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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

#361

Post by raverbashing »

rumanator wrote: post #35
gist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you (and others) think that education and academia is somehow special and not the same as, say, acting (or any career) where people regularly earn no money and work bad 2nd jobs just to survive and do something they love or want as a career? In a free market system nobody is telling you to choose that career and a University and (typically) a non-profit doesn't have any particular incentive to not act in their…

Unfortunately a PhD is sold as a key step for a well-paying and fulfilling career where you can make a difference. As we live in a society where education is fundamental to success and having a good life, a PhD is considered as the last and most exclusive step in a promising career path. But then the disappointing part is that the system in place is designed to exploit newcomers and place them in an abuse relationshi…

> a PhD is sold as a key step for a well-paying and fulfilling career where you can make a difference

Yes, it is sold as such. But the appeal is fading fast.

Academia nowadays is something between a Beauty Pageant and the Hunger Games where people struggle with underpayment for years for maybe one day getting the famed tenured position.

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

#362

Post by thrwaway69 »

kova12 wrote: post #233
wutbrodo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get that a lot of people on HN probably see the current low wages as a natural function of supply and demand in different academic disciplines. But heck, just looking at this from the point of view of the university, which is allocating resources to fight this, the calculus is odd. Note that I'm not making any _moral or normative claims_ about not striking vs striking vs wildcat striking, nor about the interplay…

Which just underlies the problem with unions: not only they are compulsory institutions that force you into their ranks whether you want it or not, but even those who join them don't get a fair representation and have to strike on their own.

Maybe. Unions like democracy are a compromise. Though, I always wonder why do so many people here (despite not being in a tech union or majorly working in industries without them most likely) push for it so much?

Can anyone give me their actual experience being in a union that's not in the tech industry?

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

#363

Post by toomim »

wdevanny wrote: post #329
toomim wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at UCSC they do this every year . Here's news on the strike from 2018: https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/05/strike-updates.html Here's news on the strike from 2017: https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/01/strike-message.html There's reason to believe that no matter what deal was reached, they would just strike again next year, to try to get more money. How much is enough?

I noticed your two links mention different unions striking; some further research might be important here. One of your links is not graduate students striking, but the union for skilled workers at UCSC. The other is a union-sanctioned strike during (I think) a contract negotiation year. Neither is representative of the assertion that graduate students strike every year.

Sure, not all strikes are officially in the name of the grad students, but (a) the unions act together, and (b) the grad students specifically have gone on strike 3 times since 2013.

Here's the strike from 2013, with grad students and service workers going on strike together: https://afscme3299.org/media/news/ucsc-service-workers-grad-...

The comments on this UCSC reddit thread discuss how the unions have been coordinating their strikes over the last 3 years: https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/ese6sz/to_everyone_wh...

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

#364

Post by dragonwriter »

hedora wrote: post #13
chrisseaton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> United Auto Workers (the UC grad students’ union) Why are they represented by such a completely unrelated union?

There’s no clear path to replacing UAW. They somehow got in control of union representation for the entire UC system. The US is a closed shop country, so it is illegal for students to simply cancel their membership in UAW and join a graduate student workers union. I’m not familiar enough with labor law to know the exact proceedue, but presumably students would need to mount a state-wide campaign to vote UAW out (if i…

> There’s no clear path to replacing UAW.

Sure there is; the rules for decertifying unions and replacing them are not mysterious.

> They somehow got in control of union representation for the entire UC system.

Because the grad students formed unions and voted to affiliate with UAW, even before their rights to do so were recognized.

> I’m not familiar enough with labor law to know the exact proceedue, but presumably students would need to mount a state-wide campaign to vote UAW out (if it is even possible).

That's the main option (they'd need support of 30% of the represented employees to force a vote)

In principle, they could also challenge the designation of a single statewide bargaining unit and argue that the separate campuses (or at least, their campus) grad student workers are somehow not part of a community of common interest with the rest of the existing BU, which would allow separate decertification for just their campus.

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

#365

Post by inferiorhuman »

shitgoose wrote: post #274
unethical_ban wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "fair representation" And, tell me how not having any union is better for all than an imperfect union.

Is there a union of software developers? Would you like to start an imperfect one? Anyone?

Yes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/technology/kickstarter-un...

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/game-dev-union-leader...

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

#366

Post by JamesBarney »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #362
kova12 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which just underlies the problem with unions: not only they are compulsory institutions that force you into their ranks whether you want it or not, but even those who join them don't get a fair representation and have to strike on their own.

Maybe. Unions like democracy are a compromise. Though, I always wonder why do so many people here (despite not being in a tech union or majorly working in industries without them most likely) push for it so much? Can anyone give me their actual experience being in a union that's not in the tech industry?

The AMA has done an amazing job at representing the interests of doctors

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

#367

Post by WalterBright »

akiselev wrote: post #359
WalterBright wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fired.

With a golden parachute.

Golden parachutes are not decided on after the fact. They are agreed upon in advance when they are hired. The only reason companies offer them is to get the best people they can.

The person running your investments can make or break you. You're going to hire the best you can, and that's going to cost. And someone with a track record of making it rain is going to know this and know what they're worth.

If you want a golden parachute yourself, you're going to need to build a track record of success first showing you're worth it.

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

#368

Post by diffeomorphism »

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.

> The assumption ... is unfounded.

Considering that many, many countries exist where this is the case (most of the time), this seems to be very well founded.

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

#370

Post by pjc50 »

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…

Whenever there's a truly toxic dispute like this, the money is less important to the managers than maintaining the status hierarchy.
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