Tag: Email Timeline

We are dismayed that the UCSC administration continues to punish students, grads and undergrads, through the Student Conduct proceedings. Despite the academic senate’s February 19th resolution calling on the administration to withdraw sanctions against striking and arrested students; despite a statement from the UC-wide academic council on February 18th calling on the university to refrain from punitive measures; despite that the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild has deemed the punishment illegal; despite local and national outrage, including a boycott of the UC signed by hundreds of academics across the country – despite all of this, administration has continued to enact draconian measures of punishment and political repression. 

We are in the midst of a global pandemic, in which cities and states have closed courts and halted criminal proceedings. Yet, beyond the fact that fired student-workers are still not reinstated, the UC’s disciplinary hearings have continued, with a new wave of student conduct summonses sent out last Thursday for grades moved from Canvas in December. The administration has refused to halt or revoke any of these measures even after most students submitted grades, and while a physical picket cannot continue. We see this haphazard rollout of conduct charges as a way to further punish and intimidate students and workers for protesting their precarious conditions. 

One of the most egregious elements of these processes is that the undergrads who supported us and stood with us have been disciplined along with us through these student conduct proceedings. While these disciplinary proceedings have been served to dozens of students, there has been a particularly pernicious and aggressive targeting of students of color – both grads and undergrads –  including undocumented students. Some of these students have received up to four summonses for a range of protest actions, and just yesterday were subjected to punishments including multi-year suspensions, loss of housing, loss of access to campus facilities, and mandated community service. They see themselves tokenized as emblems of the institution’s “diversity”, but when these same “diverse” students protest, they are met with inordinate repression, adding significant hardship to their lives and the continuation of their academic careers. 

Racialized language, historically used to criminalize and dehumanize people of color, is being used in these reports. Multiple summonses identify students of colour engaged in the right to free speech and peaceful assembly as “intimidating”, “aggressive” and “threatening”. One is subject to the charge that they ‘stared at [an administrator] in an attempt to intimidate her’. In another example, an undergraduate student – who is also a US military veteran – is identified as being “very aggressive” and “frightening”, and comments that he wore military fatigues.

While some students still await the “resolution” from their Student Conduct hearings, Carlos Cruz, a History PhD student, prominent COLA4ALL activist, and recipient of four separate student conduct summonses, was suspended yesterday from the university until June 2022. It is clear to us that Carlos was targeted by the administration and punished for his activism. We agree with Carlos when he says, “the Student Conduct office is operating like an extension of the school to prison pipeline, as it targets politically active students of color who are engaging in organizing efforts to call out issues like food insecurity, rent burden, and wage disparities at UCSC”. 

Particularly troubling is the level of surveillance and policing that went into building cases against students. Records acquired via California Public Records Act requests show that the UCSC Police Department tapped the California National Guard and California emergency services personnel for help with a surveillance operation targeting the strike – this has been documented in a Vice article released today. We are also deeply troubled by the university’s mysterious Demonstrations Operations Team (DOT), whose role on campus remains opaque at best. Apart from being ostensibly charged with “coordinating the campus’ specific operational planning and response needs related to campus activism”, we have no information about who team members are (apart from one DOT member who is a former police officer), and little to no knowledge about their budget, surveillance activities, or oversight role. We understand that DOT has worked with UCPD and UCSC administrators to identify and bring charges against select individuals for allegedly violating the Code of Student Conduct while protesting. 

We are angered and disheartened by the continuing punitive and repressive measures of an institution that brands itself as “the original authority on questioning authority”. We continue to stand in solidarity with all students persecuted by the UC and will fight to reverse and drop all discipline.

Dear senior administration,

Many of us received student conduct summonses [attached below] today for having apparently “deleted, removed, or altered multiple undergraduate student grades in the Canvas Gradebook” in Fall Quarter. Most strikers have submitted grades. Why administration continues these processes of discipline for use of Canvas, when our Description of Duties do not require the use of Canvas; why we are disciplined as students, when many of us have already been disciplined (fired) in our roles as workers; and why this must continue throughout a global pandemic, appears entirely unnecessary, petty and vindictive. 

This action flies in the face of numerous calls from UCSC and UC-wide faculty, grads, and undergrads, and the wider community, for the administration to cease disciplinary actions. As far back as February 20th, the UCSC Academic Senate passed a resolution that, among other things, calls “for the withdrawal of sanctions against striking and arrested students” [Academic Senate Resolution Bassi and Leiva, attached below]. The day before, the UC-wide Academic Council concluded a statement on the UCSC grad student strike with a resolution that “the University should refrain from punitive action against graduate students during the strike and from retaliation against them once the strike has been concluded.” The San Francisco Chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild deemed the punishment illegal, and highlighted the university’s lack of neutrality in these meetings, violating students’ rights to due process. Furthermore, these forms of discipline were part of the grounds for the call for a boycott of the UC, signed by hundreds of academics across the country. To continue with these processes, as these resolutions and statements point out, raises serious concerns not only for values of shared governance and academic freedom, but also students’ constitutionally protected rights.

Already in hundreds of grievance meetings, students have been baffled by a process in which they were already presumed guilty, while the university was unable to provide evidence of their individual guilt. Not only graduate students but also undergraduates have faced student conduct charges relating to a labor action that appear on their academic records, delay the completion of their degrees and threaten their on-campus housing and student status. A recent letter from the Faculty Organizing Group notes that this discipline continues while courts are shut and criminal proceedings have been halted. The purpose of these disciplinary hearings, as they write, seems only to be “to intimidate and overwhelm students”. These actions are unconscionable. We ask that you do the right thing, and cancel all student conduct summonses, end all other sanctions, and erase discipline from the records of all involved. 

In perplexity,

Disciplined graduate students

Dear UCSC grads, 

While our individual experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic vary, we are all affected by it. To this end, we ask that UCSC administration grants a universal one-year time to degree extension to all graduate students, regardless of their discipline, year in program, personal circumstance, and nationality.  

More specifically, we request that UCSC administration:

1. Makes available a fully-funded one year normative time to degree increase for all graduate students 
2. Extends the non-residential supplemental tuition (NRST) waiver by one year  
3. Waives the 18-quarter teaching limit

UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego have granted a one-year, one-semester and one-quarter extension respectively to all doctoral students across the board, demonstrating that inclusive, all-encompassing solutions are not only possible, but that they can also be implemented at a campus level in record time.

Please add your name to this petition to urge UCSC administration to support its graduate students by granting us a universal fully-funded time to degree extension.

New guidelines from the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) have resolved to replace all missing grades with Ps on May 1, 2020. After multiple failed attempts to break the strike and break solidarity between undergraduate students, grads, and faculty, the administration has turned to its only sure tactic: its heavy hand from above. 

In doing so, the administration has shifted the burden of missing grades from themselves and onto the undergraduates it purports to care for and educate. We cannot allow this.

In response, the COLA strikers have decided collectively to submit outstanding Fall and Winter grades and organize for a ULP strike—a union-sanctioned and legally protected state-wide strike! We are living through a pandemic that exacerbates our existing precarity and faced with a brutal and exploitative employer that will take every latitude to rebalance power in its favor. 

By submitting the grades we have carried through our struggle, we ensure that our students receive the grades they earned despite the administration’s continued indifference towards undergraduate education. 

We are deeply grateful for all of the undergraduate support we have received throughout our movement. As a movement born out of precarity, we work in solidarity with all who fight for better living conditions and a quality education at UCSC. 

On multiple occasions over recent months, we offered UC Labor Relations a “grade trade.” Two weeks ago, UC Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara strikers offered to submit all outstanding grades for the reinstatement of all student workers fired for striking and the retraction of all student discipline. UC administrators, once again, said no. Around 80 UCSC graduate students remain terminated. Dozens, including undergrads, face student conduct charges. Despite the global pandemic, UC is pursuing punitive measures against students. And we cannot afford rent.

Therefore, our fight continues as we move to a new phase of organizing. Our union, UAW-2865, filed two Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against the UC for their discriminatory discipline of strikers and their refusal to bargain for COLA with the union. In addition to representing our strongest path to reinstatement, the ULP includes a call for a raise to $40,000 per year for all graduate student workers.

We urge all TAs, GSIs, tutors, and readers to sign the ULP strike pledge for a sanctioned union strike (and to join the union if you have not already). More than 3,600 grads have currently signed the ULP strike pledge across the state, with more than 2,300 currently in-unit workers. The union is pushing for 5,000 in-unit pledges before calling the strike vote, guaranteeing that we will strike in huge numbers. 

Share the strike pledge with your departments and with your colleagues and comrades on other UC campuses.

Sign up to phone bank to help us win COLA.

We’re building power towards an enormous statewide strike! Check out this statement of statewide faculty support for our ULP strike. Please help us build towards an enormous strike – sign up for phonebanking on Thursday and Friday, and/or email all your colleagues about the ULP strike pledge!

(Also find this statement at this link on the FOG website)

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Inter-Campus Faculty Solidarity Network – Statement on Faculty Support for UAW ULP Strike – 20 April 2020

UC faculty at nine campuses have indicated their willingness to strike in solidarity with an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike, if this action were to be called by the UAW 2865 UC Student-Worker Union. In less than a week, over 300 faculty, including both senate faculty and lecturers, have responded to a statewide survey created and circulated by our coalition. Of those who responded, 62 percent declared they would sympathy strike with a ULP strike. 

This articulation of faculty commitment is in addition to multiple public statements by faculty, including those made by both the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and Academic Council, calling on the university to refrain from punitive action against striking graduate students and to enter into negotiations with the union. 

Graduate students’ labor is absolutely vital to the university’s teaching, research, and service missions. The UC can resolve this situation immediately by entering into negotiations and seeking a settlement to this labor dispute — we encourage them to do so.  And, if they do not, we are ready and willing to act alongside graduate student workers in response to the university’s unfair labor practices.

TL;DR: The present conditions require us to shift into a new phase of organizing—as a first step, sign up to phone bank to help push us towards a sanctioned strike this quarter, and sign the ULP strike pledge for a sanctioned union strike.

The start of the new quarter gives us an opportunity to step back and assess the state of our movement. Our new working conditions in the age of COVID-19 are forcing us to reconsider our tactical choices. We know that we must continue to organize for the COLA we all need, but it is time to organize differently.

Until now, our offensive tactics have been wildcat strike actions. We held our ground most impressively in a grueling, month-long physical picket line at the Bay & High intersection, gathering widespread public support and igniting wildcat activities on other campuses. But we also faced serious and demobilizing setbacks. Disciplinary retaliation and sheer fatigue took their toll. Administrators and faculty joined forces to find new and inventive ways to prevent graduate workers from withholding final grades. The pandemic obliterated our familiar methods of in-person organizing. We must take these setbacks seriously, re-evaluate our collective power, and recalibrate our tactical horizons.

To that end, COLA organizers at UC Santa Cruz will agitate in the coming weeks for the authorization of our union’s statewide ULP strike. The first step is to sign up for phone banking. The second is to call meetings with, and call people in, your departments to spread the ULP strike pledge.

What is the ULP strike?

Our union, UAW 2865, has filed multiple Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against the UC, including for its summary firing of over 80 wildcat strikers at UCSC, and for its refusal to bargain directly with the union over COLA. These unjust practices are severe enough that UAW’s statewide Bargaining Team is prepared to call an official strike, but only if enough union members are ready to withhold their labor when the call comes. The UAW’s current position on settlement for these ULP charges includes a raise to $40,000 per year for graduate student workers.

Why the ULP strike? 

Make no mistake: the possibility of a ULP strike is a concrete victory in the COLA movement, and a genuine victory of the wildcat strike. Whereas we, as rank and file workers, once stood far ahead of the union, the union is now beginning to catch up to us. We are now well placed to combine our rank and file militancy with the union’s considerable resources and legal protections. 

The current crisis conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic compound our precarious living conditions. In the thick of this crisis and the uneven distribution of its effects, the demand for a COLA is the demand to survive. We want to struggle, as workers all over the world are now struggling, with a renewed urgency. But we need protections, and we need greater numbers. On the eve of a historic economic depression, and with 3.3 million unemployment claims filed across the country last week, many among us are gaining a hesitancy about engaging in bold but risky wildcat actions, especially when confronted with an employer that would rather leave its workers without healthcare in a pandemic than bargain over a living wage. 

A ULP strike is distinct from a wildcat strike because it is voted on by the full union membership, sanctioned by the union, and gives legal protections to every single worker on strike. These protections are necessary certainties in these uncertain times. They will allow us to strike against the university with the full weight of our statewide union behind us. 

When will the ULP strike be? 

The ULP strike is not the opposite of a wildcat strike. Both forms of strike are nothing without the power of the rank and file. If you have been following the official emails from our statewide union leadership, you may be under the impression that it is only a matter of waiting for the leadership to tell you when to strike. 

But the truth is that our union leadership is cautious in its political outlook, and will only be decisive when pushed to decision from below. If union members muster up strike readiness in large numbers, leadership can be compelled to call a strike vote sooner. Otherwise, they will hesitate and postpone, and allow the weeks of Spring quarter to pass by. In other words, rank and file workers can determine the timeline of the ULP strike. 

What happens to the withheld grades?

You may have heard about the administration’s “Last Chance Agreement” to reinstate fired wildcats. Due to the absurdly tight timeline (less than 24 hours) and the ambiguities of this “offer,” COLA wildcats have written to administrators asking for clarifications and outlining a counter-proposal.

Moreover, the reinstatement of Santa Cruz graduate student workers is a central plank of the UAW’s terms for settling its ULP charges. It is uncertain how this will play out and we will need to adjust strategically to developments in negotiations, at our campus, and on other campuses. 

As with everything in the COLA struggle, the speed and terms of any outcome will depend on our strength at the time of negotiations. Our strongest position, at present, is to negotiate during a statewide sanctioned strike. 

What we have always said nonetheless remains true: only Santa Cruz wildcats (and now wildcats at other campuses) decide when to submit grades, and under what circumstances. 

Next

As we start the new quarter, we will regroup, reassess and rebuild infrastructure. We will be sending a survey over the next few days which will ask grads your thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the COLA movement so far, and what you want to see happen with the campaign going into Spring quarter. We will join a statewide intercampus General Assembly Friday April 3 at 11am (Zoom link forthcoming), and there will be a UCSC General Assembly soon (details TBC).

All of us have faced enormous uncertainty over the past months. Now, more than ever, is the time to build our collective strength to fight for a future full of security and certainty.

In power and solidarity,
COLA organizers

To UCSC Administration,

We first register our dismay that your latest deadline to turn in grades (details attached) arrived to us with less than 24 hours to respond. Some fired graduate workers have not received the offer and many will simply miss the email as they adjust to the uncertainty of the pandemic. 

The Santa Cruz wildcat strikers have always been open and responsive to good faith communications, initiating multiple requests to negotiate, including a “grade trade” offer back in February—all refused by administration. Instead of negotiating with us collectively and in good faith, the administration’s approach aims to instill panic in individual grade withholders in a renewed attempt to undermine collective action. The COLA movement, however, will continue to make decisions collectively.

In that vein, we are unable to respond to this deadline without clarifications on the following points:

• Will fired graduate student workers who are now not able to find a spring appointment receive compensation?
• Will GSIs who have had their class removed receive compensation?
• Will those graduates who were made ineligible for spring appointments (rather than fired from an existing spring appointment) receive compensation if they are unable to find a new appointment?

With affirmative clarification on the above points, the COLA movement will agree to collectively submit grades under the following terms:

• The removal of all disciplinary measures from student records for past actions related to the wildcat strike, including the grading strike, the picket line, campus shutdowns, the ARC office takeover, and dining hall takeovers, and the guarantee not to further pursue student conduct procedures against students who were involved in these actions.
• A guarantee of full reinstatement for the spring quarter for all fired graduate student workers, including TAs and GSIs and those graduate students made ineligible for spring appointments, along with full compensation for those who cannot find an appointment at this late time.
• A guarantee of eligibility for future ASE appointments for all fired graduate student workers.
• That the administration remove clause E: “In the event XXXXX is terminated from employment pursuant to this Agreement, XXXXX waives her right to a Skelly hearing. XXXXX and the Union acknowledges and agree that the parties waive their right to file a grievance or complaint with the University of California, the courts or any governmental administrative agency concerning her dismissal for failure to adhere to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.”
• A guarantee that this offer be expanded to students who are withholding Winter quarter grades.
• An expansion of the $2,500 housing supplement to all graduate students including MA students, MFA students beyond the 2nd year of their program, PhD students beyond the 5th year of their program, and all fired graduate students.
• A written commitment to advocate for UCOP to immediately engage in good faith bargaining with UAW 2865 over a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for all ASEs in the UC system. We are not striking to be reinstated; we are striking for a COLA.

The context of the global COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified the urgent need to make fired workers whole. The University of California cannot remain content with a wishful vision of “online business as usual” while its imperiled workers struggle to adapt to drastic changes in their working and living conditions. Now more than ever, graduate student workers, including those of us who are immunocompromised or otherwise particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, need job security, a living wage, and freedom from unjust and arbitrary discipline. 

We are open to negotiation, as we have expressed and pushed for throughout this strike. We ask that you renege your bad faith offer and meet our good faith one. We expect clarifications and an answer to our terms by the end of the week, Friday 11:59pm.

Signed,

UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strikers

ATTACHMENT TO BOTTOM OF EMAIL: Word Doc of “Last Chance Agreement” 

______________________

Kavitha’s email: 

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to send you an update on your Notices of Actions to Dismiss and the emails you received telling you that you would not be eligible for ASE employment in the future.  

As many of you have likely heard, management has agreed to offer jobs for the spring quarter and in quarters thereafter to all of you, should you decide to submit grades by 5pm today or if you have already submitted the rest of your fall quarter grades. Attached is a template for such an agreement, though it would be tailored to your specific case. 

If that timeline is too short and you need another day, please be in touch. Like nearly any agreement for reinstatement for these types of activities, the agreement for you would likely include, like the one attached, a limit on future wildcat grade withholding.  

I hope you’re all safe amidst the ever-changing conditions of COVID-19.  

Sincerely,

Kavitha

Text of the Last Chance Agreement

Last Chance Agreement Between

XXXX 

And

University of California, Santa Cruz

And

UAW 2865

March 29, 2020 

The University of California Santa Cruz (hereinafter referred to as the University), XXXX (hereinafter referred to as XXXX and the United Auto Workers 2865 (hereinafter referred to as Union) enter into this Last Chance Agreement (hereinafter referred to as Agreement). 

Acknowledgements

On March 26, 2020, XXXX received a letter notifying her that she would be dismissed from her spring teaching assistant appointment in XXXXX effective March 31, 2020 for failing to turn in fall quarter grades after a directive from interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer.

 On or about March 27, 2020, the University received information from XXXX regarding her submission of fall quarter grades. XXXXX submitted documentation, including two letters of support from her fall and winter quarter instructors of record, as well as a personal letter discussing that she remains committed to taking actions in the best interest of her students now and in the future.

On March 28, 2020, the University confirmed that XXXXXX submitted her fall and winter quarter grades.

In light of XXXXX subsequent grade submission and commitment to her students, the University agrees that it will not seek to dismiss XXXXX with the Union’s agreement to the following: 

Terms and Conditions

1. Upon signature of this Agreement, the Notice of Dismiss dated March 26, 2020 and all supporting documents including but not limited to the Notice of Intent to Dismiss and Skelly recommendation, will be withdrawn. None of the listed documents will be placed in XXXXX personnel file. Without a dismissal on file, XXXXX will retain her spring quarter 2020 teaching assistant position in XXXXX.

1. XXXXX is required to meet the standards of performance required of an academic student employee position, including but not limited to adherence to the  description of duties form, compliance with Regental policy 1111, and timely and accurate submission of grades for all quarters in which she holds an academic student employee appointment from the date of signature on this Agreement through the date XXXXX graduates from her degree program or separates from the University, whichever is earlier.  Her failure to meet these standards will subject her to automatic dismissal and loss of future eligibility for an academic student employee appointment with the University from the effective date of this Agreement.

1. Nothing in this Agreement precludes XXXXX from engaging in protected, concerted activity.

1. XXXXX acknowledges and agrees that her continued employment with the University is contingent upon her compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement, and that her failure to comply with all terms and conditions of the Agreement subjects her to dismissal upon execution of this Agreement.

1. In the event XXXXX is terminated from employment pursuant to this Agreement, XXXXX waives her right to a Skelly hearing XXXXX and the Union acknowledges and agree that the parties waive their right to file a grievance or complaint with the University of California, the courts or any governmental administrative agency concerning her dismissal for failure to adhere to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

1. The parties further agree that this Agreement shall not serve as a precedent for the resolution of any other issue or grievance and that this Agreement shall not be precedent setting.

1. Nothing contained herein shall be deemed an admission by the University of any misfeasance or liability whatsoever.

1. It is further agreed that XXXXX and the Union will not grieve this Agreement.

1. If any provision, or portion of any provision(s), of this Agreement is found to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision or portion thereof shall be deemed severed and the remaining terms of the Agreement shall remain in effect.

This Last Chance Agreement incorporates the entire understanding between the parties and recites the sole consideration for the promises exchanged herein. In reaching this agreement, neither party has relied on any presentation or promise except as expressly set forth herein. Each of the undersigned parties hereby acknowledges that a representative of their own choosing has represented them and that they understand and fully aware of the contents and legal effect of this Last Chance Agreement and agree to be bound by the terms contained herein.

///

///

Date: Date:

For the University: XXXXX

____________________________ ____________________________

Jennifer Schiffner,

Director, Employee & Labor Relations

For UAW 2865:

____________________________

Kavitha Iyengar, President

Email from graduate student to UCSC Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor on the day Winter quarter grades are due.

To the administration,

Despite the world-sized cloud of severe uncertainty the Covid-19 global pandemic has thrown us into, I am certain nevertheless that I will not be submitting grades today. The conditions of precarity that many the world over are newly experiencing – fear of falling ill, fear of job loss and financial ruination, feelings of isolation and powerlessness – these were already more than familiar to us, driving us to begin our movement for a COLA in the first place. We needed one before, and now we need one more than ever.

I am speaking for myself. The 80+ graduate student teachers you sacrificed were striking for the same cause I am striking for, so I withhold grades in solidarity. As a movement we have always made decisions collectively, but acted autonomously. And so I speak autonomously. But in this time of imposed isolation, it has become starkly clear that we have never been autonomous; that we think and we act on each other’s behalf; that in all our particular acts we nurture and further a co-allegiant goal. We striking graduate students, ourselves, gathered the funds to lift out of total penury the 80+ students you terminated. In keeping, I sincerely hope you are staying safe and enjoying the company of your loved ones in this precarious time of isolation and apprehensiveness. In keeping, while you may thank this pandemic for having shut down campus in lieu of us shutting down campus, and while you may thank this pandemic for virally overtaking the news cycle in lieu of stories of your brutality and our victories, do not for one moment think or thank Covid-19 for shutting down the strike. It has only more keenly affirmed us of our foundational resolve, and more firmly reminded us of our need to organize.

So I repeat, I myself am withholding grades today. I’m uncertain what sort of retaliation you are planning towards myself and others like me; your recent action against 80+ graduate student workers was unconscionable then, whereas a similar retaliatory action now would likely place you in a circle of…well, I’ve been reading a lot of Dante. I would ask instead that you respond to us with a COLA, that you use your administrative power to act as an exemplary model of what community leaders can do for their members in times of crisis. I don’t care if that’s naive. We are a community in crisis, and you can do something about it. Do something about it.

This is not a plea, this is a suggestion; generosity looks better than Randian intransigence. Either way we’ll get our COLA.

Sincerely,
Jared Harvey
PhD Candidate in Literature

We come into the COVID crisis after months of struggling to be paid enough to live in Santa Cruz, one of the most expensive rental markets in the US. 

More than 80 of us were fired in the process, now scrambling without our second and third jobs. Undergraduates are choosing between grossly overpriced housing on a closed campus and the uncertainty of securing housing in a closed economy. Residents of Santa Cruz, losing their “non-essential” jobs, remain compelled to participate in the “essential” economy—paying rent to landlords.

Although all residents of Santa Cruz lived in a crisis long before COVID, it is especially acute and urgent now. 

A group of Santa Cruz housing activists and organizers from the COLA movement at UCSC ask you to fill in this survey (droprentsc.com). We are developing a network of tenants, both affiliated with UCSC and not, to gauge the political will for tenant organizing in Santa Cruz around rent forgiveness, eliminating rent burden, and forming mutual aid networks.

If our county won’t introduce proper rental protections, if our employers will not pay us enough to live here, if our state won’t support us through the pandemic,

Then we will drop the rent ourselves.

We want to begin by acknowledging the exhaustion and anxiety many of us are experiencing. For us at UCSC, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic comes amidst an already tumultuous year. Like so many faculty, staff, and undergraduate students, we are tired, we are stressed, and we desperately want to see a resolution to the ongoing strike. 

Over the last week, strikers have been asked, “Why, in the face of a global health pandemic, would you continue striking for a COLA?” Sometimes, this question is followed with concern for undergraduate students who, without a doubt, have endured an unusual and stressful quarter. More often, this question is posed alongside the assertion that there are much larger matters to attend to, now. While we agree that we are in the midst of a crisis, we strongly disagree that this crisis gives us reason to pause our labor action. In fact, we argue that the crisis itself gives new urgency to our strike demand and renders our victory all the more necessary. We are writing to explain why. 

First, for those of us living paycheck-to-paycheck, the ability to access emergency provisions in our moment of crisis is virtually impossible. Many of us have no savings. Most of us have no family or generational wealth to draw on. The financial insecurity that compelled us to demand a COLA is now compounded by crisis-related expenses (unexpected travel, additional childcare costs, medical supplies, aid to relatives and loved ones, to name just a few).  

Second, given the exorbitant cost of living in Santa Cruz, it is not uncommon for graduate student-workers to work additional jobs. These second and third jobs are necessary to supplement the inadequate wages we receive as TAs and GSIs. However, since the order to “shelter in place” began, graduate student-workers, like workers around the country, are reporting being formally laid off or told to stay home without pay (who knows for how long, though a federal report estimates at least 18 months). With people losing their second and third jobs, the demand for a COLA is the demand to survive. 

But beyond the ways in which the economic precarity of graduate workers is compounded by the crisis, it also needs to be pointed out that this precarity itself compounds the crisis.  The University can grant sick leave and move all instruction online, but so long as it continues to underpay its workforce, requiring grads to continue to seek out second and third jobs (now as “essential” Instacart shoppers, DoorDashers, and Amazon delivery drivers) in order to make rent in Santa Cruz, it is still contributing to the likelihood that its workers, out of desperation and unable to forego supplemental employment, will contribute to the spread of the virus.  Therefore, organizing against economic precarity is very directly about addressing the conditions that produce this pandemic.  

We know from the history of labor organizing that crises are most definitely not when a pause is called for in our work for a more just society.  To treat a national emergency as something that must supersede all other demands we place on our employers and our governments is to all but guarantee that the crisis will be resolved to the benefit of those in power and on the backs of the most vulnerable.  The greatest gains for labor of the last century came as the result of a decade and a half long national strike wave that took place in the midst of the successive crises and national mobilizations of the great depression and the Second World War.  The workers who led these strikes knew that if they bracketed their demands during these global emergencies, the world that emerged would be one that was worse for working people.  

The idea that a crisis is a time when everyone’s interests align in the face of a greater shared danger is a quaint fantasy.  This danger is never shared evenly.  In the present moment, workers around the world are taking strike action and demanding what they need from their employer to live. They are striking not in spite of the pandemic but because of it.  Their demands—our demands—for economic justice are demands to end the intolerable inequality that both exacerbates and is exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak.  

The University has the ability to negotiate with us and to resolve this matter immediately. Now, more than ever, we (and all low-wage workers) need a living wage! 

Solidarity forever,

Striking graduate students