Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 445 posts

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

#401

Post by blaser-waffle »

dantheman wrote: post #394
exhilaration wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a lobbying organization - and yes, a very successful one at all levels of government. They're not involved in pay and contract negotiations at your local hospital.

They've successfully limited the supply of doctors to artificially increase wages.

True, but as someone with a surgery looming I'd much have someone who had to go through a 6-year training process then a simple 4 year one.

Like, medical mistakes are already crazy common -- and that's with the strict barriers of entry.

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

#402

Post by ChrisLomont »

namdnay wrote: post #392
WalterBright wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

> And someone with a track record of making it rain I think you kind of summed it up there... There are better things for a university to be doing than paying rainmakers

>There are better things for a university to be doing than paying rainmakers

Dozens of university endowments are over a billion dollars, with significant returns when under good management. Ignoring the returns possible on that means the students and state has to pay more to continue the university. Endowments often consist of hundreds or more fund, usually set up by donors, to advance some part of the university, which very often is scholarships and other direct student benefits.

It's incredibly short-sighted to downplay them without understanding the benefits.

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

#403

Post by corinroyal »

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.

Says a guy who never bothered to learn labor history, but feels he must know better anyway because somebody pays him good money for something. HN in a nutshell.

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

#404

Post by ip26 »

genuinealgerian wrote: post #399
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of getting banned for this comment, fuck this. I was an undergrad as UCSC and I supported the strikes then, and I support the strike now. Yes the strike interferes with undergrad education, but that is the entire point. I never went to class when a strike was on, just like I would never cross a picket line. Professors deserve to be paid well, and grad students in teaching or TA positions deserve to be pai…

Seriously, fuck this. Disrupting the revenue stream IS THE POINT.

A good strike hits the employer in the pocketbook. How much revenue did UC lose? Zero. Student fees are fixed.

It's the undergrads getting bent over the barrel, not UC, which is IMO why these strikes don't seem to have much public support.

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

#405

Post by burner831234 »

Karishma1234fff wrote: post #346
asdff wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grad students at UCSC didn't arbitrarily think the deal they struck isn't good enough anymore, they never thought it was good enough in the first place. 83% of UCSC grad students felt the minimums outlined in the agreement, which was a UC wide agreement and not between UCSC and the UCSC grad students by the way, were insufficient for the growing rents in Santa Cruz. This 13m number isn't arbitrary. In fact that $1400…

Did the students know this beforehand and despite knowing this joined UCSC ?

Haha. As a former grad student, let me tell you: 1. you're almost always eligible for subsidized power/water because your pay is that low (24k when I went) 2. some of these programs admit 10 ppl a year and no more. What you're getting paid isn't the first cut. Getting in is the first cut.

Working with the right professor to shape your research agenda and future as a result, is the second cut.

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

#406

Post by lostgame »

chrisseaton wrote: post #36
lostgame wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to live in whatever society you’re projecting here. I think that statement is incredibly narrow-minded. We need both .

> I don’t want to live in whatever society you’re projecting here. I was describing society as it is now and explaining why researchers get more scholarships than actors do.

Yet the best actors and musicians make far more in the long term, from the support of millions of people who evidently don’t think the way you do.

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

#407

Post by ivalm »

wahern wrote: post #336
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.

Compulsory union membership has been illegal since the 1947 Taft-Hartey Act. Compulsory legal representation fees for public sector unions have been illegal since Janus v. AFSCME (2018). Just like in a democracy, not everybody's interests can be fully satisfied in a union. So what? That doesn't necessarily mean we'd all be better off with autocracy or without any government whatsoever, not even the people getting the…

This is not entirely true. UCSC determines its own admission, they could have simply not increased the student body and their housing would have been sufficient.

I know the same thing is happening at UCSD, where the student body exploded in size and despite additional housing being built, it is insufficient and very expensive.

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

#408

Post by ivalm »

datashow wrote: post #272
lovich wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize that "common" was a synonym for "good" or "desirable"

There is a reason for this common practice. Do researchers pay office spaces, internet, electricity, utilities, etc...? No. So there is overhead.

This is not actually where overhead really goes to. A lot of overhead simply pays for departments that don't bring in money (eg humanities, some social sciences) and I think that's fine too. But let's not say that an experimental lab with ~10 people and ~2000sqft that pays >$1mm a year in overhead spends it on "office space, internet, electricity, utilities..." because that is disingenuous (btw those numbers reflect the reality of the lab i got my phd in). Most overhead comes from expensive experimental labs (hard science + engineering + medicine).

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

#409

Post by downerending »

valid4life wrote: post #83

I'm an undergrad at UCSC right now and have found the entire strike to be more detrimental to their cause. They've lost so much undergrad support after disrupting a STEM midterm and shutting down campus causing us to miss the classes we have paid for. I even lost my grades last quarter as my TA was fired ( of the 54 ) and he has refused to hand them over post firing. What it has done to the undergraduates is a little…

I would be completely on the grad students' side if they weren't withholding materials necessary to produce the grades. That, though, sounds a lot like extortion, and it's hard to have any sympathy whatsoever with someone doing that.

It'd be one thing for me to walk off my job. It'd be another thing entirely for me to run off with the only copy of business-critical data.

IANAL, but I wonder if there might not end up being criminal charges in some cases.

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

#410

Post by bradlys »

I doubt this will be noticed but - the solution isn't higher pay. It's building more housing. There should be a lot of dedicated housing for students.

Grad students will constantly need to be negotiating for higher wages because the rent will continue to increase. All the students are advocating for is transfer of wealth from the university to landlords. :/

Post reply on HN