Berkeley- Strike over Unfair Labor Practices Friday

notice:
"UC labor relations in the Dynes era: Moving backwards?

Talks broke down yesterday in our contract negotiations with UC and the
situation shows no sign of improving. We have charged UC with committing 64
unfair labor practices at the bargaining table and beyond. The UC
administration has also tried to buy our rights to support other Unions who
have filed similar unfair labor practice charges against UC. Moreover, UC
demands that we withdraw our unfair labor practice charges and grievances
over their failure to provide us critical information for enforcing our
rights.

The Union bargaining team, in consideration of UC's unfair labor practices,
calls for a 1 day unfair labor practice strike at all UC campuses on Friday,
and continues to resist the University's attempts to buy our rights. To sign
up for a picket shift and find out more about how to become involved, call
your Union office at 510-549-3863. We need to make sure that the Dynes
administration is a step forward in labor relations, not a step backward.

The Union Bargaining Team
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If you would like to help out, as a non union member, please call the number above or help bolster a picketline. UC Berkeley has a perimeter that is over 2 miles around, so a few hundred TAs trying to cover all the entrances to the school can look really sparse. The picket lines are considered permeable in that we encourage students and others to come on campus and go to class like normal. Typically, picketers do try to ask that delivery people for other unionized workplaces such as UPS should not cross the line and make deliveries on campus during the day of strike.

From the perspective of TAs who haven't been attending the union meetings like me, some of us aren't entirely sure of the nature of the 64 unfair labor practices, and the sticking negotiating points. It is clear to everyone in the state that the state budget will be cut by about 1/3rd this year and this will involve harsh cuts, and perhaps a harsh negotiating environment. What lots of people aren't aware of is that after years of cuts from the state, the state contribution to each student's education costs is only 25-30%, and tuition and private research money make up the rest. So it isn't so clear that pay level and the budget are the root of the current breakdown in talks.

Several decades ago, a larger fraction of university classes were taught by tenured faculty. In the 70s and 80s, the number of total graduate PHD students increased much faster than the number of opening academic teaching slots that graduating PhDs could potentially move into. In fact, the trend at many universities has been to have graduate student instructors for many of the lower division composition, language, math and science lab classes, and to eliminate new faculty positions.
The California state legislature plans to have an increase in the number of graduate students, as they speak of blocking some undergraduate enrollment, for this reason. This produces a pyramidal effect where there are several PhD students in training for each academic position that will be available, so in many fields that lack many alternative career pathways after graduate school outside of academia, the graduate school experience is akin to a great live experience at very low pay- approximately $12,000-$14,000/yr for a normal position at UCB. As students get married and have children and enter their 40s or 30s, it is difficult to depend on such a job if there is no stability created by the union. This is why teaching assistants have been unionizing and demanding recognition as real low-paid employees rather than volunteer or pseudo-workers