Grad Life Before COLA – pay us more ucsc

Anonymous graduate student accounts of trying to survive Santa Cruz on the inadequate wages and funding we receive from this institution. These are not uncommon experiences. The situation is dire.

1 Salad Days
2 Internet, Food, or Medical Care? Choose One
3 Five Years of Mold Poisoning
4 New Year’s Edition: Struggling Every Day
5 Unsafe Housing and Living Unhoused
6 I need a COLA to keep faith in this institution
7 Juggling Four Part-Time Jobs to Afford Rent
8 The only thing that can keep me going is a COLA
9 An Abusive Landlord Leads to Houselessness
10 Financial Precarity Takes a Toll on Mental Health

Mission

We are TAs, GSIs, Tutors, Readers, Student Researchers, Fellows, Postdocs, and Academic Researchers at UCSC. We are represented by our union, UAW 4811 (Formerly UAW 2865 and UAW 5810). In 2019/2020, workers at UCSC withheld labor for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), and in 2022, our statewide union struck for 6 weeks over a COLA, arguing for a 54k base wage for all academic workers with the goal of raising the living conditions of academic workers across the state. Then, in 2024, we went on strike for Divestment, Disclosure, Transitional funding for researchers, & Amnesty for all protestors. Now, we’re fighting against the attacks on higher education taking place on a national scale as we build a campaign for a UC that works for all of us.