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UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

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Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#351

Post by logifail »

Balgair wrote: post #190
papeda wrote: post #108

There are about 1800 UCSC graduate students [1]. From this 2014-15 UCSC budget report [2] there is a very near 2:1 masters:phd graduation ratio. Assuming there are 2 years of masters students and 6 of PhD at any one time, that makes PhD students 60% of “graduate students”. Let’s make this easy by saying 1000 PhD students (if anything I imagine it’s way less than this — as I understand, monetizing masters students has…

The Sacremento Bee has a database of all the salaries of every state worker, including UCSC professors and admin here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/ Chancellor Larvie made $364,754 last year at UCR.

> Chancellor Larvie made $364,754 last year at UCR

Was that the annual base salary?

What was the value of the rest of the package?

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#352

Post by anigbrowl »

allovernow wrote: post #134
csb6 wrote: post #64

Earlier 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'…

The vast majority of people in the "labor market" are making livable wages. This is not the "unjust system" that a minority at the bottom are complaining about. In any case this "exploitation" is temporary for these student teachers and most importantly as others have pointed out, most of these students are foreign workers and personally I think it's a little exploitive for them to demand entitlements while harming t…

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Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#353

Post by chrisseaton »

asdff wrote: post #52
chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don’t have to work for the university while you do your PhD if you don’t want to. I didn’t - I worked for a company instead. Maybe if the university had paid more I’d have worked for it instead.

Most schools will kick you out of the program if you take on a job during your PhD.

Why are they happy with you working for them but not for someone else?

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#354

Post by simonh »

kortilla wrote: post #324
jdm2212 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. A union-negotiated contract that's better than the one you'd get without the union is, well, better. It might not be "fair" or flawless, but it's still better.

Unless it’s worse. The assumption that forming a union and entering into effectively hostile negotiations with the company will result in a better compensation is unfounded.

It's perfectly founded, because I have seen it happen. Back in the 80s was a Thatcher believer, still am really, but in the 90s I was a member of a moderate public sector union in the UK and saw it working from the inside. It was a real eye opener, the union had huge experience in health and safety (a significant issue in that organisation), the unintended side effects of various policies and procedures, all sorts of things and actually worked very well with management to represent legitimate concerns.

It doesn't always work, in some industries I can see the relationship is much more confrontational and damaging, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#355

Post by WalterBright »

logifail wrote: post #349
WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being cheap with your chief investment officer doesn't sound like a good idea. Besides, a proper CIO's pay is tied to getting good investment returns.

> Besides, a proper CIO's pay is tied to getting good investment returns [...] Q: What happens to the typical CIO and his/her package when returns aren't "good" ?

Fired.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#356

Post by Traster »

nostrebored wrote: post #71
acdha wrote: post #12

I feel like these stories should mention the compensation for the people attacking graduate students for demanding a living wage. Someone making well into 6 figures really doesn’t have a good basis for summarily dismissing that need: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/university-o...

Why should they expect a living wage for sub-demand fields of research? Why do my choices to achieve financial stability override my experience prior to that? When you're from a poor family the decisions that these striking students are making are befuddling.

If there's no demand they shouldn't be employed. Citing demand as a reason for exploiting workers is a stupid argument and you shouldn't be making it.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#357

Post by bsder »

kortilla wrote: post #334
bsder wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you have both fallen into the position that the University wants you to. UCSC can easily marshal the resources to get your grades, get you graduated, etc. The fact that UCSC chooses not to in order to divide you from the strikers is intentional . People don't go on strike because it's fun or popular. And strikes are not meant to be convenient.

> UCSC can easily marshal the resources to get your grades Unless UCSC is hiring water boarding specialists, no they can’t. The TA refused to give them up.

1) A TA can get hit by a bus tomorrow. What do you do in that case? You can just do that here.

2) Waterboarding and torture have been demonstrated over and over to be ineffective. That mere idea that they might ever be a useful tool is pernicious and needs to be denounced even when said in jest.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#358

Post by haditab »

refurb wrote: post #121
hedora wrote: post #8

Hopefully 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.

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). Yup, the students joined the union and the union negotiated a contract they didn't like. Now the students are breaking that contract.

Well, the students didn't "join" the union. The union has been in place for many decades (likely since before the students were born).

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#359

Post by akiselev »

WalterBright wrote: post #355
logifail wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, a proper CIO's pay is tied to getting good investment returns [...] Q: What happens to the typical CIO and his/her package when returns aren't "good" ?

Fired.

With a golden parachute.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#360

Post by chrisseaton »

hervature wrote: post #86
chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don’t have to work for the university while you do your PhD if you don’t want to. I didn’t - I worked for a company instead. Maybe if the university had paid more I’d have worked for it instead.

PhD in Europe is different than in the US. There's is very little industry-academia support in terms of working while doing your PhD. From Princeton's policies, particularly the last sentence: "Graduate study at Princeton, at both the doctoral and, in most cases, the master’s level, requires full-time commitment to study and research on the part of students. The Graduate School’s financial support structure, which ex…

> requires full-time commitment to study and research on the part of students

How can they say this, and then also ask their graduate students to teach? They're contradicting themselves.

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