6 results for tag: strike

Striking UC Santa Cruz Workers Are Spending Almost All Their Money on Rent

“I am risking de-facto expulsion and having to leave the country.” By Lauren Kaori Gurley February 24, 2020 When Sohum Banerjea started his PhD in computer science at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2016, he paid $800 a month to sleep in a bare-bones living room. It was the best he could afford with the stipend offered to him by the university. “There were five of us in a two bedroom apartment,” he said. “Each of us paid $800. I didn’t have a door or curtain.” That summer, he traded the living room for a rat-infested bedroom. Banerjea is one of many UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers who withheld fall quarter grades from the ...

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 ...

UCSC Grad Students Are on Strike for a Living Wage

By Kim Kelly February 21, 2020 Though it has only just begun, 2020 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year for the labor movement, including a group of workers in Santa Cruz, CA, that started the (academic) year off with a bang. Graduate students at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) have been on strike since February 10, after months of contentious conversations with the school administration. Unlike many of their peers across the country who have been shut out of organizing, the UCSC cohort are members of United Auto Workers Local 2865, a union that has long represented graduate students in the UC system. Their current contract, ...

Buttigieg to join striking South Carolina McDonald’s Workers next week

By J. Edward Moreno February 21, 2020 Presidential candidate and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg plans to join striking McDonald’s workers in Charleston, S.C., on Monday, the day before the state's Democratic primary debate. The workers of the fast food giant are demanding a $15-an-hour wage and the right to unionize. "McDonald’s workers are living with low wages, harassment, and even violent assaults — and they deserve better," Buttigieg said in a statement on Friday. "It’s critical that we support workers who are coming together to fight for a union, fair wages and benefits, and an end to harassment and discrimin...