Press 2019-20

COLA has been covered in many outlets including the New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, MTV, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Salon, Vice, local NBC, CBS, and ABC stations, and leftist media such as the World Socialist Website and Protean Magazine.

Coverage is listed roughly in reverse chronological order, newest at the top.

Truthout – Colleges Pander to Trump in Effort to Stifle Campus Organizing

October 11th, 2020

But as frustrating as it is to be ignored, getting in the crosshairs of a college administration can be equally unsettling.

Yulia Gilichinskaya is a Ph.D. student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Last fall, she and other graduate teaching assistants withheld grades as part of a job action to demand an increase in their monthly stipend. “We received student conduct summonses for violating the Student Code of Conduct,” Gilichinskaya told Truthout. “Our position was that they could not use the Student Code of Conduct to punish workers. The administration treated us as if we were only students even though we were also workers. This retaliatory response motivated us to escalate our tactics and we were all fired. The sanctions came in waves; the first wave was in February and the last in May.”

City On A Hill Press (UCSC) – Direct Action Across the UCs Calls for Police Abolition

October 8th, 2020

All nine UC campuses engaged in direct action on Oct. 1 in support of abolishing the UC Police Department: a banner drop from a parking garage in Davis, a march in Santa Barbara, a virtual protest for San Diego, a teach-in with abolitionist organization Critical Resistance in Riverside, just to name a few. At UCSC, a caravan parked in front of Chancellor Larive’s gate to make their demands. 

The direct action campaign was organized by the coalition to abolish the University of California Police Department (UCPD), which went public on social media on Sept. 1, 2020. The group coalesces behind several names, including the “UC Abolition Coalition” and “Abolish UCPD.” Actions were supported by many current and former faculty members, including UCSC distinguished professor emerita Angela Davis.

Aca-Media – Ep. 55: Out of the Ashes and Into Academia

August 26th, 2020

As we head into this weird and dangerous fall, we bring you one of the most important episodes of Aca-Media ever: a panel on organizing the academic workplace. How do we collectively organize within and outside of unions for improvements in labor conditions, compensation, and faculty governance? What tactics should we be pursuing, and what difficulties should we expect? With Yulia Gilich, Rebecca Gordon, Chris Robé, Jamie Ann Rogers, and Ben Stork.

Jadaliyya – Time to Strike: Academic Workers and the Tactic of Withholding Grades

August 20, 2020 • By UCSC Wildcats

Our experience shows that the grading strike is a powerful weapon available to graduate and adjunct workers, whether as a wildcat action or in the context of a union-led strike. In these crisis times of higher education, with so much to gain and lose (and, we must note, with distinct obstacles to physical forms of protest, obstruction, and picketing), the tactic of grade withholding should loom large in strategic discussions and planning. Under the right conditions, this may be the most efficient way to exploit the chokepoint that casual and underpaid academic labor represents in many university business models.

90.3 KAZU – Fired UCSC Grad Students Can Get Their Jobs Back

August 13, 2020

“The firing was meant to communicate to people across the state, that if you do this, if you get too rowdy, if you don’t follow the rules for how to fight back there will be severe consequences, your life will be ruined for it,” Hamilton said, “But what we showed through this victory is actually they won’t do that to you.”

Santa Cruz Sentinel – UCSC agrees to reinstate 41 grad students fired during wildcat strike

August 13, 2020

Under the agreement, 41 teaching assistants fired in February for allegedly withholding grades became eligible to be rehired by their departments, had disciplinary records sealed and had their funding guarantees reinstated. In exchange, the union agreed to drop grievances filed on behalf of the students.

Indybay – Fired UCSC Grad Students Win Their Jobs Back

August 12, 2020

The COLA movement shows that when we fight we win! Our wildcat strike has made concrete gains for grad student-workers, including a $2,500 annual housing stipend and 5 years of guaranteed TAships or other funding.

Chronicle of Higher Education – Santa Cruz Grad-Student Strikers Didn’t Win a Pay Raise, but They Got Their Jobs Back

August 11, 2020

The union representing the university’s graduate students announced on Tuesday that 41 students who had been fired will be reinstated, following roughly the same number getting their jobs back after another agreement last month.
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“Although this is a victory for workers, our struggle isn’t over,” said Veronica Hamilton, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in social psychology and a union representative, in a statement on Tuesday, “The conditions which necessitated COLA remain.”

Vice – UC Santa Cruz Reinstates 41 Graduate Students After Months-Long Strike

August 11, 2020

“This is a testament to the power of collective action. We were on the picket line for five weeks. We withheld grades for five months. We had a national boycott going, email campaigns, and received letters from around the world, and now we have our jobs back,” Veronica Hamilton, a PhD student in psychology at UC Santa Cruz, who was fired from her teaching position, told Motherboard.

Art & Education – New Movements: Wandering Seminar, Campus Protest, and the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at UCSC

July 2020

UC grad students’ organizing around the university administration’s failure to respond to cost of living issues and provide adequate pay has continued online since, and their concerns have gained urgency due to the university’s costly police contracts and nationwide protests against police brutality.

Jacobin – Government Surveillance of Activists and Labor Organizers Is Alive and Well

June, 2020

The litany of intelligence-sharing bodies designed to link local law enforcement with federal intelligence is justified by government agencies as a response to the threat of terrorism and other serious crime. Yet a college seeking to silence its workers’ demands was able to freely tap into them.

Truthout – Why Is the University of California Punishing Students During a Pandemic?

June 7, 2020

The alienation that we have experienced from teaching remotely, and the exhaustion of transforming our classes into an online format, both pale in comparison to the bizarre spectacle we were about to witness. One after another, we asked UCSC’s administration the same question: Why is the university continuing to punish students during a global pandemic? The chancellor and executive vice chancellor did not provide an answer. Instead, they confirmed that the university would continue punitive measures against students due to their peaceful involvement in the wildcat strike this past winter.

Juliana Friend – Pedagogy at the Picket Line: Vulnerability and the Expanding Collective (Society for Cultural Anthropology)

June 4, 2020

Perhaps we could place “protest” alongside the other domains of transformative vulnerability: ethnography, writing, reading, and teaching. The wildcat protests do not just advocate for more material support for anthropologists and other scholars. They suggest a way in which the anthropological disposition of embodied vulnerability might be sustained in conditions of unequally distributed precarity. Wildcat protesters broadcast their vulnerability to expand a minority collective, and they build a collective coalition to make vulnerability survivable. In doing so, they find in the present the potential for a university yet to come.

Viewpoint Magazine – Recording the Complexity of Struggle: An Interview with the COLA Agitation Committee

May 27, 2020

Given the specifically multinational character of academic labor in the US, as well as the context of a pandemic whose unequal effects are distributed internationally, this moment could serve as a sort of conveyor belt toward a renewed internationalist politics. When universities like Columbia, CUNY, NYU, MIT, University of Chicago, or Northwestern (to name but a few that have also seen waves of recent graduate student worker unrest, and even cross-strata militancy with adjuncts and tenure track factory) roundly lay off or dismiss service workers and campus staff at the same time as they present international students with eviction notices, the groundwork is laid for a major struggle. If graduate student workers (many of whom are immigrants themselves) can intervene at all in these developments, it is certainly through contesting the imposition of work, whether arbitrary or long-prepared, by university administrations everywhere. In the midst of what will likely be a prolonged crisis, it’s certainly possible to form intercampus groups that can agitate through collective analysis and propaganda, broadcast a more general critique of the university, and militate by sharing political experiences, contacts, and tactics. In countering the forces that seek to reintensify the exploitation of labor in the academy, the movement of graduate student workers can continue to connect to an entire sequence of labor unrest today, one that repudiates the immense viral hecatomb being inflicted by the ruling class. 

Salon – Emails show UC Santa Cruz police used military surveillance to suppress grad student strike

May 18, 2020

“The loss of reputation and academic stability will likely have repercussions for many years,” Hinkley said. “It’s unfortunate that they chose to treat their own students and employees as an enemy meriting military surveillance.”

Hinkley added: “I think it’s likely that decision will end up costing them much more than if they had recognized the students’ demands and fairly bargained a solution to the real financial stress that graduate students are experiencing.”

Vice – California Police Used Military Surveillance Tech at Grad Student Strike

May 15, 2020

The California National Guard provided military surveillance equipment to the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Police Department in order to surveil and police the UC Santa Cruz graduate student wildcat strike earlier this year, documents acquired through the California Public Records Act show.

California National Guard, the state’s federally funded military force, provided so-called “friendly force trackers,” a military surveillance technology used to track U.S. troops in military combat, to monitor pickets, according to emails dated February 11 and 13. Police responding to the strike also had access to LEEP, a federal surveillance portal operated by the FBI. The emails show that law enforcement was monitoring student protest groups and social media to plan its response.

The Daily Bruin (UCLA) – UC workers continue COLA movement virtually on International Workers’ Day

May 4, 2020

Claudia Preparata is the research director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents service and patient care technical workers and is the UC’s largest employee union. She said at the panel that it is important to think of the UC system as both an educator and as a billion dollar enterprise.

As the third-largest employer in California, she said, the UC is in a position to influence the outcome of the economic recession.

“So, first and foremost, the University needs to maintain full employment, as well as ensure that the education is both quality education, as well as affordable,” Preparata said. “Whatever decisions they make today will have a long-lasting impact.”

Solidarity – UC Graduate Student Workers Wildcat Strike

May-June 2020 Issue

The rapid growth of the strike underscores the dire material conditions that face grad workers at Santa Cruz, which has seen skyrocketing rent in recent years caused by nearby Silicon Valley. It has become one of the most unaffordable places to live in the country. Real wages have not increased to reflect the housing crisis at all. The struggle for affordable housing was dealt a further blow when the Measure M, the local rent-control initiative in November 2018, was defeated by landlord forces.

The vast majority of grad workers spend more than half of their income on rent, as we are reminded in the “Rent Burden” line on the strikers’ email signatures. The amount of COLA demand would bring down rent to 30% of income, defined as affordable housing in the federal guideline.

As many workers have expressed, the lack of a COLA has exposed them to substandard and unsanitary housing conditions, hunger, and overwork. But dire conditions are not sufficient on their own to spark a mass uprising. The exponential growth of the COLA movement also owes a lot to the political savvy of the militants organizing the months-long strike, who, with a combination of utmost seriousness and irrepressible optimism, have always sought to cultivate rather than stifle militancy.

Astrobites – Grad Student Unions: Part 1 – History and the UC Santa Cruz Strike

May 1, 2020

UCSC constitutes just one example of the impact of unions on graduate student life, highlighting that department, divisional and university-wide committees are not the only avenues for policy change. Over the course of the past few decades, unions have grown to be powerful vehicles for graduate students. Given that the concerns of graduate students are not monolithic, unionization facilitates dialogue and discussion. This, in turn, enables unions to condense the needs of a large, crucial population of the university into explicit demands, which can be presented to university administrations in an effective and immediate way. It is worth noting these demands are often not just about resolving issues in the short term, but to tackle the structural barriers to prevent such disputes from occuring in the future. As one grad student at UCSC puts it, “The purpose of this strike is to get graduate students enough money to be able to afford basic living expenses. However, the implications of our movement and its success or failure are much broader.”

Santa Cruz Sentinel – Caravan of cars, bicycles on the streets of Santa Cruz protest UC’s treatment of employees

May 1, 2020

In Santa Cruz, a group gathered at noon on the UCSC campus to start the car and bike caravan to five different stops, which included the Santa Cruz County Jail and the corner of Front and Laurel streets where Food Not Bombs has been feeding homeless people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Student workers at UC campuses across the state have formed multiple demands related to the harmful learning environment and unsafe working conditions the University of California has imposed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. One demand is for a cost of living adjustment, for which UC student workers have been fighting throughout the academic year.

Chronicle of Higher Education – Covid-19 Changes the Calculus of Grad-Student Activism

April 30, 2020

But the activism, organizers say, isn’t over; it’s just taking a different form. Activists across the UC system started Strike University, a collection of online classes and teach-ins with titles like “Organize Your Department” and “The Precariat and Popular Power.”

A similar effort is underway at Columbia University, where a group of graduate students began a labor and rent strike on April 17. Among their demands are that the university increase their summer stipends to $6,000, extend funding and employment eligibility and time-to-degree requirements for one year, and cancel rent for university housing.

City on a Hill Press (UCSC) – The People’s University

April 24, 2020

“A lot of us came to grad school with this utopian fantasy that higher education is this place to have really profound, deep learning and exchange,” Brazzell said. “It’s really not. It’s a place that’s about professionalizing.” 

“Once we began engaging in the strike action, it became very clear that it’s not just about a COLA,” said UC Santa Cruz graduate student Yulia Gilichinskaya, who is helping build the digital hub. “It’s about our vision for what a public university is, and what kind of education we’ll want to be a part of. We decided that we can enact our vision of a truly public, free, accessible university online.”

The File – None of Us Are Getting Jobs: Notes on Organizing in the COVID University

April 16, 2020

Today, as our campaign escalates at Northwestern, this hope appears less and less remote. Across the nation, grad organizing is gaining momentum, with discussions of strikes shifting from occasional and furtive to frequent and public. From the current conjuncture, Santa Cruz looks less like a fluke, and more like the first in a new cycle of struggles that could spread across the country, to private and public schools alike.

CalMatters – How do you hold a strike online? UC teaching assistants are finding out

April 15, 2020

Now, with the coronavirus emptying campuses and rallies impractical due to social distancing, graduate students are figuring out how to take their movement online. 

At the end of March, strikers launched Strike University, a series of online classes for activists covering subjects like “Graphic Design for Social Justice” and “Rethinking the Benevolent University.”  The teach-ins aim to promote “free and accessible” public education, along with “critical thinking and skills not bound to the imperatives of the market,” the Strike University website reads.

Spectre Journal – How to Have a Boycott in a Pandemic

April 12, 2020

What becomes of our leverage now, when public space has literally turned toxic, and the institutions we aim to shut down have shut themselves up? That’s one major question faced by strikers, by boycotters, and by anti-capitalist movements everywhere right now.

For those of us currently sheltering in place, PAUSEd, or otherwise quarantined, this is a crucial time to be finding ways to work out new strategies. The UC wildcats, in carrying their struggle forward, provide us with both inspiration and with possible models for what might come next.

Salon – How the University of California is using the pandemic to exploit workers and lecturers

April 8, 2020

The COVID-19 epidemic has further accentuated these existing vulnerabilities and inequities. Administrators swiftly moved all education online without consulting either students or faculty. Until now, most prestigious universities have not been able to sell online education to faculty or the public, given numerous studies indicating its inefficacy compared to in-person classroom teaching. Yet, periods of large-scale shock can be used to enact highly deleterious ideas and transform them into common practice. The COVID-19 crisis allows policy-makers and administrators to experiment with what they see as the future of higher education: online education taught by underpaid (but talented) lecturers instead of tenured faculty and developing course content in marketable and modular microcertifications owned by the university that can be recycled, reused, and adopted.

The Nation – The University of California Strike Enters Its 4th Month

April 6, 2020 • By UCSC Wildcats

As the strike enters a fourth month, the administration’s response has shifted in ways that demand closer scrutiny. They range from systemic and targeted harassment to repression of political and labor dissent through the Student Conduct process, to misinformation campaigns, to the implementation of many levels of campus surveillance, to undermining principles of academic integrity.

Jewish Currents – Lessons From Strike University

April 2, 2020

The onset of the pandemic has opened up new complications and possibilities within the existing crisis. In the last few weeks, higher education has faced a massive upheaval, with undergraduate students sent home and learning shifted online to avoid spreading Covid-19 on campus. For students like those at UCSC already struggling to afford housing and other living expenses, the pandemic has made the instability of their financial situations clear, especially since, due to shelter-in-place requirements, many have lost side jobs that supplemented their teaching stipends.

The Aggie (UCD) – COLA movement even more relevant in amid spread of COVID-19, organizers say

April 1, 2020 • News Article

Negotiations between United Auto Workers (UAW) 2865 and the UC that took place during the month of March have resulted in concessions for the 82 UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers fired on Feb. 28. Yesterday, UAW 2865 announced in a press release that UCSC would allow fired workers to get a Spring Quarter appointment if they turned in their Winter Quarter grades.
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UCSC Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) organizers responded today with a counter-offer, saying they were unable to respond to the offer without clarification regarding compensation for graduate students who could not find appointments or had classes removed.

Alexa N. and Yueran Z. – To Win a UC for All, We Need to Build Up a Powerful and Militant Union

April 1, 2020 • Blog/Medium Post

It’s exactly these disengaged and fearful co-workers that we need to move towards strike-readiness if we want to pull off a powerful, massive strike capable of forcing the concessions necessary to lift us out of rent burden. In our experience on the shop floor — in labs, offices, and classrooms — these workers need to be gradually moved towards strike-readiness through consistent, targeted organizing. We must bring these co-workers in through one-on-one outreach and in-person conversations — which will require creativity in the face of this global pandemic — and concretely show the power of workers coming together by addressing specific issues in their workplaces. We must build a team of rank-and-file organizers in every department capable of winning their co-workers’ trust. This takes a tremendous amount of work. 

MTV – These UC Santa Cruz Graduate Students Are Striking For Better Working Conditions

March 30, 2020

“This university is supposed to care about access to education for all,” Banerjea, who like Gilich uses an F1 visa to attend UCSC, told MTV News. “It’s supposed to be able to provide an environment in which anyone can come and contribute their ideas, and their thoughts, and their skills to welcoming research, education and learning community,” he added. “It’s made it clear that it’s not that. It’s made it clear that as far as the university’s concerned, the only thing that they’re willing to care about is their bottom line.”

The students’ movement called the threat of termination of employment “de facto deportation” for international students on strike. But it’s not the only threat they’re facing: The striking students’ health care was also jeopardized after they received their notices of dismissal. The precarious positions they now face have only been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — and undocumented students, immunocompromised students, and students with chronic illnesses are at a special risk of receiving inadequate care should they contract COVID-19.

Activist History – Wildcats against “Instructional Continuity”

March 30, 2020

At UCSC, the idea of “instructional continuity” allows the university to conveniently sidestep a disruption of its own making: the firing of a huge chunk of its workforce, weeks before they are set to start teaching in Spring quarter. Classes that previously had Teaching Assistants (TAs) will continue without TAs, meaning that enrollment numbers are now being capped across a number of departments. As a result, many undergraduates are unable to take classes that they wanted to take, or are required for as prerequisites, or are required to graduate. Faculty have the double burden of moving their courses online and carrying these courses out without the workers they specifically appointed to do the labor of grading, teaching sections, meeting students at office hours, etc. “Instructional continuity,” for UCSC’s administration, is designed to jump over two crises at once: one unfortunate and unforeseen; the other, foreseeable and totally avoidable.

Activist History – How to Be a Wildcat

March 26, 2020

The fight for COLA is not just about our survival but about who has access to the academy. With this wildcat strike now spreading across the state, we are organizing and taking collective action to have greater control over our workplaces and learning environments. We are fighting back against austerity and budget cuts. We are fighting against racist policies that increase funding for police on campuses but don’t reduce the cost of textbooks or tuition. We are fighting for equal access to the vocation of teaching and research. We want to see an academy that is accessible to BBIPOC, trans and queer, undocumented and international, disabled, and poor students. All people deserve the opportunity to teach and learn in the community, not just those whose family can subsidize their graduate education. Until then, we strike!

Unicorn Riot – “Everyone Deserves A Cost-Of-Living Adjustment”: Interview with UCSC Striker Yulia Gilich

March 26, 2020 • Audio Interview

Gilich says they want to see organized struggle for a livable wage spread across the country — “I want to see other graduate student workers and other low-waged workers across the country and across the world come together and build their collective power and demand better.”

Semassa Kpatinvo Boko – What’s a Social Welfare Strike?

March 26, 2020 • Blog/Medium Post

The Social Welfare Strike is both material and symbolic, and meant to be adapted to one’s personal position and working conditions. The idea is to reallocate — all or some parts — of one’s work time and obligations from standard work to social welfare. The first step is to listen to and learn the needs of one’s community, especially as universities have left many gaps in this rushed and patchwork state of affairs. As a grad student worker, this will mean using designated class time to check in on my undergraduates and find out what I and fellow grad students as a collective can do to help. Here in Irvine students have already begun a mutual aid program to deliver food and medical supplies, ease the isolation of social distancing, and address other community needs. 

Al Jazeera – UCSC teaching assistant strike: Revolt of the academic subalterns

March 25, 2020 • Opinion

In the US, the functioning of the academic market is dependent on the exploitation of PhD candidates. It is a vicious cycle. Universities accept a high number of undergraduates to generate higher revenue from tuition fees, then employ a high number of PhD candidates, who they pay next to nothing, to teach these undergraduates. This allows them to increase their teaching productivity, research output and rankings without much effort and investment, and in turn, receive more undergraduate applications.

While the exploitation of PhD candidates continues at pace across the United States, this massive but unrecognised labour force is now fighting back.

The Outline – Tenured faculty should be showing up for striking grad students

March 25, 2020

Of course, the real problems are with university administrations, how outrageously expensive education has gotten, and an academic job market that no longer guarantees job security to Ph.Ds. Still, it is especially galling when self-styled radical professors train their students to engage in critiques of oppressive structures while failing to see, or care, what is happening all around them.

Labor Notes – Graduate Student Workers: UC Must Pay!

March 25, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the University of California moving Winter final exams and Spring classes online—instructors are advised to use the digital platform Zoom. The strike also moved online: the digital picket line means that strikers will be withholding students’ Winter grades and won’t teach over Zoom.

UAW 2865 is responding to this rapidly changing situation. The union demanded that UC bargain over our changing labor conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The union won the remission of health care premiums for all student workers who were terminated and will continue bargaining to win a COLA.

Until then, we strike.

Hyperallergic – 82 Grad Teaching Assistants Fired During University of California Strikes

March 24, 2020 • News Article

“We continue to be underfunded due to the coronavirus,” said Alexandra Macheski, a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz. “Some classes can’t be translated online. Everything you need a tangible skill for has been cut. It’s made the precariousness of the arts visible.”

Despite the challenges that COVID-19 and a shuttered campus have brought, strikers are hopeful that they will prevail as their movement grows. “There’s no campus to shut down, but we’re not silenced,” Macheski said. “Over 80 of my friends and comrades have been fired and more will be fired. We’re angry and we’re gonna win this.”

Ellen David Freidman – The Balance of Power has Already Changed; Response to Curtis Rumrill

March 14, 2020 • Blog/Medium Post

To argue there is only one way to organize misreads the history of our labor movement. Yes, our movement encompasses such “ideal type” examples as the multi-year build-out of school-based capacity that took the leadership of United Teachers of Los Angeles huge resources to construct before they launched their powerful anti-charter strike in 2019. But it also includes the thrilling, incomprehensibly successful 2018 wildcat teacher strike in West Virginia that began when a handful of “the willing” risked everything in Mingo County, lit a spark of indignation that spread to all fifty-five WV counties, then leapt to the dry tinder of hard-pressed teachers in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, and beyond, forcing hundreds of millions of dollars from reactionary state legislatures. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, none of these red state strikes were planned or executed by a central body. In fact, they were actively opposed by the teacher union leadership in those states.

Dissent – Belabored Podcast #193: Work in the Time of Coronavirus

March 14, 2020 • Podcast Episode

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the world and across the United States, as we are all told to practice “social distancing,” we are reminded that the way we work has everything to do with how we interact as humans and how infections spread through society… And since labor hasn’t stopped since the outbreak began, we also check in on the Saint Paul Federation of Educators strike and the ongoing graduate employees’ cost-of-living battle that began at the University of California at Santa Cruz and has spread across the UC system. 

The Aggie (UCD) – UC Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) movements adjusting to COVID-19 concerns

March 14, 2020 • News Article

“The digital picket means: don’t submit, keep grades off Canvas, don’t hold classes online and undergraduates should submit their assignments directly to their TAs,” the email said. 

The email called the move to online education an “alarming precedent for how the university could function without its workers,” citing years of resistance to online education and its likelihood of diminishing quality of instruction.

“COVID-19 is being used by university administration to assume emergency powers that can profoundly impact the way that academic work is done,” the email said.

Commune – From Occupy Everything to COLA for All

March 13, 2020 • Historical and cultural analysis

Instead of insulating students and communities from the predation of the real estate market, universities have joined the game themselves, becoming exemplary rent predators draped in scholarly gowns. This is why the COLA campaign emerged in large part from the strikers’ recognition that “the UC is our landlord.” When the university is literally asking faculty and staff to take students into their homes, as UCSC recently did, there should be little question as to why Jordan Peele chose Santa Cruz as the setting for his inequality horror film Us.

LA Progressive – UC Fires Grad Students Unable to Afford Rent

March 12, 2020 • Opinion

But we owe those fired to demand our governor and legislators intervene. UC can readily afford COLA’s for UCSC grad students, who will still remain a great bargain for the university.

Graduate students across the University of California are joining the fight. They are demanding a cost of living adjustment (COLA), the rehire of 85 fired graduate students at UCSC, and for the UC to sit down at the negotiating table with their union, UAW 2865. A statewide graduate students strike is spreading from UC Santa Cruz to UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and is currently undergoing expansion through organizing at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and the other campuses.

The Antifada – Ep 87 – If UC Pay Me w/ 3 FIRED UCSC strikers

March 11, 2020

A wave of wildcat strikes, blockades, and general militant organizing is spreading the University of California system based on the demand that academic workers be paid a living wage. We’re joined by three union members of UC Santa Cruz who were fired for refusing to turn in grades until their demands are met. We discuss the history of UC strikes starting with the 2009 occupations that were a precursor to Occupy Wall Street, how this struggle began, the meaning of Bernie’s support, its broader political vision, and what lessons the broader working class can draw.

CBS News – “I don’t want a lavish life, I just want to be able to pay the basic needs”: Parents, international students struggle after UC Santa Cruz firing

March 11, 2020

Arjona said that if she is rehired, getting a cost of living adjustment would mean being able to provide the basic needs for her and her son while she works toward a career that will be beneficial for both of them in the long-term.

“I don’t want a lavish life, I just want to be able to pay the basic needs. I want to be able to buy toilet paper,” she said. “We’re just trying to be in a position where we can pay for those things that are absolutely necessary, and study.”

For now, Arjona, Davies, and dozens of other UC Santa Cruz students are planning to continue striking.

WFHB – Interchange – Stacked Crooked: Renting Rooms In the Humanities Ghetto

March 10, 2020

Over the past decade, academic labor has become increasingly precarious, with tenure track positions diminishing rapidly and the pool of adjunct lecturers growing intensely. Compensation for graduate students who double as Teaching Assistants (or TAs) has dropped significantly or stagnated while tuition and additional fees, as well as general class sizes and teaching responsibilities, have climbed steadily.

The graduate students at the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California are keenly aware of this predicament: A crisis in housing has driven them into an extreme rent burden, demanding upwards of 70% of their already meager paychecks to cover monthly rent. With Santa Cruz being one of the most expensive cities in the United States to live in and with wages for graduate workers at the university falling well below the average cost of living in the city, UCSC students are often foregoing basic necessities just to get by. To remedy this and to fight for a life of fairness and basic dignity, UCSC graduate students went on strike, demanding a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for all students at the university.

KFHB – Stacked Crooked: Renting Rooms In the Humanities Ghetto

March 10, 2020 • Podcast Episode

But look closer…which graduate students are struggling the most? It’s not those who study war, or chemistry, or politics, or business, or biology…rather it’s the students who investigate and critique those other methods of structuring our society.

LA Times – UC graduate students threaten more strikes as movement grows

March 7, 2020

During widespread UC campus demonstrations, students filled the Janss Steps at UCLA, Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley and Cheadle Hall at UC Santa Barbara on Thursday and other pickets unfolded on Friday. At Santa Cruz — where the protests began three months ago with a wildcat grading strike that ended in the dismissal of some student workers — students blocked entrances to campus. At UC Riverside and UC Irvine crowds marched.

LA Times – Column: UC’s harsh response to a student strike shows it’s a business more than a university

March 6, 2020

Like many other public universities that have been systematically bled of financial support by their states, the University of California has been behaving less and less like an educational institution and more like a business.

Inside Higher Education – #COLA4ALL Shuts Down UC Santa Cruz

March 6, 2020

Graduate assistants blocked all entrances to the Santa Cruz campus before dawn, forcing the university to cancel classes, except those offered online. Many faculty and undergraduate supporters joined the picket lines on that campus and across the UC system starting midmorning. As of last week, graduate assistants at the Santa Barbara campus are also on a labor strike for a COLA, and assistants at the Davis campus are on a grade strike.

Minion Death Cult – Interview with striking UC students

March 6, 2020

“When this was called, it was on an email thread, called by rank-and-file members who were really just desperately frustrated about the lack of any sort of response from the administration. The lack of awareness about our situation, the fact that there had been years and years of trying to push cost-of-living at Santa Cruz, regularly rated as one of the least affordable places to live in the country because wages are so low and rent is so high.”

CounterPunch – Apprentices to Nowhere: From Impoverished Graduate Students to Impoverished College Professors

March 6, 2020

The UC Santa Cruz student strike is one part of the many negative changes that have affected our nation’s colleges and universities over the past fifty years. Often run by presidents with business and government backgrounds and a bottom-line mentality, colleges long ago ceased to resemble the myth of sacred “ivory towers” protected from the profane world of work. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that more than sixty college presidents earn over one millions dollars a year in compensation. Our nation’s higher education system controls both the supply and demand for academic labor…

NPR – UC Santa Cruz Fires Over 70 Striking Graduate Teaching Assistants

March 5, 2020 • Audio News Segment

The University of California, Santa Cruz has fired 74 graduate teaching assistants for their refusal to end a strike. They withheld fall grades in an effort to demand higher wages.

Chronicle of Higher Education – Grad Students and UC-Santa Cruz Chancellor Say Strike Will Have Lasting Impact on Higher Ed. They Disagree on What That Will Be.

March 5, 2020

For the graduate students, it’s an all-or-nothing bet, a conviction to press forward in spite of the consequences. Desperation-fueled courage, perhaps. None of the four students The Chronicle spoke with indicated being deterred by the firings. A spokesman said he wasn’t sure if any of the strikers had turned in grades and stopped striking since the university sent the dismissal notices.

KQED – UC Berkeley Graduate Students Stage Walkout, Push for Strike Authorization

March 5, 2020

Will Parrish, a Ph.D. student in history of consciousness at UC Santa Cruz and organizer with Pay Us More UCSC said 600 people attended the rally at UCLA, while the crowd was 1000 strong at UC Berkeley, and 2000 at UC Santa Barbara. According to Parrish, about 500 people participated in Thursday’s campus shutdown at UC Santa Cruz.

The Daily Tar Heel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) – Editorial: Support UCSC graduate workers

March 5, 2020

A large portion of UNC graduate students live off of the minimum stipend of $15,700, which, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology living wage calculator, is more than $10,000 below the Orange County living wage for a single person with no children. 

The strike at University of California, Santa Cruz for a cost of living adjustment — and the university’s retaliatory firing of strikers — is directly relevant to living and working conditions for graduate workers in Chapel Hill.

Mel Magazine – The New School of Labor Rights

March 4, 2020

The issue of housing and wages has sparked the biggest “wildcat” strike in America today, meaning unionized workers are protesting without official backing from the state-wide union that represents graduate teaching assistants, United Auto Workers Local 2865. It’s a complicated position for students to be in, and for months, the union and the UC have pointed fingers at each other over the strike and organizers’ attempts to negotiate with the university directly — both of which constitute a breach of the contract that the UC and UAW have through 2022. On the asphalt in front of the campus, however, the picket line is holding firm. “Since we first went on strike, we agreed that the strike will only end when the strikers decide it’s finished,” Gilich tells me. “We said that whatever offer the administration gives us will be put for a general assembly vote. No offer has been made to us. So, we strike.” 

It’s Going Down – This Is America #108: “A New Age Of Antagonism”

March 3, 2020 • Podcast Episode

On Monday on University of California campuses, thousands of staff, faculty, and student workers took part in continued wildcat strike activity. So far, both UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis have joined the strike, with student workers at UC Davis agreeing to not turn in grades and UCSB student workers pushing for a full on work stoppage. Other campuses rallied in support of those at UC Santa Cruz, who are now in their third week of the strike and have recently watched over 80 grad students have been fired from their teaching positions for refusing to turn in grades, as part of an ongoing push to win a cost of living wage increase.

The Chronicle of Higher Education – After Announcing Firing of Grad Assistants, UC-Santa Cruz Is in Turmoil

March 2, 2020 • PDF

In the wake of the mass firing, it was unclear who would handle the undergraduate courses that would have been taught by the teaching assistants. More than 500 other graduate students have pledged not to fill the spots vacated by the dismissed teaching assistants.

Rather than quelling the uprising, the dismissal added fuel to the fire. On Monday, the first business day since dismissal letters were sent to the students, an energized crowd of a couple of hundred graduate students and their allies gathered on a picket line at the campus’s main entrance.

90.3 KAZU – Number Of Fired UC Santa Cruz Graduate Students Now At 70 Plus

March 2, 2020

Natalie Ng, a 3rd year PhD student in Anthropology, is one of the fired teaching assistants. 

“We are sick. We are tired. And now we’re fired. But we won’t give up,” Ng said to the crowd.

She used a megaphone to address the group, which was a mix of fired grad students who are still protesting plus other academic employees who have their jobs, at least for now. 

“We won’t stop striking until we get a COLA. And until we get reinstated,” Ng said.

D Report (UC Riverside) – UC Santa Cruz Strike: Fighting for our Dreams and the Future of Higher Education

February 29, 2020

“The housing market in California has gotten to a breaking point. This is something that’s so much bigger than graduate school, than higher education. But, we’re seeing that this is related to issues related to higher education, like student debt. One thing that you touched on is that people think of [TAing] as such a great deal, wow, you get tuition remission. But what people forget is that tuition is unnecessarily high, and, for example, at the University of California Santa Cruz, at its inception, was tuition free!”

The Guardian – UC Santa Cruz fires 54 graduate students participating in months-long strike

February 28, 2020

“The first person who was sent a letter is a single mother who spends almost all her income on rent on subsidized family student housing,” Hamilton said. “I think people were ready to be fired, but still surprised,” said Jane Komori, a third-year graduate student studying the history of consciousness. “It’s such a destructive action for the administration to take … Hundreds and hundreds of undergraduates won’t be able to take certain classes.

“It’s a serious issue for the quality of undergraduate education and the number of undergraduates that can be enrolled,” she added.

Nearly 500 graduate students have said they won’t teach next quarter because of the firings, Hamilton said. Now with the strike spreading to other UC campuses, they are more ready than ever to keep on the picket line.

“I’ve heard from graduate students across the country,” Hamilton said. “Everybody is sick of the situation that we’re in. Graduate students of today are weighed down by the student debt crisis. Graduate students of today are more likely to be parents, more likely to come from working class backgrounds, from backgrounds of racialized capitalism. This is just the beginning.”

The Washington Post – UC Santa Cruz Fires 54 Graduate Assistants for Withholding Grades in Ongoing Labor Dispute

February 28, 2020

“The financial implication is totally devastating,” said Melissa Cronin, an organizer and doctoral candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “For a lot of those people, this is their only source of income. The combination of loss of income and staggering tuition is disastrous.”

Cronin estimates that one-fifth of the teaching assistants who received notices are international students who could lose their visas. She said people were willing to risk their education because of how dire living conditions have become as graduate students are priced out of the housing market.

“People are living in their cars. They don’t make enough money to buy food,” Cronin said. “For so many people, this was the culmination of months or years of continuing to slide into poverty. And something just broke.”

LA Times – UC Santa Cruz fires 54 graduate student workers striking for higher pay

February 28, 2020 • Note: about 80 people were fired, not 54

Hamilton said the $2,500 supplement offered by the university after negotiations this year provides students with only an extra $200 a month, which does not do much to fix the problem. She said students shouldn’t have to relinquish their only leverage for the university to come to the table.

Commune – Become Unreasonable

February 28, 2020

In so many ways, the demand for a cost-of-living adjustment seemed entirely reasonable. We weren’t asking for anything more than an income enabling us to pay for both rent and food. It seemed far more unreasonable that so many of us were spending 50, 60, even 70 percent of our wages on housing alone. Once we calculated the pay increase required to ease this rent burden and began to reach out to other graduate students and faculty at the university, we were told again and again that we were being unreasonable — that our demand was impossible to reach.

We kept talking anyway.

The Aggie (UCD) – 54 COLA strikers at UCSC served Notices of Intent to Dismiss for continuing to withhold fall quarter grades

February 28, 2020

In response, the UC Davis graduate students behind the COLA movement published a statement on Twitter that said they would strike until their demands were met.

“Their [the administration’s] letter today merely another confirmation: the university does not care about us,” the statement said. “Instead of hindering undergraduates, this grade strike reminds us that this is our university.”

The Daily Nexus (UCSB) – Breaking: UCSC Dismisses 54 Graduate Students on COLA Strike for Failure to Turn In Fall Quarter 2019 Grades

February 28, 2020

Hundreds of UC Santa Barbara graduate students teaching assistants began their own indefinite wildcat strike yesterday morning, meaning they will not grade, hold sections or do any work not related to their own degrees until the university meets their demands for a COLA of $1,807.51 per month. 

The UC Office of the President did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CBS News – University of California Santa Cruz fires grad students who are striking for higher wages, union says

February 28, 2020

All 19,000 UC student employees who are part of UAW 2865, according to the union, are considered rent–burdened by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) guidelines. That means they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. These students typically spend up to 60% of their pre-tax income on housing costs, the union said.

The Daily Bruin (UCLA) – UC files charges against UAW Local 2865 following wildcat strikes at UCSC

February 27, 2020

“Instead, to avoid talking with the union and weaken (student workers’ voices), but still feign like they are respecting graduate student employees, they are opting to talk with the graduate student government and not bargain with the union,” Uebersohn wrote.

Voices of Monterey Bay – International students take charge at UC Santa Cruz

February 27, 2020

“This is a fight for future international students … (and about) who gets to have access to higher education and how the conditions we live in and labor under right now precludes people who are not independently wealthy from pursuing a career in academia … For international students, undocumented students, and students of color, we understand the risks and yet it’s worth trying to change our situation than just continuing to live in it.”

Jacobin – The UCSC Strike Is Working

February 26, 2020

If graduate student workers had any second thoughts about standing firm in the face of threatened termination, their decision was vindicated by an email from administration early Monday morning, which pleaded with them for the withheld grades while also setting another “hard” deadline for strikers. But strikers didn’t ask for an extension — they asked for a COLA. And they are feeling the growing power they have to get it. With graduate students at UC Santa Barbara joining the strike this Thursday, and others poised to follow, they just might.

The Stanford Daily – GSC votes to stand in solidarity with striking UC Santa Cruz students

February 26, 2020

“They’ve been met with oppressive resistance from the administration including threats of expulsion and employment termination,” Neusner said. “Their requests are being ignored by the administration, so we would like the GSC to pass a resolution that indicates that they stand in solidarity with these UCSC graduate students.”

Inside Higher Ed – UC Santa Cruz Strikers to Lose TA Jobs

February 25, 2020

The University of California, Santa Cruz’s ongoing graduate student strike over a requested cost-of-living adjustment escalated late Friday, when many teaching assistants did not turn in undergraduates’ fall quarter grades by a deadline set by Janet Napolitano, university system president. A week prior, Napolitano said anyone who withheld marks as part of a December grade strike would be ineligible for a spring teaching appointment. She also told those teaching assistants on a current labor strike to resume their duties.

The Highlander (UCR) – UCivil war: a message to the striking UCSC graduate students and the administration that opposes them

February 25, 2020

The UCSC teaching assistants must take heart, stand strong and know that they are supported. On Wednesday, Feb. 19, UC Los Angeles graduate students followed in the footsteps of their UCSC kin and participated in a sick-out, and they aren’t the only UC school to do so. Graduate students at UC Davis rallied on Feb. 10 in solidarity with the UCSC workers. Of particular note is Democratic frontrunner and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ recent endorsement of the UCSC graduate students over Twitter, during which he urged President Napolitano to cease her threats of termination. If the administration believes that they will be able to fire the striking teaching assistants without backlash, they have quite a storm coming for them. 

Salon – Threats against striking UC Santa Cruz students backfire as Sen. Sanders steps in

February 24, 2020

Rather then engage with the student workers’ sensible demands for having their basic survival needs met, administrators at UCSC opted to send in police in riot gear to greet the nonviolent protesters at the picket line at the base of campus. The police, which consisted of a combination of University of California police along with cops bussed in from other campuses and counties, beat students with batons and paper-arrested at least 17 nonviolent protesters. The university has since issued a statement on the arrests of February 12, calling the strikes “unsanctioned.” 

Daily Nexus (UCSB) – Breaking: UCSB Graduate Students Vote To Begin Full Strike on Thursday for Cost-of-Living Adjustment

February 24, 2020

UC Santa Barbara graduate students voted Monday evening to begin a full strike on Thursday for a cost-of-living adjustment, preparing to join UC Santa Cruz graduate students who have been on strike for the same issue for the past two weeks. 

Vice – Striking UC Santa Cruz Workers Are Spending Almost All Their Money on Rent

February 24, 2020

In recent weeks, STEM students have joined the moment en masse, leading three rallies since February 13, where students protested in lab coats, hard hats, and goggles, waved signs reading “No STEM, No COLA.” Meanwhile, following threats from the UC system’s president to fire all striking graduate students, at least eight science departments, including computer science, biomedical engineering, and chemistry, have written pledges saying they will refuse to fill the teaching roles of anyone in their department if striking workers are fired.

Inside Higher Ed – UC Santa Cruz Strikers to Lose TA Jobs

February 24, 2020

The University of California, Santa Cruz’s ongoing graduate student strike over a requested cost-of-living adjustment escalated late Friday, when many teaching assistants did not turn in undergraduates’ fall quarter grades by a deadline set by Janet Napolitano, university system president. A week prior, Napolitano said anyone who withheld marks as part of a December grade strike would be ineligible for a spring teaching appointment. She also told those teaching assistants on a current labor strike to resume their duties.

Daily Bruin (UCLA) – The Quad: The UCSC strikes and how they’ve prompted graduate student solidarity across UC

February 24, 2020

Following a strike from graduate students at University of California, Santa Cruz, students across the UC are speaking out against a lack of affordable housing options alongside minimal compensation for their work as TAs. Some UCLA students have protested to demonstrate support.

Davis Vanguard – UCD Students March in Solidarity with Over 200 UCSC Graduate Students to Be Terminated from COLA Protest

February 23, 2020

Over 400 UC Davis students marched this Friday in solidarity with over 200 UC Santa Cruz students who will be fired from protesting for the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) by withholding grades. They ended the event with confronting Regents in the Student Community Center.

World Socialist Website – UC Santa Cruz graduate students defy administration ultimatum, vote to continue strike

February 22, 2020

In a report-back from a meeting with the UCSC administration at the general sssembly, a graduate student representative told the attendees that Kletzer and administrator Quentin Williams refused their request for non-retaliation and a substantive meeting in exchange for grades. The administration specifically refused to remove disciplinary letters from student files or rescind student conduct summonses, saying they would negotiate only after students halted the strike. The speaker noted to Kletzer that “I personally was livid that two of my friends in that room were going to be deported.” Kletzer’s one-word response was, “Registered.”

The Guardian – California grad students risk losing their jobs amid months-long strike

February 21, 2020

“It’s incredibly empowering for people who are getting fired on our own campus to know that there will be major disruption throughout the university system and a ton of pressure on the office of the president when those campuses go on strike with us,” Komori said. “I think if all the campuses stand together on this, they won’t have a choice but to address it.”

Mother Jones – In the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike, Class War Meets the California Housing Crisis

February 21, 2020

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Sarah Mason, a graduate student in sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, tells a crowd of several hundred students, wrapping up the fourth day of an unprecedented wildcat strike that has drawn threats of mass dismissal and captured the attention of UC campuses across the state. Using a megaphone, Mason reminds them that LA teachers went on strike for six days last year and Oakland teachers for seven before getting their pay raises. She asks for a show of hands to see how many wanted to continue to picket the following day. Arms shoot up all around her.

It’s Going Down – Wildcat Strike Spreads: UC Santa Cruz Shut Down & UC Dining Halls And Offices Occupied

February 21, 2020

Friday saw thousands of students, staff, and faculty take part in mass rallies, marches, street blockades, dining hall takeovers, and building occupations at almost every campus throughout the UC system. The actions hearken back to the wave of student occupations that broke out in California in 2009 and show no signs of slowing down. 

The Triton (UCSD) – UCSD Graduate Students to Withhold Final Grades If UCSC Strikers Are Terminated

February 21, 2020

Graduate students at UCSD with the COLA campaign announced that, along with hundreds of other graduate students across the UC system, they will withhold final grades for the quarter if the UC system retaliates against UCSC graduate students for going on strike.

The Daily Californian (UCB) – UC Berkeley organizations discuss cost of living adjustment amid UC Santa Cruz strikes

February 21, 2020

Campus students gathered in Dwinelle Hall for an “Undergraduates for COLA at Cal” meeting Feb. 19 to discuss cross-campus solidarity and what a cost of living adjustment, or COLA, would mean for UC Berkeley.

90.3 KAZU – Midnight Deadline Looms For Striking UC Santa Cruz Grad Students

February 21, 2020

“The housing crisis isn’t going to get better anytime soon,” Veronica Hamilton, a PhD student in psychology and one of the strike leaders, said Tuesday. “And so it’s time to take a multi-pronged approach, not just building more housing, but actually addressing the problem as we live with it now. And that means changing our material conditions.”

The Aggie (UCD) – Graduate student workers’ concerns deserve to be heard by UC Santa Cruz administration

February 21, 2020

The Board urges the UCSC administration to meet with protestors and negotiate a fair contract. We encourage the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) to come up with a way to make future labor contracts with the UAW 2865 campus-specific. Graduate students should not have to strike in order to afford housing. The UCSC administration and UCOP must dialogue with graduate student workers and ensure that their concerns are heard rather than arresting and punishing them.  

Daily Bruin (UCLA) – UCLA grad students rally in support of UCSC TAs striking for affordable wages

February 20, 2020

UCLA graduate students rallied Wednesday in solidarity with graduate student strikers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Ucla4Cola organization rallied in the Court of Sciences, with dozens of students and faculty members gathering in solidarity with student strikers at UCSC. Wednesday’s “sick-out” is one of four events Ucla4Cola has planned this week to support the UCSC protests against low wages and a lack of affordable housing.

The Triton (UCSD) – Rally in Support of UC Santa Cruz Strike Temporarily Closes Geisel Library

February 20, 2020

UCSD students and workers coordinating with the UC system-wide COLA movement held a rally today at noon in support of the UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) Wild Cat Strike, leading to a temporary closure of Geisel Library’s doors to the public.

Salon – University of California President Janet Napolitano threatens to fire striking grad students

February 19, 2020

“The graduate student demand for cost of living increases, begun in actions at UC Santa Cruz and now spreading across the system, is an acute response to unsustainable conditions,” the statement said. “A punitive response to these actions, resulting in the dismissal of hundreds of Academic Student Employees, will disrupt the education of thousands of undergraduates and will make the work of many UCSC faculty difficult or impossible.”

The Highlander (UCR) – The UCSC wildcat strike is a fight against an anti-worker UC system

February 19, 2020

With a UC system that seems to care more about lining its own pockets instead of providing their workers with a living wage and their students with an affordable education, it is obvious that this greed must be fought. The only way to truly fight against this hostile administration is for workers and students to come together as allies and continue to advocate for their workplace rights.

It’s Going Down – Strike While The Iron Is Hot: An Interview On The Growing Wildcat Strike At UC Santa Cruz

February 19, 2020 • Republished by Black Rose Anarchist Federation

Perhaps the most important updates since Monday are that our numbers have expanded significantly. At the peak of our blockade and picket Wednesday, there were likely 500 – 600 graduate workers, undergraduates, faculty, staff, and non-university affiliates present.

It’s Going Down – #COLA4All As Commune: A Report On The First Week Of The Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike

February 19, 2020

Arriving in the late morning, we were greeted by what can only be described as communalizing festival. Hundreds of picketers laughed, danced, sang, and chanted with each other. A makeshift percussion section, instrumented with half a drum set, bottles, spoons, and pots reminiscent of Quebecois Casseroles, took up residency in the nearby street median, keeping the beat for throngs of crosswalk picketers throughout the day. We beckoned passing drivers to honk their horn to show their support, with no attempts made to prevent cars from entering or exiting the university. Today wasn’t so much about them, as it was about each other.

KSBW – International UCSC grad students could be deported if demands go unanswered

February 19, 2020 • Video Segment

It’s estimated there are about 30 international graduate students on the picket lines—and they don’t know what their future is if the UC follows through with its threat.

“If we lose this job, we’re not able to work in other places. We have to pay extra tuition. So for people like myself, it would be a defacto deportation—for most international graduate students,” said English international grad student, Tony Boardman.

World Socialist Web Site – Striking University of California-Santa Cruz grad students defy UAW, arrests and threats of termination

February 18, 2020

Graduate student instructors (GSIs) and teaching assistants (TAs) at University of California-Santa Cruz are beginning the sixth day of their wildcat strike to demand a cost of living adjustment. Like many educators in California, grad students have confronted stagnant wages alongside skyrocketing rents that leave them struggling to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. Last December, grad students initiated a grading strike to demand the increase.

NBC Bay Area – UC President Threatens to Fire Striking UC Santa Cruz Grad Students

February 18, 2020

University of California President Janet Napolitano has threatened to fire a group of UC Santa Cruz graduate students who have been on strike and withholding students’ grades over better pay, according to a report from KSBW.

The New Republic – A Wildcat Strike Grows Out of a Housing Crisis

February 17, 2020

But the graduate student strikers believe they have leverage of their own. UC Santa Cruz ranks highly in its enrollment and graduation of “economically disadvantaged students,” has self-branded as “the original authority on questioning authority,” and prides itself on a rich radical tradition. The administration may feel that a public crackdown on the strike could harm the school’s reputation. And if they are able to maintain momentum and support from faculty, undergraduates, the public, and graduate students at other schools in the UC system, the striking teaching assistants (TAs) are betting that they can pressure the administration into granting concessions beyond what’s in the current union contract.

Workers World – California grad students wildcat for COLA

February 17, 2020

In 1948 the United Automobile Workers became the first union in the U.S. to win cost-of-living allowance (COLA) language, also known as an escalator clause.

A militant, determined group of UAW members have launched a new fight for COLA. Not traditional autoworkers, they are graduate student teaching employees at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Nevertheless, they are demanding a traditional escalator clause to offset the high cost of living in Santa Cruz.

The Daily Tar Heel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) – Column: Support the UCSC strike for COLA

February 17, 2020

UCSC graduate workers began their strike last semester by refusing to submit grades, in many ways reminiscent of the UNC TA grading strike. This semester, after no response from the administration, UCSC graduate students initiated a full work stoppage. The strike has since garnered national media attention and an onslaught of threats of termination and even deportation from administrators. 

The Guardian (UCSD) – Student Employees Rally for Affordable Housing

February 17, 2020

Rallying for affordable housing and an end to rent burdens, UC San Diego Academic Student Employees marched from Library Walk to the Chancellor’s Office on Feb. 10, 2020. Taking part in the Cost of Living Adjustment movement, these students called upon the university to take greater steps to reduce the costs of student housing to promote affordability. 

Fox News – University of California president Janet Napolitano, a former head of DHS, blasts ‘wildcat strike’ at UC Santa Cruz

February 15, 2020

University of California President Janet Napolitano on Friday condemned a multi-day graduate student worker strike at UC Santa Cruz this week that resulted in 17 arrests, saying there would be “consequences” including potential job losses.

KQED – Striking UC Santa Cruz Graduate Students Hold Picket Lines After Police Arrest 17

February 14, 2020

“I think we are having effects,” said James Sirigotis, a graduate student in the sociology department. “The university continued to say that they could not meet with us, [but] they’ve had two meetings with us since we went on strike. Every time they say they can’t do something, we continue to stand strong, and they end up doing it.”

The LA Times – UC Santa Cruz grad students strike for higher pay, saying they can’t afford rent

February 14, 2020

Davies said police — including campus police and others from nearby San Francisco and Alameda — faced off against strikers. He said helmeted officers carrying batons and tear gas struck one student, who suffered a concussion, on Monday. On Wednesday another student sustained a concussion and several others had bruises, Davies said.

The Washington Post – Graduate strike at UC Santa Cruz leads to arrests

February 14, 2020

A contentious labor dispute between graduate-student workers and the University of California at Santa Cruz resulted in the arrest of 17 students this week, ratcheting up tensions as students refuse to end their strike without a pay increase.

The Triton (UCSD) – UCSD Graduate Students Demonstrate in Support of Systemwide Cost of Living Adjustment

February 14, 2020

Participants at UCSD marched from the Silent Tree at Geisel Library to the Chancellor’s Complex at 1:00 p.m. to deliver a COLA framework and a letter to Chancellor Pradeep Khosla demanding that ASEs receive a monthly housing stipend, rent reduction for on-campus housing, and that UCSD construct more affordable housing. The COLA framework designates a monthly housing stipend for each UC campus based on mandatory fees, a monthly TA salary, and the average monthly housing cost. The proposed plan would give UCSD ASEs an extra $1422 per month for housing.

NBC Bay Area – Police Arrest 17 During UC Santa Cruz Grad Student Strike

February 13, 2020

At least 17 people were arrested during the third day of a wildcat strike by University of California, Santa Cruz graduate students demanding higher pay.

Police surrounded demonstrators sitting in circles in the intersection with their arms linked and dragged them away one by one. More demonstrators poured into the intersection and took the places of those being arrested in a tense standoff between hundreds of demonstrators and dozens of police, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.

Daily Nexus (UCSB) – Across UC System, Graduate Students Unite for COLA Movement

February 13, 2020

Across the University of California, a unifying message — shouted at the police barricade at UC Santa Cruz, taped to the walls of the UC San Diego’s chancellor’s office, yelled on the fifth floor of UC Santa Barbara’s Cheadle Hall — has emerged: Crack open the UC, because its graduate students want a COLA.

Democracy Now! – UC Santa Cruz Graduate Students Strike to Protest Unaffordable Housing Costs

February 12, 2020

Hundreds of graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have gone on an open-ended strike to protest the unaffordable costs of living on their low teaching salaries. The strikers are demanding a cost-of-living adjustment of $1,412 per month, which student educators say is necessary to avoid living on the brink of homelessness as they teach classes and provide essential work to keep the university running. A 2018 study comparing housing costs with household incomes found Santa Cruz was the least affordable place to live in the United States.

It’s Going Down – This Is America #106: Riot Police Attack Wildcat Strike at UC Santa Cruz

February 11, 2020 • Podcast Episode

In this episode we speak with a member of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation and also rank-n-file member of the United Auto Workers who is participating in the wildcat strike at the University of California in Santa Cruz. They report on the first day of the strike, the autonomous forms of organization that the the strike has utilized, how strikers are push back against the administration and the official union structure, and an account of the violence that transpired on the picket lines at the hands of riot police.

NBC Bay Area – UC Santa Cruz Teaching Assistants Go on Strike Over Pay

February 11, 2020

University of California, Santa Cruz graduate students started a strike Monday to demand higher wages to keep up with living costs in an area that has recently seen housing costs skyrocket.

About 400 students picketed outside campus, holding signs that read “The rent is too damn high” and “Pay us enough.”

Veronica Hamilton, a social psychology doctoral student and co-vice president of the UCSC Graduate Student Association, said the students decided to strike after months of failed conversations with the administration.

90.3 KAZU – UC Santa Cruz Grad Students Take Strike To Next Level

February 11, 2020

On Tuesday, the second day of the strike, over 300 students gathered in front of the main entrance to UCSC, blocking traffic. The group included graduate and undergraduate students along with some faculty members. Police dressed in riot gear stood nearby. 

Salon – Santa Cruz graduate students striking for a living wage are met with threats and batons

February 11, 2020

On Monday, graduate students went on a full wildcat teaching strike, meaning they are withholding teaching, grading, and office hours. This strike follows previous actions such as withholding 12,000 grades last quarter and taking one of their contractually protected sick days to attend the University of California Regents meeting in January. These efforts have yet to induce the university to meet their collective demand to include a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) to help alleviate the rent burden of living in an expensive California town. 

Inside Higher Ed – Striking for COLA

February 11, 2020

Hundreds of students gathered on campus throughout the day for rallies, talks and solidarity. Faculty members and undergraduates visited to offer support. Graduate students don’t know how long they’ll keep agitating, but they’re prepared for a fight.

“We organized for a local rent control measure that failed, and we’ve worked very hard to support the university, but now it’s time for the administration to work hard to support us,” said Yulia Gilichinskaya, a graduate assistant in film and digital media studies at Santa Cruz.

New York Times – Why Graduate Students at U.C. Santa Cruz Are Striking

February 11, 2020

The action — known as a wildcat strike, because it’s taking place without the backing of the union that represents the university’s graduate student academic employees at campuses across the state — follows months of back and forth between administrators and graduate student educators who have demanded a cost of living adjustment of $1,412 per month.

That amount, graduate students have said, would help pull student educators — many of whom are spending the majority of their income on rent — from the brink of homelessness.

Labor Notes – University of California Intimidating International Students to Defeat Wildcat Strike

February 10, 2020

University of California President Janet Napolitano proudly touted her opposition to Trump’s racist immigration policies before he even moved into the Oval Office. Now she’s following in Trump’s footsteps, threatening international students with actions that could lead to their deportation in an attempt to smash a wildcat strike at the university’s Santa Cruz campus.

U.S. News – UC Santa Cruz Teaching Assistants Go on Strike Over Pay

February 10, 2020 • Republished by NBC Bay Area

About 400 students picketed outside campus, holding signs that read “The rent is too damn high” and “Pay us enough.”

Veronica Hamilton, a social psychology doctoral student and co-vice president of the UCSC Graduate Student Association, said the students decided to strike after months of failed conversations with the administration.

The Nation – We’re California Graduate Students, and We’re Not Taking Poverty Wages Anymore

February 10, 2020

So today, we are entering a new phase in the movement. The strike commenced with a picket line at 7:30 am at the entrance to the UCSC campus. And we will not be alone: our labor militancy has helped spawn an intercampus graduate student movement for a cost-of-living adjustment: COLA rallies and marches will also take place at several UC campuses including Santa Barbara, Davis, Berkeley, San Diego, and Los Angeles, where students have begun demanding their own COLA.

KSBW – UCSC graduate students plan open ended strike Monday

February 8, 2020 • Video Segment

University of California, Santa Cruz teaching assistants have notified the administration they plan an open-ended strike Monday morning.

Labor Notes – Facing Skyrocketing Rents, Santa Cruz Grad Students Extend Wildcat Strike

February 7, 2020

Protesting low wages in one of the most unaffordable cities in the country, graduate students at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) went on a wildcat grading strike in December and are now organizing for a full strike, beginning February 10.

Industrial Worker – UCSC Strike for Cost Of Living Allowance

February 2020

A quick update on the student strikes at the University of California Santa Cruz.

At present, Lynn and other undergraduate students are working to organize undergraduate on-campus, off-campus, and unemployed students into an IU 620. They have been able to work alongside the COLA grad student strikers to maintain a positive relationship and, as grad students have announced a new hard strike on February 10th, the potential for IWW affiliation across student sectors is growing.

Industrial Worker – #COLA4ALL

February 2020

The strike is still going strong, no grades are in, and on Thursday, January 30th, 178 grads voted to go on a full student strike, to be held on February 10th. These brave students have inspired more to pick up their cause for COLA and a COLA4ALL campaign has been organized!

Black Rose Anarchist Federation – Santa Cruz Grad Students Prepare to Launch Full Strike Next Week

February 6, 2020 • Republished by It’s Going Down

In late January the office of the chancellor announced a new “housing supplement” program, which promised to selectively issue an extra $2,500, on a yearly basis, to workers who the administration determines are most at need. While it should be said off the bat that this supplement would be wholly inadequate to cover the extreme housing costs in Santa Cruz, it must also be noted that this supplement is not universal and appears not to be available to international workers on visa.

This announcement also included a thinly veiled threat, promising further retaliation against graduate workers who continue the strike. 

Our response to the administration’s failure will be to go on a full teaching strike starting on February 10th. 

KION 5/46 – UCSC grad students planning indefinite strike starting Monday

February 6, 2020

Graduate students say they do not intend to harm undergrads. Strike organizers say administrators did reach out to them for negotiations, with no settlement reached. But they are hopeful talks are just the start.

“We see the results of the pressure we’re putting on the administration, but we’re just going to have to put more pressure,” said Gilichinskaya.

Santa Cruz Sentinel – At UCSC, teaching assistant unrest may escalate to full strike

February 4, 2020

In the latest escalation to an ongoing pay dispute, teaching assistants at UC Santa Cruz say they are organizing for an open-ended strike starting next week.

The group of graduate students announced their plan to UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive via email Monday.

“On February 10, hundreds of graduate students will begin an open-ended strike,” stated the email, authored by strike organizers that include the elected leadership of the UCSC Graduate Student Association. “This means we will be withholding our labor, including teaching, grading, office hours, and research.”
According to the student leaders, the escalation was supported by 60% of hundreds of graduate students who attended a Thursday general assembly. An earlier online poll taken by roughly half the campus’ 1,800 graduate students was also supportive of a strike, they said.

Salon – “Do I do research or pay rent?” Grad students in Santa Cruz start a wildcat strike

January 25, 2020

Just within commuting distance of Silicon Valley, the beach town once known for the counterculture has become a symbol of the relentless gentrification of the once-Bohemian pockets of the Bay Area at the hands of the tech industry. University of California’s tutors, readers, Graduate Student Instructors and teaching assistants across all campuses are unionized with UAW Local 2865, and strikes or threats of strikes are not uncommon; yet a wildcat strike is unusual. UC Santa Cruz workers say they turned to a wildcat strike out of frustration: the current statewide UAW Local 2865 contract has language regarding 3 percent wage increases annually, and there is no language about housing subsidies. UC Santa Cruz workers were disappointed with leadership when the current contract was pushed through to approval in August 2018.

Hence, starting in December, UCSC graduate students demanding the cost of living adjustment organized a series of events as part of the wildcat strike. Most recently, organizers led a sick-out day on Wednesday, Jan. 22, using one of their sick days to attend the Regents meeting in San Francisco.

Daily Nexus (UCSB) – UCSB Grad Students Hold Demonstration in Solidarity with UC Santa Cruz Over Cost-of-Living Adjustment

January 23, 2020

UCSB’s Wednesday demonstration focused on the parallels between the challenges faced by UCSB and UCSC graduate students, such as steep housing costs, and the high number of students at both schools who are considered “rent-burdened,” meaning that they pay more than 30% of their income toward rent.

Last week, the UCSB Graduate Student Association took an informal poll of roughly 600 graduate students and found that respondents, on average, spent 48% of their $2,091.98 monthly income on rent. 

Organizers said that the “sick-out” was meant to draw attention to the COLA movement and gather support from graduate and undergraduate students who may not be aware of the movement.

KPFA – Segment on Sick-Out Strike

January 20, 2020 • Radio Segment

“Grad students are developing anxiety and depression or their anxiety and depression is getting worse because they are constantly worried whether they can make ends meet at the end of the month, they’re moving every couple of months, and they’re unable to find adequate housing. They’re sleeping in their offices, sleeping in cars, it’s not just a financial crisis, it’s also a health crisis. When the UC says this is not an appropriate use of a sick day, it’s ignoring that we go to work sick every single day.”

Good Times – The Ongoing Grade Standoff Between UCSC and Striking Grad Students

January 14, 2020

UCSC, Parish stresses, is a political institution. And in general, the strikers don’t imagine school administrators as a bunch of passive decision makers given money by state, he explains, with certain dollar amounts locked in for every item. “We see them as having a lot more latitude than they let on with everything that they do,” he adds, before catching up with the protest march en route to its next stop at Rachel Carson Dining Hall. “The responsibility really lies with them. If they’re going to run a university, they need to do the basic things that it takes to have a health university environment for people.”

Strikewave – “People can’t take it anymore”: Inside the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike

January 9, 2020

“People can’t take it anymore,” Parrish says. “The material conditions of their lives are just so severe. It has nothing to do with being wacky, leftist Santa Cruz residents. It has everything to do with living in really exploitative conditions.” He says the cost of living in Santa Cruz has skyrocketed over the past two years, increasing by 52%. “People don’t make a lot of money relative to San Francisco or the rest of the Bay Area, but they’re paying the exact same rental prices.” Gilmore also contends that the tenuous conditions that graduate students find themselves negatively impact undergraduate students, when the quality of their teaching goes down due to concerns over issues like food and housing instability: “We have a love for teaching, but it’s hard to do it when you’re forced to find other work.”

90.3 KAZU – UC Santa Cruz Students And Workers Strike For Higher Pay

January 9, 2020 • Article and Audio Segment

“People can’t pay their rent now. People are dropping out of their graduate programs now. And it is too long to wait until the next contract campaign,” Hamilton said.

Santa Cruz Sentinel – More than 12,000 fall grades missing as strike continues at UC Santa Cruz

January 8, 2020

More than 12,000 fall-quarter grades — about 20% of the total — remained outstanding as of Sunday as the UC Santa Cruz grading strike continued into the new year.

Demanding a raise they say would allow them to afford the high cost of living in Santa Cruz, scores of UCSC teaching assistants and graduate-student instructors refused to submit students’ fall quarter grades by a Dec. 18 deadline.

Protean Magazine – A Wildcat Strike at UC Santa Cruz: Mobilizing in Digital and Physical Spaces

December 31, 2019

Pop-cultural touchstones like Baby Yoda, Willy Wonka, Coca-Cola, Rocky Balboa, and Arrested Development may seem like unlikely symbols to juxtapose with a militant labor action. For graduate student workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, however, pop culture references in meme form have served as the raw material fueling a wildcat strike that ripped through campus as part of a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) campaign, reflecting a mix of in-person, on-the-ground organizing and strategic online communications.

See our Meme Gallery for the memes discussed in the Protean article.

Jacobin – A Wildcat Strike at UC-Santa Cruz

December 26, 2019

While the administration dithers, UCSC wildcat strikers have received strong support from other campuses and labor organizations. More than 1,800 supporters signed the general solidarity petition, the strike fund collected more than $8,000, and solidarity statements came from more than thirty organizations locally, nationally, and globally — including by the United Teachers of Los Angeles, who organized a successful strike this year. The wildcat strike has had a particularly electrifying effect on other University of California campuses, sparking rallies in support of UCSC’s wildcat strike and to demand our own Cost of Living Adjustment at UC Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara.

Patch – UCSC Scrambles To Ensure Final Grades Amid Wildcat Strike

December 19, 2019

A day after final grades were supposed to be turned in for the fall quarter, a wildcat strike at UC Santa Cruz continues. Employed as academic student employees, some UCSC graduate students working as teacher’s assistants are withhold [sic] students’ grades until their demands for a higher wage are met.

The File – “The Plan is to Win”: A Conversation With the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strikers

December 20, 2019

A wave of militant action has gripped the campus at UC Santa Cruz, resulting in a spate of wildcat actions based in the demand for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). A contentious contract was put in place by the statewide union (UAW) in 2018 that bound all UC campuses to a no-strike clause. This contract was rejected by 83% of the unit at Santa Cruz, who are experiencing a drastic increase in cost of living primarily driven by sky-rocketing housing prices.

The File – The Roots of the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike

December 19, 2019

There is currently a historic wildcat strike of graduate student workers at UC Santa Cruz. It erupted because our existing union-negotiated contract did not cover our basic needs, and is a “wildcat” action because that contract contains a no-strike clause. To understand the strike, in other words, it is first necessary to understand the history of the contract, which covers graduate teaching assistants, graders, and undergraduate tutors on all nine teaching UC campuses. And to understand that history, it is necessary to grasp the tensions running through the body that negotiated it, the UC Student-Workers’ Union, UAW Local 2865.

NPR – ‘There’s Really No Refuge’: Santa Cruz Grad Students Strike Amid Housing Crunch

December 18, 2019

All is not well in Banana Slug country.

Final grades for the fall quarter are due at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the campus of some 19,000 students with a curious mascot, but a wildcat strike has put those report cards in jeopardy. Graduate students, who declared a work stoppage earlier this month, have vowed not to deliver grades for the undergraduate courses they work with until the administration meets their demands for higher pay.

Specifically, graduate students are calling for a cost of living adjustment — a monthly bump of just over $1,400 to help them cope with the region’s high cost of housing. And to do so, they have decided to act independently of their official statewide union, United Auto Workers Local 2865, which in 2018 negotiated a systemwide annual wage increase of 3% over four years.

World Socialist Website – UC Santa Cruz graduate students wildcat strike enters critical phase

December 18, 2019

The strike mounted in defiance of the graduate students’ official union, UC Student Workers-United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865, has drawn nationwide attention and support from students across public and private universities. Santa Cruz, which lies within Silicon Valley, is one of the most expensive cities to live in California, a state that is already known for its general high cost of living. As various reports indicate, single rooms for rent in the city go for as much as $2,300. The situation is so desperate that many graduate students have been forced to periodically, and at times even permanently, live in their cars. Students forced to live in this manner have been subject to police harassment, and fines of $300, since sleeping outside is illegal in the County of Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz Sentinel – On eve of deadline, no signs of resolution for UCSC grading strike

December 18, 2019

To date, more than 400 UCSC faculty members have signed a petition supporting the striking students and endorsing their demand for a pay increase. The demand was also endorsed by UCSC undergraduates’ Student Union Assembly in a resolution passed Dec. 13.

At least 15 UCSC departments have committed not to retaliate against participating students, according to copies of letters from the departments reviewed by this news organization.

The Daily Californian (UCB) – UC Berkeley graduate students protest in solidarity with UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike

December 18, 2019

Campus graduate students gathered on Sproul Plaza on Monday for a “Cal COLA: Pay Us More UCB” protest in solidarity with UC Santa Cruz, or UCSC, graduate students who are demanding a wage increase that reflects the cost of living in Santa Cruz.

Patch – 504 Alumni Threaten To Withhold Donations To UCSC: Wildcat Strike

December 17, 2019

As the deadline for final grades looms, more than 500 UC Santa Cruz alumni have signed a letter threatening to withhold donations to the university until the school’s administration agrees to pay a “cost-of-living adjustment” of $1,412 a month to graduate students.

Left Voice – Wildcat Strike at UCSC Enters Second Week

December 16, 2019

On Sunday, December 8, more than 400 graduate workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz pledged to withhold final grades until their demand for a cost of living increase is met by the UCSC administration. This wildcat strike, which was called without approval of the official UAW 2865 union, comes just five days after graduate workers at Harvard University (also organized by UAW) walked off the job. Both strikes mark a shift in the militancy of graduate worker organizing, which has become an increasingly volatile site of struggle within the larger labor movement. But the UCSC strike is a particularly interesting test case, because it is the first action to really challenge the UAW’s strategy of performative graduate worker strikes.

It’s Going Down – This is America #99: Inside the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike

December 13, 2019 • Podcast Episode

On this episode, we are lucky enough to speak with two grad students involved in the growing wildcat strike that is demanding a cost of living adjustment on the University of California (UC) campus of Santa Cruz, located south of the bay area in Northern California.

Grad students are demanding more money for their work in order to afford the cost of rising rents and everyday expenses. Students have threatened to not turn in grades at the end of the semester if their demands are not met and UC administrators are threatening possible retaliation. We discuss the growing struggle, the influence of the student occupation movement in 2009-2010, and what this fight means in the context of increasing revolt against austerity across the world.

NBC Bay Area – UCSC Workers Withholding Final Grades During Strike

December 10, 2019

More than 300 UC Santa Cruz students voiced their support for striking graduate students. Many of them are teaching assistants who say they simply can’t afford to live in the Bay Area on just $2,000 a month.

World Socialist Web Site – California graduate students on wildcat strike

December 11, 2019

Beginning Monday, a group of graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz began a wildcat strike demanding a cost-of-living wage increase. The graduate students are demanding an end to their precarious financial situation, which many students report results in regularly skipping meals, spending some 50-80 percent of their income on housing in one of the most expensive rental markets in the US, and overall heightened stress levels in struggling to meet basic needs.

Justin Gilmore – Using Power Builds Power: The UCSC Strike and COLA

December 11, 2019 • Blog/Medium Post

Good organizing elicits passion from everyday workers. It connects self-interest with the more political view that collective action is not only possible, but urgently necessary. COLA has accomplished this on our campus by melding together agitation and education. In discussing the housing crisis, and the complicity of the UC in this crisis, not to mention the clearly unjust percentage that many of us spend on rents, the seemingly large demand for a $1412 adjustment appears critically necessary. So much so, that rank and file UAW members called for a grading strike which has now taken hold. Buttressed by excellent organizing by our local UAW leadership, the COLA campaign has brought about a new phase of mass militancy that, I believe, can spread to other UC campuses.

ABC 7 News – UC Santa Cruz grad students on grading strike over pay raise, university says action is illegal

December 10, 2019 • Article and Video Segment

Englel says, “The problem is not just that contract. It’s a long history of exploitation by the university of saying we’re going to pay you enough money to live here. We’re not looking for big salaries, we’re looking for money to buy food, to make rent, to support our lives.”

Inside Higher Ed – UC Santa Cruz Grad Assistants Strike for COLA

December 10, 2019 • “Quick Take”

Currently Santa Cruz grad assistants earn $2,434 before taxes, nine months per year. Many say they spend half or more of their salaries on rent, leaving little left for anything else. These grads are affiliated with the United Auto Workers but say that this strike is not authorized by their union. Participants say teaching assistants will refuse to submit grades until their demands are met and that research assistants will refuse to do additional work. About 200 grad students rallied on campus Monday.

Black Rose Anarchist Federation – Wildcat Strike Launched by UC Santa Cruz Grad Student Workers

December 9, 2019 • Republished by It’s Going Down

On December 8th, 120 graduate student workers gathered in an auditorium on campus, accompanied by another 140 via Zoom video chat. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of violating our contract in order to begin a wildcat strike the very next day.

After about an hour of discussion, those present (both in person and online) cast their ballots. Speaking in a loud, firm, and nearly unanimous voice, they said: We strike tomorrow!

City on a Hill Press (UCSC) – Graduate Students Protest For Living Wages

November 15, 2019

Over 100 graduate students gathered in Quarry Plaza on Nov. 7 and marched to Kerr Hall to present a list of demands to Chancellor Cindy Larive.

In the first march of a monthlong campaign of visibility, graduate students advocating for fair pay made it clear this wouldn’t be the last time the UC Santa Cruz administration would hear from them.

The Union of Academic Student Employees (UAW) Local 2865 is demanding a cost of living adjustment (COLA). They demand an additional $1,412 every month to ensure a “wage-housing price” ratio similar to that of UC Riverside graduate students, who receive the same wages as UCSC graduate students, but pay much less for housing.