Is that even legal?
UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
171–180 of 445 posts
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Grad students aren't even really workers "As part of its commitment to transparency and public accountability, each year the University of California publicly reports employee pay data. The report covers UC's career faculty and staff employees, as well as part-time, temporary and student employees." [1] I think the commonly accepted definition of worker is someone who is an employee and not a manager. Grad students…
They're not workers in the traditional sense. What are other workers get degrees for their work?
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then for all intents and purposes, it is a duck.
As a grad student, I taught 2 undergraduate courses a semester as the professor, the same load as a full faculty member—very much ‘workers in the traditional sense.’ Moreover, grad students are also writing a dissertation and doing research for their advisors and taking a full course load, and apparently in CA, also working a side job to pay their bills.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's not how it works in the real world. You get paid by market rate; which means if there is someone else accepting a pay cut, you'll get fired and replaced. I agree, that's true. It's almost as if this is an unjust system that devolves into a race to the bottom and inevitable exploitation of workers. And that in the real world, anyone who tries to fight against this system ends up screwed by their employers. I'…
How is it exploitation? These people are students who are compensated while learning -- they're not full time staff. They get a degree at the end.
Many of these students are paid part-time to do essentially full-time jobs, and often find it difficult or even impossible take up outside employment.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
because they perform a service. they teach classes. that's literally what they were withholding - grades for classes they TA. so there is plenty of demand for that service. it has nothing to do with the labor market after they graduate. god some people just fall all over themselves to be smug.
If you want to have an actual conversation, I'm happy to. If not, let me know so I don't waste my time. They do perform a service, sometimes teaching classes, sometimes grading papers, sometimes assisting with office hours. They get paid $2400/mo, putting them above median salary for full-time TAs. Nobody is forcing them to go to graduate school in California and accept this job. This isn't something that they were c…
Even if you receive the biggest stipend out of all graduate programs in the entire country in computer science or whatever stem subtype you'd like to name, it won't be much higher than 35k/yr. Grad students in top programs in Boston and the bay area are living on the razor edge of affording a roof and food. It doesn't get much easier in the midwest, either. Your rents are cheaper but your stipend is comparatively lower, and opportunities are more difficult to find compared to networking on the coasts which are hubs of tech and biotech.
The current stipend is just not enough to pay for rent in Santa Cruz. In recent years the city has become a bedroom community for bay area commuters and appropriate housing supply hasn't been built to match the influx of people. There are grad students at ucsc where it is cheaper for them to fly across the world back to their home country for the summer than to live in Santa Cruz for those three months.
There are also graduate students who entered their program under a different union contract, with a different rental market landscape, and now find themselves with the prospect of being unable to pay for a wildly higher rent than they expected from data from 2016, something that they couldn't forsee when the signed their fellowship contract 4 years ago, so yes, some of these students are being baited and screwed.
On top of this, UCSC graduate students attempted to fix this at the negotiation table, but the agreement between all UC campuses and the greater graduate union did not take into account the rising cost of living in Santa Cruz when it was made; 83% of UCSC graduate students opposed this agreement at the time and their concerns were not heard by their union or the University of California.
For many students, the choices are to starve, attempt to derail their life by dropping out of grad school and reset it in another field somewhere far away from California with their lack of disposable income to even fund a move like this, or to strike and attempt to improve the situation. I can't blame them at all.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
You paid a bunch of money, then the school provided you with instructors that have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from.
Hyperbole is not really helpful for this discussion.
“I’m struggling for basic needs such as toilet paper, buying my son milk,” said Arjona, who pays about $1,700 a month in rent out of the $2,200 she receives
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whether or not it hurts the students is up to the administration. Professors can grade their own exams, as they do in many courses already. The university doesn't even have to dip into their own pockets, they can use federally subsidized work study labor if they were short on labor. However, by hurting students and adhering to draconian policies that serve to hurt more students, the school is paradoxically increasing…
From what I’ve gathered, the exams were turned over to the grad students for grading. The school asked for the grades, the grad students refused. Has the school asked for the exams to be returned, so they could be graded? I don’t know. I assume the graduate students wouldn’t turn them over anyways.
And again, this is brought upon by the university and their adherence to policies designed to strike the biggest wedge between the student body. I've had classes at my university where if you miss one exam your grade is averaged from all the rest. If the building that housed the exams was engulfed in flames and all the exams were lost, this is probably what the university would do in response.
The university is free to make whatever rule they'd like to get around this, but instead go for maximum hurt to try to cut the legs off of this strike, and what is blowing me away is that this strategy by the university is working very effectively.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#177More grad students should refuse to turn in grades. After all, it is the grad students doing the grading and work.
What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You find a job that pays the same but requires fewer hours of work?
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#178Hopefully the strike will now spread to other UC campuses. The back story here is that United Auto Workers (the UC grad students’ union) negotiated an unacceptable contract, and despite many months of pushback from the students, and despite UCSC voting against it, the union ratified it anyway (including a no-strike clause). Also, the faculty of UCSC voted against the firings.
> Hopefully the strike will now spread to other UC campuses.
It already has. Graduate students at UC Santa Barbara started striking a few days ago, and there are rumors of solidarity strikes at other UC campuses as well as a direct result of these firings.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#179I see a lot of discussion about the consequences of TAs withholding grades. This situation is a consequence of poor management at UCSC. Every other university I'm familiar with makes faculty responsible for submitting grades. It's inconceivable to me why TAs would be responsible for grades. TAs should be teaching assistants, not adjunct faculty. Edit: I read "assigning grades" to mean assigning the final grades for t…
Most faculty does not want to grade anything. I've TA'ed 6 courses, the professor just showed up for lectures and reused last year's exams/homeworks. Students had the solutions, >70% of the class copied them exactly. The prof didn't care. And TA's were handling most complaints about the grades. This was common for majority of undergrad level classes I took (a different UC campus). Also, it was my job as a TA to expla…
No offence, but that sounds like a really shitty school to me.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, 100% of the people affected by injustice will always go on strike. No external factors exist. The likely reason only 54 went on strike is because most grad students were afraid for their jobs, which the university has shown to be well-founded.
I could just as easily say these students went on strike because they are ideologues who were brainwashed by delusions of importance.
Brainwashed by the fact that there isn't money in their account to pay their landlord?