Tag: Email Timeline

Strike Updates Day 15

From Joe Klein
March 2, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 
For the 15th day, hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied at the base of campus–today wearing red for ed in honor of the striking educators who have come before us–most recently in LA, West Virginia, and Oklahoma. For the 15th consecutive working day, metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. Energy was incredibly high all morning as strikers marched on the picket line and rallied for a press conference where fired graduate students spoke out and told their stories–about being denied their livelihood while living with the threat of deportation, chronic illnesses and disabilities, and with families to support and care for. Directly after the press conference, faculty marched down Coolidge to the main entrance of campus, and together with strikers peacefully closed down the main entrance to campus, which remained closed for the entire working day. Meanwhile, major strike actions happened across the state, wearing red in solidarity with UCSC, including a “Big Ass Rally” at UC Davis, a Red4Ed march and rally at UCSD, and a massive march and rally at UC Santa Barbara, while UC Irvine held a sickout strike and rally, UCR rallied and held a general assembly, and UCLA held a major march and general assembly to move toward further escalation. The strike is spreading to all 10 campuses. 

As of today, UCSC has now spent approximately $4.5 million on the police presence at the picket line. Meanwhile university administration remains silent–and so the strike continues!

In a stunning development, our statewide union UAW 2865 has filed additional unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the University of California due to the firing of UCSC graduate students, and is convening a bargaining team to discuss a vote to authorize an ULP strike. This would mean that all UAW 2865 workers at all 10 campuses would be legally protected to escalate to a full teaching strike in protest of the university’s egregious escalations. Click here to read the full UAW 2865 statement. The union explained its commitment: 

“Why are we digging in on this? Because we’re facing a crisis in higher ed – about who gets to participate when few can afford it, about gender equity and sexual harassment, about chronic under funding from our political leaders & about fair pay.”

In more exciting news from the picket, in the afternoon strikers gathered to welcome hip hop artist, writer, and activist Mike Africa Jr. to the picket line all the way from Philadelphia. While waiting for Mike to arrive, UCSC students read poetry written by Mumia Abu-Jamal, author, radical activist, inmate, and PhD student in History of Consciousness. Mike Africa Jr. spoke to a huge crowd of students about the power of solidarity and radical struggle, the connections between racial and environmental justice, and the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex. Strikers are grateful to the amazing undergraduate organizers who made this visit possible. 

Today I learned that the UC’s annual operating budget is approximately $9.5 BILLION with a fat B. A group of organizers is working to target state government officials, especially Gov. Gavin Newsom, to ask that $310 million of the state’s $21.5 billion (ANOTHER B) 2020 surplus be allocated for statewide COLA funding for the UC system. Supporters are encouraged to call Gavin Newsom’s office and ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. 

In honor of election day, organizers have planned a “Super BBQs-day” election bbq party at the picket line tomorrow. Anyone who needs to vote on campus is encouraged to cross the picket line! In addition to the regular loop buses, there will be voter taxis available at the base of campus to help people get to the polls efficiently. 

Some of today’s action items: 

  • Join strikers on the picket line, beginning Monday at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.
  • 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 asking them to come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. 
  • 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. 

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!

A note on the firings

Dear all,


It is worth noting, firstly, that more than 54 graduate student workers were fired or barred from spring appointments on Friday, including at least ten international students. The number is certainly higher than 70 and may be around or above 80.


I wanted to state the obvious point that these firings are not yet final. They can be reversed at any moment. That is, they are now a site of struggle for our community. 


Many have written and will continue to write about the stakes of this moment: for the jobs, livelihoods, and careers of those fired; for the future of public graduate research and education; for the quality of public undergraduate education; for the future of labour movements and living-wage and affordability struggles; for the future of robust humanities, arts, and social science divisions; etc.


But I wanted to share my simple conviction that no community deserving of the name would permit 70-80 of its members to be fired for a peaceful struggle for the ability to pay rent. In the words of our STEM colleagues, this is a deplorable action.


The support outside of UCSC since the firings has been swift and enormous. Since the news broke, the strike fund has received nearly $100,000. People across the UC system are organizing weeks of action and graduate student workers move closer to striking every day, both for our reinstatement and for their own COLA. Before the firings, thousands of faculty across the country committed to effectively boycott UCSC in the event of mass firings.

 
But once again, and even after grueling months of struggle with administrative threats and police violence, the response that matters most is the one within the UCSC community. It is a moment that demands nothing less than the most meaningful forms of solidarity: more grading strikes, mutual aid, class cancellation, protest, picketing, collective job refusals, boycotts, work stoppages, etc. 


This starts on Monday at a press conference on the picket at 9:30am and does not stop until we are reinstated, safe, and making genuine progress towards the implementation of a COLA. 


I’ll see you on the picket.


Your fired international colleague and friend,

Jack. 

COLA Pledges: ACTION NEEDED!

Dear all,

TL;DR: ACTION ITEM: ORGANIZE A MEETING WITH YOUR DEPARTMENT CONCERNING DEPARTMENT PLEDGES.

Linked here are all 22 pledges signed by departments in solidarity with fired graduate student workers, and a letter from STEM graduates at UCSC.

You have probably heard by now that on Friday the administration announced the firing of 54 graduates, before sending out 44 notices of intent to dismiss grads from spring appointments. In addition to this, an undisclosed number of graduates received notice that their spring appointments will be blocked, bringing the number of fired grads well beyond 54, and possibly as high as 80.

At least 16 pledges are now active and no fewer than 411 graduate student workers are committed to declining appointments next quarter, in one form or another, until fired grads are reinstated. This total includes at least 176 “hard pledges” to refuse any spring quarter appointment in the event of mass firing.

This moment demands the most meaningful form of solidarity. Fired graduate students have conviction in the knowledge that we are not alone on this campus. 

This is also a critical juncture for the future of public higher education. It is a decisive moment in the broader fight for a system of public education that adequately funds graduate research and education—one that supports diverse and international scholarship, and that is run by and for researchers and educators.

We call upon departments to meet immediately to review their pledges and start to organize their fulfillment, and possibly expanding them in light of yesterday’s firings.

On Monday we will send out a form to assess the needs and positions of those who refuse TA/GSIships.

A list of pledges:

All pledges:

Anthropology, Astronomy, BME, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Education, EEB, ENVS, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, MCD Biology, METX, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.

Active pledges:

Anthropology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.

Possibly active (depending on the termination of a member of their department):

BME, ENVS.

“Hard” Pledges:*

Anthropology, Computational Media, Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, Literature, Psychology, Sociology

*Computational Media and Psychology’s pledges stated that they would refuse TAships, GSIships and readerships only in their departments (besides not taking up fired labor). Literature had stated they would also refuse GSRships; at the request of the collective, literature’s pledging grads retracted this and informed grads and the department of this today. The other hard pledges commit to declining all spring appointments other than GSRs.

STRIKE UPDATE: nearly 80 grad workers fired today, picket continues on Monday!

From gsa_pres

Today, UCSC administration announced the termination of 54 graduate student workers, and sent out official dismissal letters to at least 44 of us. 

Late this afternoon, a series of graduate student workers received an email from the Office of the EVC containing only the following single sentence:

This email serves to inform you that you will no longer be considered for or receive any Academic Student Employee (ASE) appointment including such positions as teaching assistant, graduate student instructor, tutor, or reader, for the spring quarter of the 2019-20 academic year.

We are still confirming the number of fired graduate student workers, and believe it may be as high as 80.

In solidarity with their comrades and colleagues on Kletzer’s chopping block, graduate students from 22 academic departments, comprising over 550 individual workers, have already pledged at a minimum to refuse Spring appointments vacated by terminated grads. Many of these graduate workers have pledged to refuse all Spring appointments if a single wildcat striker is terminated. Taking these pledges at their word, at least 394 graduate student workers are now committed to declining spring appointments in one form or another. 

In response to this grave administrative escalation, we call for the cancellation of classes on Monday and for everyone to join us on the picket for a press conference at 9am.

On Monday, we wear red for the future of higher ed. The strike continues. See you on the picket.

Strike Updates Day 14 / MAYDAY

Please come out Monday!

From Joe Klein
February 28, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 
For the 14th day, graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied at the base of campus. For the 14th consecutive working day, metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. Today’s energy built from yesterday’s Radical History March and Teach In which moved across campus gathering support and teaching about the history of student and labor organizing at UC Santa Cruz. Strikers sang and chanted about the legacy of social movements that they now join, before marching down to the base where they peacefully shut down the main entrance to campus.

Just after noon today, EVC Lori Kletzer wrote to inform graduate students that they were being fired from their spring appointments. In an email which began with laughable posturing about “increasing support” and “caring deeply” about graduate students, Lori Kletzer proceeded to fire close to 100 graduate students, knowingly and willingly depriving them of housing, medical care, the ability to feed their children and families, and condemning international students to deportation. As one grad noted, “Nothing like being fired by someone who really cares.” It is worth reiterating that EVC Kletzer’s claim to have attempted to “find an amenable resolution” is false, or in a more colloquial sense, a lie. Administration has never agreed to discuss “amenable solutions” with graduate students, preferring instead to dictate the terms of a labor dispute, to call in police to arrest and brutalize students, and then to fire them unilaterally, going against the directives and wishes of the Faculty Senate, the Graduate Student Association, and the undergraduate Student Union Assembly.

This is mayday. To meet this egregious escalation, strikers are organizing for a massive week of action for this coming week 9. In an incredible show of solidarity, more than 500 graduate students have so far pledged to refuse appointments and go on strike. We will need all hands on deck to disrupt the violence of this university and to fight for a living wage for graduate workers. Faculty are called upon to get organized as quickly as possible and to move towards a full teaching strike. Together, faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, staff, and lecturers continue to fight for living wages for all of us, and for a university that works for all of us, not just the privileged or elite. And so the strike continues!

If you have ever cared about a graduate student we need you at the picket line on Monday. This is about your friends, your students, and the future of graduate education at the University of California. Please come join us in defiant celebration wearing red for education. 

As of today, UCSC has spent at least $4.2 million on police presence at the picket line. This is nearly 20% of the annual cost of a COLA for all graduates at UCSC at the rate of $1412 per month. It was also revealed today that Chancellor Cynthia Larive is in charge of a discretionary fund of approximately $120 million dollars, from which the police presence at the picket line has been paid. In other words, Larive could have paid for the entire annual cost of a COLA for all grads and still had $100 million left over in her no-strings-attached slush fund. While administration has made its priorities clear, we nevertheless, once again, invite them to negotiate in good faith to bring this strike to an end and to prevent further ongoing labor actions.

Yesterday as strikers chanted “UC UC you can’t hide, this strike’s going UC wide!,” the strike was indeed spreading like wildfire. On Thursday UC Santa Barbara began a full teaching strike to demand their own COLA and in solidarity with UCSC, while UC Davis also began a grading strike. UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Merced, and UC San Diego are organizing toward strikes of their own. Meanwhile, yesterday the statewide UC graduate workers union UAW 2865 has filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against the University of California, and today Senator Bernie Sanders again called on Janet Napolitano and UCSC to negotiate with striking graduate students and stop union-busting. 

More information about the week ahead will be forthcoming but we are planning a massive “Red for Ed” rally on Monday, a Get out the Vote / Super BBQs-day on Tuesday with voter taxis, and a “Cola-chela” lineup of musical performances on Wednesday as a taste.  
Some of today’s action items: 

  • Join strikers on the picket line, beginning Monday at 7:30am. Please wear red and please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.   
  • Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  Please share the strike fund with your networks!
  • Faculty are encouraged to move 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 asking them to come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. 

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 Monday!
P.S. Please feel free to forward and share this message.

[From Admin] Notice of Intent to Dismiss for Spring Teaching Fellow Appointment

One of the 54 letters sent to TAs withholding fall grades on February 28, 2020. Approximately 28 other TAs received notices that they “will no longer be considered for or receive any Academic Student Employee (ASE) appointment.”

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[From Admin] Update on grade strike

Email from EVC Lori Kletzer to UCSC community on February 28, 2020, at 12:30 pm stating 54 TAs have continued to withhold fall grades and will be dismissed from spring appointments.

February 28, 2020

To: UC Santa Cruz Community
From: Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer
Subject: Update on grade strike

Dear Colleagues,

As you are likely aware, in an effort to better support our Ph.D. and MFA students and help address the very legitimate financial concerns they have raised, we announced and implemented a number of new campus programs to help alleviate their financial burdens – and we are working together to provide greater levels of support. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to find an amenable resolution, 54 teaching assistants have continued to withhold fall grade information. As a result, we have been left with no choice but to take an action that we had truly and deeply hoped to avoid. As I previously shared, students who fail to meet their contractual obligations by withholding fall grade information will not receive spring quarter appointments, or if they have received them they will be dismissed from their spring quarter appointments.

We care deeply about our graduate students, value their contributions to our campus through both their scholarship and research, and their work as teaching assistants and graduate student instructors. It is extremely disappointing to us that we have to take such a drastic step, but we ultimately cannot retain graduate students as teaching assistants who will not fulfill their responsibilities. While we have been able to successfully get 96 percent of grades submitted for the fall quarter, we cannot again jeopardize our undergraduates’ education or put them in a position where they may not have the teaching resources they need to succeed throughout the spring quarter.

I want to thank all of you who have had honest and difficult conversations with graduate students about the need to end this unsanctioned strike. Our graduate students are brilliant scholars and, like you, I want to see them succeed at UC Santa Cruz and beyond. No doubt your conversations encouraged some graduate students to return to their important work.

Alongside other campus leaders, I met five times with graduate student leadership with the hope that we could resolve this unsanctioned strike and return to our shared mission of educating undergraduates and conducting research for the good of our society.

While I’ve disagreed with the tactics the graduate students have used to communicate their concerns, I do not want to downplay the gravity of those concerns. The students have highlighted a real need for greater support because of the high cost of housing in Santa Cruz and limited campus housing available to them. As a reminder, in an effort to provide more financial support and predictability for our Ph.D. and MFA students and work toward greater support overall, the campus is:

  • providing an annual $2,500 housing supplement until more campus housing becomes available for graduate students. This support will be available retroactively for this academic year for doctoral and MFA students who resume their TA/GSI appointment obligations for fall, winter, and spring quarters.
  • offering new and continuing doctoral students support packages for five years (two years for MFA students). These packages will have a minimum level of support equivalent to that of a 50 percent teaching assistantship.
  • creating two temporary housing assistance programs to support graduate students through Slug Support.
  • forming a joint Senate-Administrative Graduate Education Working Group to develop a strategic plan for appropriate and sustainable graduate program support.
  • convening a new Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Graduate Education to examine and make recommendations to improve graduate student support throughout graduate school and beyond as graduate students prepare for a range of careers beyond the professoriate. 

With a clear sense for how many graduate students will continue serving as teaching assistants in the spring, we can now begin planning for how we deliver an education to our undergraduates. As I shared at the Feb. 19 Academic Senate meeting, this is a problem for us to solve. I am committed to working closely with all impacted departments and providing additional resources so that we can continue with our mission. I will soon be visiting impacted departments to join in discussions about our curriculum.

This has been a difficult time for our campus and we have more problems to solve.

We all believe deeply in the mission of UC Santa Cruz and public higher education. We have the privilege to teach a diverse student body and provide them with knowledge and skills that can transform their lives. We have the honor to cultivate scholars who will be the next generation of professors and practitioners. And we, as professors, help reshape our world, whether it’s through ideas, inventions, and discovery.

I look forward to continuing to fulfill our tremendous mission.  

Letter to Lecturers, Workers, & Staff

February 19, 2020

Dear UCSC lecturers, workers, and staff,

We know that you cannot show your solidarity with graduate students in
all the ways you want to.

We know that it pains you to have to cross our picket line to make
sure you can pay rent and put food on the table.

We know that our strike has impacted you, whether by creating more
labor for you, slowing your commute, or otherwise inconveniencing you.

We know that workers and staff have faced intimidation from the
administration, and that some have been threatened with docked pay
because of impacts of the strike.

We know that lecturers face a particular form of precarity, absent
many protections we and others on this campus enjoy, and that even if
you want to cancel classes to support us, you might not be able to.

We want lecturers, workers, and staff to know that we appreciate you.

We want you to know that we see and cherish your efforts to support us.

We thank you for the risks you are taking to aid us.

Love & Solidarity Forever,
Striking Graduate Students

After Doomsday / Life After Death

Doomsday came and went, or was deferred until Thursday. 

Wildcat strikers stared down the UC’s biggest possible threat—mass termination—and the UC blinked, at least for now, as EVC Lori Kletzer this morning released a series of “clarifications” on the terms of her mass firing threat.

In a meeting with department chairs today, Kletzer made it clear that the $2,500 program is not a COLA designed to alleviate rent burden, nor is it an offer in response to our demand for a COLA. It is, in her words, an “incentive to go back to work.” 

If the last doomsday was the stick-version of strikebreaking (Kletzer today: “I want this strike to end”), then this is the carrot. No doubt we prefer carrots to sticks, but this is not much of a carrot.

This “program” excludes MA students as well as graduate students in their sixth year and beyond, many of whom have been delayed in their studies precisely because of the housing market in Santa Cruz. Furthermore, there is no transparency about the length of this program. Like any merely academic program, it may be revoked any year, or under the next austerity-dictated budget. It is not even a promise of non-retaliation: none of the disciplinary measures through the student code of conduct process will be paused or stopped, and disciplinary suspensions for arrestees will not be lifted.

In meetings with various academic divisions today, Kletzer repeatedly and consistently confirmed that this was neither an offer nor part of any future negotiation with strikers. Rather, this is a program that UCSC will roll out regardless of strikers’ input, with the caveat that any present or future wildcat striker, in addition to facing the prospect of dismissal, will not be eligible for this funding. Instead of opening good-faith negotiations with a collective of strikers to end the strike once and for all, the administration has simply unveiled a tactic designed to bribe individual strikers into returning to work. 

Annual rents in Santa Cruz increase by $2,500 every few years (or sooner, depending on the landlord). This “incentive” does almost nothing to address the reasons most of us went on strike in the first place.

Grads at multiple UC campuses are meeting tonight and throughout this week to decide their escalation in response to our strike and our plight here at Santa Cruz. If last week was an indication of how much the administration might be willing to budge, another week of mass action and the threat of mass action at other campuses may just tip the scales in our favor. 

We might be hearing some news very soon.

Picket Teach-in Coordination

From Jack Davies
February 24, 2020

Dear all,

We’re in the third week of our strike. Throughout, undergrads, grads, lecturers, and faculty have been running teach-ins everyday on the picket. These are wonderful learning moments and for many of us, the kinds of education that we have often wished to include in a UC curriculum. Topics have ranged from student debt and housing to horizontal education, legal observation and direct action training, and many more besides.

We are sending out this form (https://forms.gle/goYScQiRf8e6gVo86) to try to better coordinate and give advance notice of our teach-ins. If you have any plans or desires to teach or learn on the picket, on whatever topic, please fill it out and we’ll support you to make it happen.

Tomorrow, we are running our teach-ins on legal observation at 12pm and on horizontal pedagogy at 1pm.

Can’t wait.