After a year of fruitless negotiation sessions for fair wages and labor practices, university employees march in what could be the largest higher education academic strike in U.S. history.
By Brenton Zola
This article was originally published at Prism.
Chants of “fair wages now!” could be heard all throughout the University of California at Los Angeles’ (UCLA) campus on Nov. 14, backed by a chorus of drums and vuvuzelas. Those same chants echoed throughout every campus in the University of California (UC) system as nearly 48,000 academic workers commenced the university’s largest academic strike to protest “unlawful conduct” and unfair labor practices. At all 10 UC campuses, academic workers are demanding an overhaul of pay and benefits that have seen graduate educators and postdocs struggling for years.
“I definitely struggle to make ends meet. I currently pay half of my monthly income just on rent,” said Aya Konishi, a second-year sociology Ph.D. student and a head steward of the United Auto Workers (UAW) 2865 chapter at UCLA.
Like her colleagues at other UC schools, Konishi is represented by the UAW. Historically linked to automobile and agricultural factory workers in the industrial heartland, the UAW has seen significant growth in membership at academic institutions over the last several years. Academic workers have leveraged the union’s expertise while the diversified membership keeps the organization strong in size and funding.
At the heart of the UC strike is the reality that many college researchers and educators like Konishi can barely afford rent despite generating millions of dollars for the university. Teaching assistants generally instruct many undergraduate students and conduct the bulk of the research. “I personally have 75 students every quarter,” Konishi said. “[Teaching assistants] generally grade their homework, grade exams, hold office hours, and facilitate a huge chunk of their learning. All in all, we do much of the labor and research that makes UC work.”
For that labor, UC academic workers only earn an average of $24,000. According to recent data from realtor.com, the median rent price in the Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland metro areas was over $36,000 per year, food, transportation, and other essentials notwithstanding.
UC Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael Brown wrote a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 11 in response to the looming strike, stating that affordable housing is a problem for all Californians, including UC faculty and staff. Brown states that rent at UC-owned properties are generally 20%-25% below market rates.
However, rate sheets from UC Berkeley and UCLA indicate that a studio for graduate students rents for $1,400 to 1,600 a month—roughly 80% of the monthly graduate student worker pay of $2,000. Additionally, there is fierce competition for the limited inventory of graduate apartments, with waitlists in the hundreds for students clamoring for spots.
Brenton Weyi is a first-generation writer, thinker, and polymath who uses the power of words to cultivate humanity. Informed by travel to dozens of nations to illuminate some of the world's greatest challenges, his work blends narrative, philosophy, and history to examine how we build ethical societies.
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