Category: Uncategorized

Quentin Williams cancelled the Graduate Student Commons “February Friendship First Friday,” a popular recurring grad student community event, because it was advertised as a “strike activity.”

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From: Quentin Williams
Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2020
To: GSC Governing Board

Hi GSC Governing Board,

Let me be a bit more clear: the FF event is being (and has been) advertised as a strike activity. That cannot be supported by the campus, approved by the campus, or be associated with organizations on the campus. I have cancelled university approval of the event, associated PO’s, alcohol approval, etc.
It is cancelled.

Sincerely,
Quentin Williams
aVPDGS

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From: Graduate Student Commons <gscommon@ucsc.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2020, 1:42 PM
Subject: [grads-group] GSC FIRST FRIDAY CANCELLED
To: <grads-group@ucsc.edu>

Dear Graduate Students,

We apologize for the short notice and untimely announcement that our February Friendship First Friday, to be held today at 5 – 7 pm at the GSC, has been cancelled by the University administration. They withdrew all funding and support related to this event due to the purported presence of “strike activity”.

This morning, the GSC Governing Board was informed 30 minutes before going shopping for food and drink that we have lost our funding for First Friday. Shortly after, we received an email from the University administration officially cancelling First Friday.

The Graduate Student Commons is a space for all graduate students to access and enjoy. All graduate students with a registered student ID card should still have 24-hour access* to the GSC.

*If you haven’t received 24 hour access, please stop at the GSC front desk TODAY before 5pm to have a student intern program your student ID card.

We again, apologize for the short-notice and we are grateful for all our graduate students who have dedicated their time to support and attend our events. And while this event has been canceled, we especially want to acknowledge the time and effort that many grads put toward planning it.

If you still want to meet up with your fellow graduate students tonight, join us downtown at Salsa Night at the Palomar from 8:15 to 11:30 PM!

Sincerely,
Graduate Student Commons Governing Board

February 7, 2020 3:49 PM
To: UC Santa Cruz Community
From: Interim Campus Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer <officeofcpevc@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Opportunities for dialogue

On January 27, Chancellor Larive announced two new programs to support our graduate students. Despite these efforts, we were disappointed that some of our TAs—200 of whom continue to withhold grades—last week threatened to escalate their activity to a full teaching strike. The threatened action violates the collective bargaining agreement that the University of California has with the TA’s union, the UAW. The collective bargaining agreement memorializes the rights of employees (here, the TAs and GSIs) and employers (here, the University of California). One of the central benefits bargained for by the University is the right to be free of any strikes during the term of the agreement. We expect our TAs who are union members to abide by the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.  

Nonetheless, in an effort to open up dialogue, we had two important meetings with graduate students this week. The first was a meeting at the UC system level between representatives from the Office of the President and the UAW Executive team who represent students across all campuses. That took place in Irvine on Wednesday. The second meeting occurred yesterday. I, along with Director of Employee & Labor Relations Jennifer Schiffner, joined the Acting Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Quentin Williams, and Graduate Student Association (GSA) co-presidents Yulia Gilichinskaya and Antony Boardman.

At the second meeting, we discussed collaborating towards building better support for all PhD and MFA students, not just union members. As part of this effort and to ensure productive conversation, we shared our willingness to pause employee disciplinary and student conduct processes for one week if graduate students paused all strike activities. These meetings are a positive step toward coming together as a community to face our shared challenges.

We certainly hope that these meetings mark the start of a new dynamic with our graduate students and a renewed sense of cooperation. Our graduate students play an important role in the educational mission of UCSC and we understand and empathize with the financial burden that results from the current housing crisis for many on our campus. It is only by working together that we can find solutions as a community.

However, if students decide to proceed with the threatened strike escalation they will violate the collective bargaining agreement that UC has with the UAW. In fact, the UAW notified the Academic Student Employees (ASEs) directly today that such strike activity is unauthorized and violates the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. As articulated in the agreement, participation in the strike will lead to consequences up to and including dismissal from employment.

This has been a challenging time for our community, especially our undergraduate students. I am hopeful we will find a path toward resolution and look forward to the opportunity to dialogue.

Sincerely,

Lori Kletzer
Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

Dear Strikers and Faculty,

We are writing in response to Lori Kletzer’s email, “Opportunities for dialogue.” First, we are encouraged by Kletzer’s willingness to meet with us. We affirm that we are ready to engage in productive dialogue in order to reach a favorable resolution to the ongoing strike. However, we are deeply concerned that the parameters of the meeting being proposed will make such a resolution impossible.  We are currently pushing for a meeting that would be acceptable for us. Additionally, given our impending strike action, we are concerned that Kletzer’s email is a bad faith attempt to interrupt the momentum we have built and persuade graduate students to abandon the strongest leverage we have. We hope that this email will help you to better understand the University’s messaging today and our response to it. 

Most importantly, we believe that any decision to “pause” the strike must be made by all graduate students and not a handful of representatives. We will have a General Assembly on the picket line (base of campus) on Monday, February 10 at 4:30 PM. At this meeting, we will raise the question of “pausing” the strike for all to consider. We encourage everyone to participate. 

Before we contextualize, here’s the TL;DR:

• Administration has still not made any offer to meet our demand.
• Administration has still not even agreed to bargain over our demand.
• Based on the conversations we have had thus far with administration, we do not believe that another “touch base” style discussion will yield any meaningful movement towards a COLA.  We need formal negotiations. 
• To get us to “pause” our strike, all administration would offer is a pause on “employee disciplinary and student conduct processes for one week”. (our italics)
• Administration can meet with us. 

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On January 31, Graduate Student Association co-presidents Yulia Gilichinskaya and Tony Boardman received an invitation to a “Winter Quarter Touch Base” with Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Quentin Williams and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies Jim Moore. 

Many of us remember the administration’s constant refrain about meeting to bargain with striking grads (they were apparently “precluded by law from such direct dealing” during the strike) back in the most intense days of the Fall grading strike. To us, this private “Touch Base” meeting sounded like a way for administration to roll back their initial rhetoric without actually making any concessions — to meet with us without calling it a meeting with us, just “touching base.”

This “Touch Base” meeting occurred yesterday, February 6. Leading up to the meeting, admin was unforthcoming and underhanded — the location of the meeting was not announced until 30 minutes before it began, no agenda was distributed prior to it, and two additional, unannounced participants joined 10 minutes in. These were EVC Lori Kletzer and Director of Labor Relations Jennifer Schiffner. They asked if they could join the meeting, which was already in progress; GSA co-presidents, stunned but ready for dialogue, agreed.  

Kletzer and Schiffner took over the meeting. They wanted to discuss “de-escalation” options. They asked how GSA co-presidents could “pause” the strike. The co-presidents stated that not one person has this power, and only the administration can stop the strike by meeting our demands or, at the very least, engaging in good faith bargaining over the matter. Admin did suggest that if graduate students “pause” the strike, the administrators would pause further discipline. We want to be very clear; the administration has offered a week’s pause in their disciplinary action, not an end to them. In effect, the administrators have offered nothing; they have simply leveraged their disciplinary power. They admitted that discipline is an escalation on their part, and we presume they began disciplinary measures earlier this week so that they could use them as a bargaining chip today.

Gilichinskaya and Boardman reiterated that the strike will only end the way it began: when strikers vote on an offer from the administration with a dollar amount attached to it, that will bring us out of rent-burden and includes a guarantee of non-retaliation–not a pause. Since the administration did not make an offer but suggested a “pause” to retaliation, Boardman and Gilichinskaya said that the administration could put their suggestions in writing and send it to the campus community. The email from EVC Kletzer does not guarantee us any of these things we have been demanding since the beginning. In the meeting, Gilichinskaya and Boardman expressed that graduate students do not trust this administration after years of failed attempts to compel UCSC to improve their conditions. 

The administration claims they are ready for dialogue. We are too, and have been since December. Yet unlike our administrators, we have maintained a consistent position. We don’t respond to threats, implicit or explicit, or to back-channel, bad faith meetings. When this administration is serious about addressing our dire conditions, we will be, as ever, open to good faith discussions. As we have said from the beginning, and as the administration has now tacitly acknowledged, nothing prevents them from meeting with us while we are on strike. 

See you on the picket line!

Solidarity forever,
UAW 2865, Santa Cruz
GSA
Striking graduate students
—
Sarah Mason
Doctoral Student | Research Associate 
Sociology
University of California, Santa Cruz 

Email to graduate students from the GSA, February 5, 2020

Dear Fellow Strikers:

Many of you have received a letter signed by Quentin Williams entitled “Written Warning for Withholding Undergraduate Student Grades.” We wanted to take a minute to explain what this letter does, and does not, mean for your employment, and what we can all do collectively to fight back.  

Before we get into the details of the letter, we want to say a word about the importance of a collective, political response to it. No less so than when we began our strike, our strength still comes from our numbers and from our ability to act collectively.  Whether the university is able to escalate to harsher levels of discipline, or whether they instead cave to our demands and grant a COLA, will turn on how firmly we stand together.  

Article 8 of our union contract says that the University “may discipline or dismiss an ASE for just cause.” The forms of “discipline” stated in the contract are “written warning, suspension without pay, or dismissal.” For the University to attempt to suspend pay or to dismiss a graduate student employee, it has to provide the employee a “written notice of intent” that it is seeking to impose one of these penalties, after which the employee gets ten days to respond to the notice, and additional steps occur thereafter. 

The “Written Warning for Withholding Undergraduate Student Grades” is not a “written notice of intent” that begins the process that the University must undergo in order to suspend or dismiss an employee. Rather, it is the least form of “discipline” the University can attempt to impose under the contract. To be clear, this means that the “warning” letter does not formally begin any process against you that can lead to suspension or removal.

The “Written Warning” does become part of your “employment file.” There are two types of actions that can be taken in response:

(1) Fight Back–Grieve It

First, the contract provides you with the right to file a grievance under the contract over the placement of the letter in your file within thirty (30) days of the date you became aware of the letter’s existence. To the extent that the letter appears to be based on fabricated or inflated accusations, you can file a grievance over the placement of the letter in your file. And it does indeed appear that the letter signed by Quentin Williams is based on false or wildly inflated allegations of purported “harm” to undergraduate students. For example:

• The letter claims that undergraduates may experience a “potential” loss of financial aid “if the University is unable to verify individual undergraduate student progress to the Department of Education.” The University alludes to its purported inability to comply with Department of Education requirements. However, striking TAs have made every conceivable effort to provide every student whose financial aid is potentially imperiled with the information they need to continue to qualify for this aid (previous information here, and here). Given these efforts by you and other TAs, any failure to provide the Department of Education with required information would be entirely the result of the incompetence and indifference of the University, not of striking workers. 

• The letter lists additional consequences such as students’ potential inability to “successfully apply to graduate,” to receive credits for classes taken, to “declare a major,” or to receive “additional academic advising.” Every one of these supposed harms arises from the University’s mechanical, reflexive, bureaucratic misapplication of its own policies and procedures  to students affected by the strike; none of these consequences is in any way a direct result of a TA’s withholding of grades. If the University were genuinely so animated by concern for undergraduates’ well-being, it would allow students to take all of the actions and comply with all of the requirements identified in the letter regardless of whether or not a grade has been withheld. The University’s decision to prefer its own internal policies to its students’ well-being is the cause of all of the speculative harms it lists in its letter; thus, not one of the conjectural impacts to undergraduate students can justify discipline. 

• The University’s warning letter fails to identify a single undergraduate student who was actually harmed by any action the TA has taken. Every one of the purported harms identified in Quentin Williams’ letter is imagined, not demonstrably real. For the University to remove a graduate student employee from their position, it should be able to demonstrate actual, real-life harm from the actions that it claims justify dismissal, not the laundry-list of “potential (but not actual) consequences” Williams identifies in his scaremongering letter. 

These are all points that we can make in a grievance filed over the placement of a warning letter in your file. We can also add to these general points with information about your specific situation that you think may be helpful to you. If you received a warning letter, we will be reaching out shortly about filing a grievance. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to UCSC UAW 2865 Unit Chair Veronica Hamilton.

(2) Put Another Letter in Your File

UAW 2865 has prepared a letter responding to Williams’ “Warning Letter” that explains TAs’ actions were taken as part of concerted labor activity to attempt to force the University to pay a living wage to its employees. Contact Veronica Hamilton to get a copy of this letter addressed to you to have it placed in your employment file.

Supportive faculty have indicated that they are prepared to provide a similar letter responding to Williams’ accusations. In this letter, faculty may express their support and further contextualize the “Warning Letter.” We recommend contacting your instructor of record (if supportive) to request a letter. 

What happens next?

To sum up, the “Warning Letter” does not initiate any disciplinary action against you, and we’ve covered two ways that we can fight back. We are also pursuing a political, collective response to this disciplinary action beginning on the picket line on Monday, February 10 at 7:30am. 

It is important that everyone who has received a disciplinary warning touch base before we take any actions individually.  If you got one of these letters, we will be reaching out shortly to set up a meeting or a Zoom call to discuss our response. If you withheld grades but have not received a formal warning letter like this, we also want to hear from you. This could help us understand the University’s approach and potentially make a case about the arbitrary and capricious nature of these warnings.  

To the extent that the University attempts to proceed with imposing harsher discipline, there are additional ways we may be able to fight back through procedural in addition to political channels. For example, if you were offered consecutive appointments at the beginning of this year, the University’s failure to re-employ you in one of those offered positions may violate Article 3, the “Appointment Security” provision of our contract. While Article 8 allows the University to remove an employee for “just cause,” it is not at all clear under the contract that alleged conduct in a position held during the Fall Quarter of 2019 can be grounds for removal from or denial of an entirely different position that would be held in subsequent quarters. Removal from or denial of a subsequent position that was earlier promised to you may be a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, that would be subject to a grievance, and that may award in backpay. Strikers are continuing to discuss other potential legal and procedural remedies among themselves and with outside counsel. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any additional questions! See you on the picket line!

Solidarity forever,
GSA
UAW 2865, Santa Cruz

Dear graduate students,

In this email you will find a Call for Proposals for talks, performances, workshops, etc. for the picket line, more details about the Coastal Campus “work-in,” and where to get your own wildcat COLA shirt and buttons.  Please distribute the Call For Proposals widely.

1) We are soliciting art, performances, talks, workshops, events, and services to be shared on the picket line starting February 10. Graduate students are fighting for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) and a truly PUBLIC university that is run by students and workers. We want to pull our collective creativity and expertise to build a picket line curriculum that we actually want to learn and engage in.

We have already received proposals to make buttons, screenprint wildcat t-shirts, read tarot, give massages, facilitate yoga sessions, and perform music at the picket line (this list is not in any way exhaustive, and is only meant to give you ideas for your proposal). Let’s share our talents, knowledge, skills, and expertise with each other as we demand a COLA.

Please fill this form to suggest an activity you want to bring to or see at the picket. Share the Call for Proposals widely with other grads, faculty, staff, workers, and community members! The call is open to EVERYONE (except cops, landlords, and admin)!

2) This Friday graduate students will congregate on the Coastal Campus of UCSC for a joint “work-in.” Bring your laptops, books, notepads, and other things you need to do your work, your research. Let’s work together!  We will also share a meal, print wildcat shirts, make COLA buttons, and build community with our COLA comrades in STEM. More details in the flyer attached.

3) You can make your own wildcat COLA shirt and strike paraphernalia at First Friday in the Graduate Student Commons (GSC) from 5:00pm-7:00pm. Bring your own shirt, bandana, or any fabric you want to print the wildcat on. You can also get a red UAW 2865 shirt at First Friday. Come through!

Whose University? Our University!

Always and forever in solidarity,

Striking Graduate Students

Introduction

Yesterday afternoon, about eighty graduate students and a dozen undergraduates convened in McHenry Library to discuss what a full strike will look like for different groups of UCSC student-workers. After sharing concerns and potential strategies, groups of TAs, GSIs, GSRs, fellowship recipients, and undergraduates met to discuss their visions for next week’s strike escalation. 

Below are recommendations for how to plan for the next week.  These recommendations should be adapted to your own level of readiness and contextual factors (e.g. the level of support you receive from your department and the ways that withholding your labor impacts the institution). 

Importantly, everyone should show up to the picket line at the base of campus on Monday, February 10 at 7:30 AM, in order to provide maximum visibility and disruption. 

We will hold meetings on the picket line at the end of day (4:30pm-5:30pm) to assess new developments and plan our next steps. 

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What happens now / What you can do / What to expect next week

• Department-level organizing: this is a critical time to check in with classmates, colleagues, and faculty to discuss what strategies graduate students could and should take.  
• If one hasn’t already been scheduled, call a department meeting. Personally call every graduate student that you know in your department to encourage participation. The more one-on-one conversations you have, the better. 
• If you haven’t polled your department, do so now (poll model here, please duplicate and tailor and feedback results to payusmoreucsc@gmail.com). The poll at Thursday’s general assembly was framed as “an assessment of our collective power,” rather than a vote. Department polls will be more representative of the specific actions that your department can achieve with regards to this week’s strike action.

Actions this week: 

• Tonight’s GSA/COLA/MMM, 5-8pm, at the GSC, with an undergraduate teach-in on debt, and discussion of undergraduate demands, 5:45-6:30pm. 
• STEM “Work-in” at Coastal Sciences on Friday, 2/7, 10:30am-3:30pm with screenprinting. Bring a t-shirt! Restock on buttons! 

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How to strike as a TA

If your department is highly organized and supportive, we need you and your faculty on the picket line! Having a massive presence at the base of campus makes it clear that we are on strike, business cannot continue as usual, and that we have numbers/support. 

• Join the picket on Monday morning, February 10 beginning at 7:30 AM. 
• Send a letter to your department. Call on faculty to honor the picket line. Instead of holding classes on campus, recommend that they relocate to the base of campus. This has been common practice during past AFSCME strikes and helps to increase undergraduate turnout/education on the picket line. (See “Template for Faculty” PDF attached)
• Send an email to your students and encourage them to show up to the picket – you can use the template we include below. (See “Template for Undergrads” PDF attached)
• Hold your section/office hours on the picket line. 
• If you are in STEM and/or your department is in the early stages of building power, conduct “Teach the Strike” teach-ins. These teach-ins can be critical for strengthening undergrad-grad relationships and building interdepartmental solidarity. Sign up here.

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How to strike as a GSR

What is most important for GSRs to consider is how withholding work will or will not make an impact on the institution. If, for example, your GSR is directly linked to your dissertation data collection or to your advancement in your lab, you may want to find more covert ways to show your support than withholding your labor completely. Based on yesterday’s group discussion with GSRs, here are our recommendations for how to participate in the strike:

• Join the picket on Monday morning, February 10 beginning at 7:30 AM. 
• Show up and support the picket whenever possible. Organize your lab or research team to commit to times on the picket lines. 
• If you have to continue GSR work, wear the COLA wildcat t-shirt, a UAW 2865 t-shirt, or red (for Ed). Wear COLA buttons to the lab and seminars.
• If you are in STEM, add a COLA slide to every research presentation and talk about COLA at rotation presentations (template COLA slides will be uploaded on payusmoreucsc.com); consider wearing lab coats if that’s relevant to your research.
• Work in public/visible spaces: join the “work-in” at Coastal Sciences on Friday, 2/7, 10:30am-3:30pm 
• Start a conversation with other GSRs about unionizing. What are the grievances you have as a GSR (for example, no cap on hours you have to work; no set date for the paycheck; protections from exploitation)? Attend, or help present, a presentation at the picket about unionizing GSRs and voice those concerns. Contact gilichinskaya@gmail.com for more information. 

If withholding your work will immediately impact the administration, we encourage you to completely withhold your labor.

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How to strike as a GSI

For GSIs, we want to make clear that we are emphasizing the critical role we have in keeping the UC running, while simultaneously articulating that we do not want to hurt students’ academic progress (particularly those who are already falling behind).

Some options for GSIs that were discussed during yesterday’s meeting are:

• Join the picket on Monday morning, February 10 beginning at 7:30 AM. 
• Cancel classes or relocate them to the picket line. 
• Hold extended office hours on the picket line.
• Send an email to your students and encourage them to show up to the picket – you can use the template we include below. (See “Template for Undergrads” PDF below)
• Hold classes in alternative spaces (off campus, online, or in very visible spaces like Kerr Hall, McHenry Library)
• If you are in STEM and/or your department is in the early stages of building power, conduct “Teach the Strike” teach-ins. These teach-ins can be critical for strengthening undergrad-grad relationships and building interdepartmental solidarity.  Sign up here.
• Show up and support the picket whenever possible. 

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How to strike on fellowship

What is most important for graduate students on fellowship to consider is how to use your position to put pressure on the UC and support the efforts of strikers. Based on the group discussion with graduate students on fellowship, here are some recommendations on how to participate in the strike:

• Join the picket on Monday morning, February 10 beginning at 7:30 AM. 
• Show up and support the picket whenever possible. 
• Offer to conduct teach-ins, particularly for STEM classes. To do this, sign up here.
• Offer to support TAs and GSIs during (traditional or alternative) class sessions to show solidarity.

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Please await forthcoming information in the next few days on:

• How to protect yourself from retaliation 
• How to strike as an undergraduate
• FAQs
• General strategies for alternative forms of teaching

In solidarity.

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Attachments

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Email sent among graduate students Feb 4, 2020

On Friday, January 31st, Financial Aid sent out a form email to certain TAs and GSI claiming:

“_______ is among a group of about 50 students for whom the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office is required to retroactively reduce or eliminate fall quarter aid on Monday, February 3. This aid is from the U.S. Department of Education and/or the California Student Aid Commission with regulations which require us to take this action. This action will likely cause a bill to the student” (see screenshot for full email below)

We still maintain that the UC does not have to, should not, and potentially will not harm undergraduate students in this way, but we believe that continuing to have their grades withheld poses a substantial risk to the undergraduates who were listed on this email. 

To clarify: this only concerns the 50 students mentioned in the January 31st email, not earlier emails from Financial Aid. For the students included in earlier emails, you can still use the template below. See our earlier communication about these students.

If you have received this email (Jan 31st), we strongly suggest contacting the affected students with this information to ask them how they would like to proceed (those students should have received an email directly from the Financial Aid Office about this issue as well). You should only continue to withhold these students’ grades in the event that an undergraduate responds to you today stating affirmatively that they understand the risks and they still want their grade withheld. If students respond saying that they want their grade submitted, or do not respond at all by the end of the day today, their grades should be officially submitted. 

You can submit individual grades by logging into MyUCSC and submitting a partial grade roster. Instructors should save the grades they wish to submit in the grade roster, then email the Registrar’s Office from their UCSC email address with their request to submit a partial grade roster. Requests should include the course subject and number and be sent to registrar@ucsc.edu, CC regsys@ucsc.edu and cpsanger@ucsc.edu. If you are a TA, your instructor should do this. If you are a GSI, you should do this yourself.

After you have submitted the requested grades, consider reaching out to affected students and let them know that you have responded to the situation. While undergraduate students have been generally understanding and supportive, their direct experience of the administration’s callousness and incompetence may provide yet another opportunity for building solidarity.

Solidarity,

Striking graduate students

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Dear UCSC Financial Aid Officers,

I confirm that [STUDENT’S NAME, STUDENT ID NUMBER] completed [COURSE NUMBER AND TITLE] in Fall 2019 with a passing grade (C- or higher). 

[NAME’S] actual grade will be sent to the Registrar once graduate students’ demands for a cost of living adjustment have been met.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]

[TEACHING ASSISTANT or INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD] for [COURSE], Fall 2019

To UCSC administrators, UCPath representatives, and UCSC graduate students,

Several graduate students were notified on Thursday and Friday that their paychecks would be delayed because of flaws in UCPath (click here to learn about problems with UCPath). Graduate students, like other low wage workers in Santa Cruz, typically live paycheck to paycheck, and our income stays in our bank account just long enough to pay our rent. This means that there are many graduate students who have just learned that their rent check will bounce (and thus, have to pay additional fees). This is just one more example of the vulnerabilities graduate students face at current wage levels.  

Graduate students have been underfunded for years, and the current system is unsustainable (despite the meager “needs-based scholarship” that Chancellor Larive announced last week). It should not be surprising that under these conditions the system will break, as we have witnessed over the last two months. Graduate students are now organizing for a full strike. Wildcat strikes historically arise out of unbearable conditions, and are a reflection of the collective power of workers who can’t take it anymore (learn about other wildcat strikes by clicking here). The UC has the power to change the lives of thousands of workers and students; on our campus, graduate students and the campus community are holding the UC accountable to enacting necessary change.
To GSIs, TAs, tutors, and readers: If you were not paid in full, please fill out this form (click here) or contact me so that I can file a grievance on your behalf (learn more about grievances related to UCPath by clicking here). Because our union only currently represents GSIs, TAs, tutors, and readers, I can only file a grievance on behalf of these student workers. However,all graduate students should request a same day pay check from the UCPath office (based on their recommendation from the December GSA/UAW meeting): contact payhelp@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-2488.

Signed, 
Veronica Hamilton, M. A.