rather negatively impact graduate and undergraduate students, would rather pay for a militarized police presence at the picket line, would rather heighten the risk to their most marginalized students and employees, would rather arrest a Black alumna than pay graduate student workers a living wage speaks for itself. This is not about whether undergraduate students can afford to go without grades, it is about refusing a system where the interests of graduate student workers and the interests of undergraduate students are falsely constructed as oppositional.

The stakes are too high not to speak candidly. I hope you will consider openly standing in solidarity with COLA4ALL. 

#critical university studies #academia #COLA4ALL #COLA #COLA UC #ucsc strike #labor organizing #social justice #covid-19 #corona virus #structural inequality #carceral studies #sorry it's been a while #I've really been Going Through It y'all #also as a note: I do not in any way speak for or represent the COLA movement #these are simply my thoughts on the matter as an undergrad who supports the movement #essay

[eclogues]

Happy Valentine’s day to our UCSC strikers from Janet Napolitano! For anyone outside of this all and don’t know what’s going on here — UC graduate students from UCs all throughout the state (though this information is from my first-hand experience with the UCSC strikes happening currently) have decided to break away from their union which contracted these students into not being ABLE to strike— essentially ridding these people of their free speech against this very administration that claims to offer constant support for their students. This, as we’ve seen over the past week especially, is nothing but a performance from the university!

Graduate students are demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) so graduate students are able to LIVE. Most graduate students (as well as undergrads, from what I personally observed and experienced) are rent burdened to severe degrees, with the amount of houseless students —both graduate and undergradute— growing as the administration claims to be a helpless victim of the “housing crisis”. I know for a fact there are plenty of vacant rooms throughout campus and the administration has been consistently lying to students via emails about what the situation REALLY is.

The past week has been as follows: Monday the police presence (which the UC is paying upward $300,000 each day for) kettled around students peacefully protesting in the street and began hitting them with their batons. Some of my own friends were brutalized by police this week. Wednesday the police presence completely surrounded strikers around the enire intersection. They began to physically drag strikers out of the street when they were just sitting down protesting. Students reported broken fingers and bruised ribs — there is video footage of a police officer stepping on a student’s neck. That student was sent to urgent care afterwards. The police arrested 17 students who are now (mostly—all but 1 student) released but have been given a suspension by the university.

This is an open-ended strike until graduate students get their COLA from the administration.

#cola 4 all #ucsc strike

[elliotannhella]

The grad students at my alma mater are striking for a cost of living adjustment and I feel so far away and so useless because I can't offer much financial support and I don't know what else to do several states away...

#me #cola #cola4all #ucsc strike #grad student

[redslushyeldergod]

Bernie Sanders supports UCSC COLA!!

#COLA #ucsc COLA #ucsc strike

[empidonax]

Hi all. For the past 3 days (since Monday 1/10/2020), grad students, undergrads, and faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz have been picketing for a cost of living adjustment for UCSC grad students. This strike started in December of last year with grad students withholding grades for classes they teach, and escalated to a full strike on Monday.

The strikers have been peaceful. They have blocked off one intersection at the main campus entrance, but entry is still open through the west entrance. Police have been arresting, assaulting, and threatening people. But there are still hundreds of people in solidarity at the picket line.

Please reblog this to help spread the word. If you can, contact University of California admins and ask to provide a cost of living adjustment. @cola4all and @payusmoreucsc on Instagram are livestreaming and posting updates.

First picture is by Santa Cruz Films, others are screenshots from @cola4all’s livestream.

#ucsc #university of california #uc #uc system #uc santa cruz #ucsd #ucb #uci #uc davis #ucla #uc berkeley #uc irvine #ucsb #uc santa barbara #strike #protest #activism #antifa #police brutality #police violence #eat the rich #california #kes talks #cola #cola4all #cola ucsc #political

[lilgaybarista]

So for some context: Graduate students and TAs at UC Santa Cruz have been fighting for a cost of living adjustment (or COLA) for their wages they get for working and teaching at the university. With many of the TAs and grad students forced to spend nearly 40-80% of their wages on rent, a COLA was necessary.

The admin of the uni have been very stubborn in refusing to give any ground or concessions in this fight, causing the grad students to move from a grading strike-where they withheld Fall Quarter grades-to a full on walkout strike. We held a picket for six weeks, during which 18 students were arrested, and by the fifth week 54 grad students were fired.

The admin spent roughly $300,000 per day on police shipped in from nearby counties, all the while claiming there was no room for any pay adjustments. An agreement was struck during the last few weeks of the strike wherein fired grad students would still be able to retain their health insurance for the duration of the current pandemic, and no grad students would be subjected to student conduct hearings for their participation in the strike in exchange for submitting fall quarter grades.

However, this week the admin began issuing summons for students to face hearings on charges of “theft” and “forgery” for withholding grades during fall quarter. The university backed out on its end of the agreement, and now it has come to light that they paid the California National Guard to get access to military surveillance equipment and methods so as to intimidate students and suppress any form of dissent on campus.

The UC system claims to support and care for its students, to have our best interests at heart. This is a lie. The UC system only cares about profits. The UC system claims to value diverse opinions and ideas. This is a lie. The UC system suppressed any forms of peaceful protest and dissent.

If I had known my tuition dollars would be going to unwarranted surveillance of me and my comrades on the picket line, to the arrest of my fellow students, and the continued exploitation of the workers and students of this university, I never would have gone here.

Links:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kppna/california-police-used-military-surveillance-tech-at-grad-student-strike

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/in-the-uc-santa-cruz-wildcat-strike-class-war-meets-the-california-housing-crisis/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/28/university-of-california-student-strike-fired

#ucsc #uc santa cruz #eat the rich #eat the regents #signal boost #wildcat strike #anti capitalism #socialism

[totsshots52x52]

AFSCME

#WORKERS RIGHTS #AFSCME #UCSC #STRIKES

[voicesfromthepicket]

Kendall, Literature & Creative Writing PhD Student, UC Santa Cruz

I joined the Department of Literature 8 years ago, one of two applicants accepted into the second ever cohort of the Creative/Critical Concentration. I received a GSI appointment in Creative Writing my second quarter here, and have continued to contribute a significant number of courses as the Instructor of Record in my primary field. Even back in 2015, I discovered what my newer colleagues know all too well: Santa Cruz is ensnared in a housing crisis and escalating costs of living. I moved seven times in three years (including tenuous Craigslist sublets & crashing on friends’ couches during summer months) before being fortunate enough to find a tenable living situation. Relative housing security has come with its own costs, however, including structural issues with plumbing, roofing, and appliances; significant rat infestations; a revolving door of five other housemates; and safety concerns related to vandalism and trespassing.

The irony of preparing lesson plans on Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”—in which Woolf predicates intellectual productivity on adequate material conditions—while I struggled to make a home here is not lost on me.

Over the years, I have also had to supplement my UC income with a number of side hustles ranging from retail to catering, housekeeping to intensive high school summer programs.

I share all this not because my experience is the exception, but because it is the norm for graduate students who want to exist, let alone thrive, in Santa Cruz. Consequently, many of my cohort members chose alternative paths.

At least three of my peers quit or transferred within our first year. After two years, I was the only local member of my cohort. And more than any personal financial stability, I mourned this loss of community, a vital creative force.

So I pull hard on this slack, trying to produce for my students what Santa Cruz has failed to produce for me. The space of the classroom is a community—a microcosm of society—what bell hooks would call a “contact zone.”

When I ask my creative writing students to share and respond to one another’s work, I am really asking them to be good neighbors.

When I invite my students to revel in the excess of poetic language, I am really inviting them to honor difference & multiplicity.

When I require my students to revise their submissions, I am really requiring them to re-envision, to imagine, to, as Ezra Pound has said, “make new.”

I want the role of higher public education to be practicing the conditions of change that will bolster more compassionate citizens, more critical thinkers, and more daring makers against a pretty fucked up world.

And I believe striking graduate student workers and researchers want the same. I believe this so strongly that it was worth being effectively fired for 3 quarters as a result of participating in the wildcat strike, and I believe this so strongly that I strike again, out of love. It is because I love teaching and writing at this university that I demand the UC do better. I would not be doing my job if I didn’t strike—if I did not hold the UC accountable to the same values to which I hold my students.

Don’t get me wrong—I strike because I do want the UC to straight up give me more money. I am exhausted by having to choose between repairing my car or paying my medical bills. I am angry with a system that tells me with every trip to the food pantry when I’m broke at the end of a month that I don’t matter, that Literature doesn’t matter.

But I also strike for my students, my kindred meaning-makers.

I strike for my faculty mentors, whose seminars & research have radicalized me.

I strike for my friends at other, increasingly corporatized universities.

I strike for my parents, who know nothing about poetry, but who have nonetheless instilled in me that anything worth having is worth taking risks for.

And, as grandiose at it might sound, I strike for the future of quality higher education.

I hope you will, too.

#literature #ucsc #uaw on strike #cola4all

[anarchist-caravan]

http://dailynexus.com/2020-02-28/breaking-ucsc-dismisses-54-graduate-students-on-cola-strike-for-failure-to-turn-in-fall-quarter-2019-grades/

#COLA Strike #UCSC #Santa Cruz #University #Wildcat Strike #news

[tattooed-alchemist]

the TL;DR points of the article (which you really should read in full!):

The strike shows having a union is not enough

The strike exposes management’s age-old lie: ‘We just don’t have the money’

The strike demonstrates how to build solidarity among groups management seeks to divide.

#ucsc #wildcat strike #living wages #union #management #solidarity

[hoothootmotherf-ckers]

#cola strike #cost of living strike #cola4all #ucsb #ucsc

[woodygaythrie]

UC Worker’s Strike OCT 23-25

Hey, I haven’t seen any tumblr posts about this, but AFSCME Local 3299, the union that represents all workers employed by the University of California (on all 10 campuses across California), is currently striking to get a fair contract. These workers are janitors, gardeners, cooks, maintenance workers; people who keep the UC campuses running. These people are not being paid a living wage by the University of California, and UC is trying to take away even more benefits from them. If you live in California and are near a UC campus, please show up to support the striking workers if you can or show support on social media. The AFSCME website has more info about strike locations and times: https://afscme3299.org/strike-announcement-locations/

#afscme local 3299 #university of california #UCLA #UCI #UCSB #UCSC #UCD #UCSD #union #strike #signal boost

[exigencelost]

From the @payusmoreucb on twitter:  Fight back against UC Berkeley's "Big Give". Donate instead to the Cal COLA Wildcat Strike fund! http://tinyurl.com/UCBStrikeFund Read our full statement on The Big Give: https://payusmoreucb.com/support/statement-on-the-big-give… Image text available under read-more and at second link above. 

[Image text:

CalCOLA Statement on UC Berkeley “Big Give”, Launch of Strike Fund

Each year, UC Berkeley celebrates its increasing privatization and commodification of education by soliciting private donations for a 24-hour period they call the “Big Give”. During this time, University administration uses student advocacy as a marketing tool while they rake in millions of dollars contingent upon the demands of wealthy donors. This year, instead of resigning ourselves to this twisted, undemocratic, and neoliberalized vision of “public” education, we are asking you to fight back against this system and contribute to the CalCOLA strike fund. These funds will be allocated for legal fees, docked pay for strikers, food and organizing supplies for actions, to promote equity, and ensure accessibility at our events, assemblies, and meetings.

Recent decades have seen a shift in the funding and operation of our “public” universities. The State of California has decreased its contributions to the UC from $23,000 per student to $8,000 over the last four decades. The UC is now funded more by student tuition and private donors than by public funds. We see the University prioritize its relationship to private interests over listening to its students, its workers, and the public. This system perpetuates the racial and economic injustices of the past and present into the future as it gives those in privileged groups the ability to determine who is included and excluded from our public institutions.

We cannot accept this. We recognize these structural problems are protected and reinforced by a toxic culture in the UC administration. We cite the California State Auditor’s assessment of the Office of the President:

“Our report concludes that the Office of the President has amassed substantial reserve funds, used misleading budgeting practices, provided its employees with generous salaries and atypical benefits, and failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on systemwide initiatives. [...] Correspondence between the Office of the President and the campuses shows that the Office of the President inappropriately reviewed campuses’ survey responses, which resulted in campuses making changes to those responses prior to submitting them to us...”

...the Office of the President’s actions during this audit have caused us to question whether it will make a genuine effort to change.”

(auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2016-130.pdf)

The poisonous combination of these structural failures and the administration’s mismanagement and lack of ethics have left graduate students in the UC system no choice but to act. On Monday, March 16, graduate students at UC Berkeley will go on strike to demand the University provide a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) that will bring graduate students out of rent burden. Beyond the well-being of current graduate students, this demand is required to ensure higher education is accessible and equitable, and truly serves as a public good. Graduate students across the UC are putting their bodies upon the gears and the wheels of the administration in order to stop this dishonorable higher education system. We are asking you to support us in our collective struggle.

Please donate to COLA organizer strike funds listed below, and from Wednesday March 11 at 9pm to Thursday March 12 at 9pm, and promote the hashtags #CalBigGive, #cola4all, and #colastrike on social media to show the administration and the public that you stand with our COLA strikers. We have immediate need for funding to ensure universal access at COLA events and meetings, and to provide security for our most vulnerable strikers.

Current Strike Funds for Wildcat Strikers:

UC Berkeley: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucb UC Santa Cruz: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc UC Santa Barbara: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ucsb-cola-campaign

In solidarity, CalCOLA

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

-Mario Savio, 2 Dec 1964, Sproul Plaza

/end Image text]

#spread the strike #pay us more #spreadthestrike #payusmore #cola4all #UC STRIKE #fundraising