From Joe Klein
March 9, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike.
For the 20th day graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied in support of a COLA. Today marks the 1 month anniversary of the full teaching strike that began in February. This week the picket line is coming to campus, moving each day to a new location as we continue to organize, build community, and build power. For the first day of week 10, in solidarity with the UCSC Undocu Collective, strikers took over the Academic Resource Center (ARC). Energy was high all day as strikers continued to organize and plan for the ongoing strike. As of today administration continues to ignore our demands–and so the strike continues! Tomorrow the picket will move to a sit-in at the Earth and Marine Sciences Building, beginning at 9am.
One month ago, in response to months of UCSC administration ignoring Undocumented students’ demands for greater support, including for a dedicated space to serve the undocumented community, members of the Undocu Collective occupied and took over an office in the ARC to demand that the space become a new headquarters for Undocumented Student Services. Rather than respond to the demands and concerns of the collective, UCSC administration retaliated against these students by issuing code of conduct violation summons for some of those who participated in the protest, and banned these students from the ARC–which should be a community space open to all students. These students who are working tirelessly to support themselves and their community are threatened with suspension or expulsion by a university that brags about its diversity while doing nothing to support its struggling student body. We know this pattern well: students exercise their right to make a claim on the university for the resources they need, and are met with retaliation. Their fight is our fight.
In stunning news from our statewide union UAW 2865, leadership today announced that graduate students across the UC system have voted overwhelmingly (97% of respondents) to ratify union demands to reopen contract negotiations and to fight for COLA across the state. Today leadership began circulating a pledge to gauge support for moving to an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP Strike); this would mean that all graduate students across the state would be legally protected to go on a full strike. You can fill out the pledge here, and encourage your colleagues to do so as soon as possible. If enough students sign the pledge this week, a vote to authorize the strike could come as soon as next week.
It should go without saying that this move by our statewide union would not have been possible were it not for the courage of UCSC strikers and grade with holders to risk their own livelihoods to fight for all of us graduate students, and for the months of organizing work by our comrades and colleagues, both graduate and undergraduate, who helped this movement build power to fight for a better university that actually works for its students and workers. UCSC organizers today issued a statement on the relationship between this movement and the ULP strike, noting that only the wildcats on each campus will decide when to end the strike once the demand for a COLA has been met. To avoid this strike, university administration is once again asked to come to the negotiating table, including by California Assemblymember Mark Stone and 11 other representatives from across the state in an open letter.
Meanwhile, across the state the wildcat strike is spreading faster than ever. UC Berkeley today announced that it will join UCSC and UC Santa Barbara on full teaching strike effective next Monday. UC Davis and UC San Diego continue their own grading strike, while UCLA is expected to announce its own strike soon. Following similar actions at UC Santa Cruz led by COLA4ALL and The People’s Coalition, today organizers at UC Santa Barbara liberated a dining hall on their campus to provide free meals to all students. These actions not only feed hungry students, but help us to imagine what might be possible in a university that works for its most vulnerable.
Some of today’s action items:
- Join strikers at Earth and Marine Sciences, beginning tomorrow at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: coffee, hand sanitizer, and healthy food are always in demand.
- Teach the strike: Guide available here
- Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc Please share the strike fund with your networks!
- Faculty are encouraged to discuss moving to a full teaching strike.
- Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
- Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket.
- Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them.
- Write to the administration demanding that they come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. Guides and samples available here.
- Call Gavin Newsom’s office to complain about the firing of graduate students, the extreme rent burden of graduate students, and to ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. Click here for contact information. For reference see the Faculty Organizing Group letter to Gavin Newsom.
As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful.
See you tomorrow!