Strike News: Additional Developments - Part 3

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

We continue noting developments related to the student worker strike below:

From the Sacramento Bee:

A group of striking University of California workers held a sit-in Monday at a downtown Sacramento building, where police officers surrounded them for a few hours before citing them for trespassing... The sit-in coincided with a march on the building, the UC Center Sacramento at 1130 K Street. The center is a teaching, research and public-service site operated by UC Davis that offers an academic program in public policy to students from throughout the UC system... Shortly before 5 p.m. — when the building was scheduled to close for the day — officers gave the workers inside the fourth and final dispersal order. The workers refused to leave. The officers cited and released the 17 workers. Nobody was taken into custody. The workers were each given a date to appear in Sacramento Superior Court...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article269640286.html.

Also from the Bee:

The University Council-American Federation of Teachers has sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, urging him “to do everything in your power to immediately resolve the instructional crisis” at the University of California, which is now several weeks into an academic worker strike. The union has accused the UC of failing to bargain in good faith... The letter calls on Newsom to pressure UC President Michael Drake and the UC Board of Regents to pay a living wage to the academic student employees and student researchers, and to impress upon the UC that the state government “is willing to sufficiently reinvest in public higher education to enable all of our schools to pay instructors living wages.”

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitolalert/article269625701.html.

Buried in an article in the Daily Cal:

...The UC bargaining team sent the union its first serious proposal late Friday night..., according to [graduate student Roshanak] Gonzalez. She said in an email that the wages offered show “substantial progress” from the last proposal. However, Jonathan Mackris, a picket lead captain, said the offer is still “extremely inadequate.” ...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/2022/12/05/uaw-academic-workers-stage-sit-ins-atcalifornia-hall-enter-wheeler-hall.

And somewhat related from Inside Higher Ed:

An associate professor of political science at Indiana University at Bloomington told graduate students that he can’t serve as the department’s job-placement director any longer, as he refuses to participate in the “official department charade.”

“Dear graduate students,” the professor, Abdulkader Sinno, emailed students, “I’m resigning because I don’t want to be complicit in keeping you in a Ph.D. program that doesn’t help your advancement. The department needs graduate students to cheaply teach or assist in teaching its undergraduate students, and for faculty to keep claiming that we have a serious Ph.D. program. I just don’t believe that you should pay for their needs with your livelihood.” ...

Michael McCarthy, a second-year graduate student in the department... posted Sinno’s letter to Twitter... McCarthy has said on social media that one concrete way to help graduate students would be for the university to recognize their union. Graduate assistants at IU-Bloomington went on strike seeking recognition and collective bargaining rights in the spring, but the university refused to accede to these demands. Over the summer, the university offered them contracts that raised minimum stipends from about $18,000 to $22,000...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/12/07/faculty-member-issuesdire-warning-grad-students-about-jobs.

T o h e a r t h e t e x t a b o v e , c l i c k o n t h e l i n k b e l o w : https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/additional%203.mp3