3 results for tag: graduate students

UC Berkeley students hold ‘wildcat’ strike for more pay, rehiring of fired workers

By Natalie Orenstein March 16, 2020 UC Berkeley will become familiar with term “digital picket” this week, as graduate students, who are already working from home because of the coronavirus, begin a work stoppage Monday. The student workers are going on a “wildcat” strike — meaning it hasn’t been authorized by UAW 2865, the UC graduate student union representing some 19,000 workers — to demand cost-of-living pay adjustments and the rehiring of dozens of their counterparts who have been fired from UC Santa Cruz. “In the Bay Area and across California, wages are stagnating compared to the cost of living,” said Helen, a ...

In the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike, Class War Meets the California Housing Crisis

Mairav Zonszein February 21, 2020 “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Sarah Mason, a graduate student in sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, tells a crowd of several hundred students, wrapping up the fourth day of an unprecedented wildcat strike that has drawn threats of mass dismissal and captured the attention of UC campuses across the state. Using a megaphone, Mason reminds them that LA teachers went on strike for six days last year and Oakland teachers for seven before getting their pay raises. She asks for a show of hands to see how many wanted to continue to picket the following day. Arms shoot up all around her. Gr...

Students across California march for a living wage

By Caleb Hampton February 22, 2020 Students at UC Davis and across the University of California system rallied on Friday, demanding a living wage for teaching assistants and other graduate student workers. A growing coalition of UC students pushing for a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, has set off a power struggle between students and administrators. UC students living in some of the country’s most expensive housing markets say they cannot afford to live on their current salaries. “The majority of our pay goes to just trying to have a shelter over us,” said Beshara Kehdi, a Ph.D. student at UC Davis. “We are fighting for a decent ...