Email to graduate students from the GSA, February 5, 2020
Dear Fellow Strikers:
Many of you have received a letter signed by Quentin Williams entitled “Written Warning for Withholding Undergraduate Student Grades.” We wanted to take a minute to explain what this letter does, and does not, mean for your employment, and what we can all do collectively to fight back.
Before we get into the details of the letter, we want to say a word about the importance of a collective, political response to it. No less so than when we began our strike, our strength still comes from our numbers and from our ability to act collectively. Whether the university is able to escalate to harsher levels of discipline, or whether they instead cave to our demands and grant a COLA, will turn on how firmly we stand together.
Article 8 of our union contract says that the University “may discipline or dismiss an ASE for just cause.” The forms of “discipline” stated in the contract are “written warning, suspension without pay, or dismissal.” For the University to attempt to suspend pay or to dismiss a graduate student employee, it has to provide the employee a “written notice of intent” that it is seeking to impose one of these penalties, after which the employee gets ten days to respond to the notice, and additional steps occur thereafter.
The “Written Warning for Withholding Undergraduate Student Grades” is not a “written notice of intent” that begins the process that the University must undergo in order to suspend or dismiss an employee. Rather, it is the least form of “discipline” the University can attempt to impose under the contract. To be clear, this means that the “warning” letter does not formally begin any process against you that can lead to suspension or removal.
The “Written Warning” does become part of your “employment file.” There are two types of actions that can be taken in response:
(1) Fight Back–Grieve It
First, the contract provides you with the right to file a grievance under the contract over the placement of the letter in your file within thirty (30) days of the date you became aware of the letter’s existence. To the extent that the letter appears to be based on fabricated or inflated accusations, you can file a grievance over the placement of the letter in your file. And it does indeed appear that the letter signed by Quentin Williams is based on false or wildly inflated allegations of purported “harm” to undergraduate students. For example:
- The letter claims that undergraduates may experience a “potential” loss of financial aid “if the University is unable to verify individual undergraduate student progress to the Department of Education.” The University alludes to its purported inability to comply with Department of Education requirements. However, striking TAs have made every conceivable effort to provide every student whose financial aid is potentially imperiled with the information they need to continue to qualify for this aid (previous information here, and here). Given these efforts by you and other TAs, any failure to provide the Department of Education with required information would be entirely the result of the incompetence and indifference of the University, not of striking workers.
- The letter lists additional consequences such as students’ potential inability to “successfully apply to graduate,” to receive credits for classes taken, to “declare a major,” or to receive “additional academic advising.” Every one of these supposed harms arises from the University’s mechanical, reflexive, bureaucratic misapplication of its own policies and procedures to students affected by the strike; none of these consequences is in any way a direct result of a TA’s withholding of grades. If the University were genuinely so animated by concern for undergraduates’ well-being, it would allow students to take all of the actions and comply with all of the requirements identified in the letter regardless of whether or not a grade has been withheld. The University’s decision to prefer its own internal policies to its students’ well-being is the cause of all of the speculative harms it lists in its letter; thus, not one of the conjectural impacts to undergraduate students can justify discipline.
- The University’s warning letter fails to identify a single undergraduate student who was actually harmed by any action the TA has taken. Every one of the purported harms identified in Quentin Williams’ letter is imagined, not demonstrably real. For the University to remove a graduate student employee from their position, it should be able to demonstrate actual, real-life harm from the actions that it claims justify dismissal, not the laundry-list of “potential (but not actual) consequences” Williams identifies in his scaremongering letter.
These are all points that we can make in a grievance filed over the placement of a warning letter in your file. We can also add to these general points with information about your specific situation that you think may be helpful to you. If you received a warning letter, we will be reaching out shortly about filing a grievance. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to UCSC UAW 2865 Unit Chair Veronica Hamilton.
(2) Put Another Letter in Your File
UAW 2865 has prepared a letter responding to Williams’ “Warning Letter” that explains TAs’ actions were taken as part of concerted labor activity to attempt to force the University to pay a living wage to its employees. Contact Veronica Hamilton to get a copy of this letter addressed to you to have it placed in your employment file.
Supportive faculty have indicated that they are prepared to provide a similar letter responding to Williams’ accusations. In this letter, faculty may express their support and further contextualize the “Warning Letter.” We recommend contacting your instructor of record (if supportive) to request a letter.
What happens next?
To sum up, the “Warning Letter” does not initiate any disciplinary action against you, and we’ve covered two ways that we can fight back. We are also pursuing a political, collective response to this disciplinary action beginning on the picket line on Monday, February 10 at 7:30am.
It is important that everyone who has received a disciplinary warning touch base before we take any actions individually. If you got one of these letters, we will be reaching out shortly to set up a meeting or a Zoom call to discuss our response. If you withheld grades but have not received a formal warning letter like this, we also want to hear from you. This could help us understand the University’s approach and potentially make a case about the arbitrary and capricious nature of these warnings.
To the extent that the University attempts to proceed with imposing harsher discipline, there are additional ways we may be able to fight back through procedural in addition to political channels. For example, if you were offered consecutive appointments at the beginning of this year, the University’s failure to re-employ you in one of those offered positions may violate Article 3, the “Appointment Security” provision of our contract. While Article 8 allows the University to remove an employee for “just cause,” it is not at all clear under the contract that alleged conduct in a position held during the Fall Quarter of 2019 can be grounds for removal from or denial of an entirely different position that would be held in subsequent quarters. Removal from or denial of a subsequent position that was earlier promised to you may be a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, that would be subject to a grievance, and that may award in backpay. Strikers are continuing to discuss other potential legal and procedural remedies among themselves and with outside counsel.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any additional questions! See you on the picket line!
Solidarity forever,
GSA
UAW 2865, Santa Cruz