This demand was delivered to Chancellor Larive on November 7, 2019.
Dear Chancellor Larive,
We deliver this letter to you as underpaid and rent-burdened graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We graduate students write to you demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment. We have only one demand, and it is this:
An ongoing payment to every graduate student that would bring us out of rent burden and to wage parity with graduate students at UC Riverside. At current rates, this amounts to $1412 per month.
By “every graduate student,” we mean every graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, regardless of residence, visa category, documentation, or funding and employment status.
With “rent burden,” we refer to the material situation of crisis in the Santa Cruz housing market, where graduate students spend more than 30% of their wages on rent. We thereby find ourselves in a condition that housing scholars name “rent burden.” In fact, UC Santa Cruz graduate students, who frequently spend as much as 50-60% of their wages on rent, are severely rent-burdened. Our demand for a Cost of Living Adjustment is therefore also a call for a living wage. With “wage parity,” we refer to the uneven economic geography in which the University of California employs its graduate student workers. While we are nominally paid the same wage as UC Riverside graduate students (presently $2434 a month before taxes on a 9 month basis), the real purchasing power of this wage in Santa Cruz, as expressed in the cost of rent, falls far below its purchasing power in Riverside. It is in this sense that our demand for a Cost of Living Adjustment is also a call for the University of California to give equal pay for equal work.
With “current rates,” we refer to the differential housing costs between Santa Cruz County and Riverside County, based on the median rental figures for sharing a two- or three- bedroom apartment from April 2018 to August 2019, as reflected in the Zillow Rental Index.
By “ongoing payment,” we mean a monthly payment of $1412 over and above our present wages: a Cost of Living Adjustment. This Cost of Living Adjustment must itself be adjusted annually to keep up with changes in rent costs in the Santa Cruz housing market.
UC Santa Cruz cannot fulfill its mission to produce outstanding research and to provide outstanding public education if its graduate students remain underpaid, rent-burdened, and economically precarious.
Actions, as the banners adorning our campus would have it, speak louder than words. We demand a Cost of Living Adjustment now, and we demand it from you. This cannot wait, and we will not wait.
Signed,
UC Santa Cruz Graduate Student Association Executive Board,
UAW Local 2865 Santa Cruz,
And other UC Santa Cruz graduate students and allies
7 November 2019