Strike News

 From the UC-San Francisco Synapse: The student researcher union, Student Researchers United, is holding a strike authorization vote this week in response to the University of California’s refusal to recognize the union. Kate Crawford explained that the group decided to authorize the vote, being held from Nov. 10 to 19, after submitting 12,000 cards to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) last May, showing that they had supermajority support of grad students across the state. “PERB verified our majority in July,” said Crawford, a student in the Bioengineering Program, which is run jointly between UCSF and UC Berkeley. “And the UC has been stalling and delaying now for almost four months by throwing out what we all recognize are stupid arguments.”

Student Researchers United and the University of California are in a standoff after the university denied recognition to the union by failing to recognize all the students who submitted authorization cards. The university claims that students who are funded through grants and fellowships do not have an employment relationship with the university and do not perform “substantially similar” work as graduate students paid through payroll...

Full story at https://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2021/11/09/student-researchers-hold-strike-vote.

NOTE: If there were a strike, and if PERB were to rule in favor of the university, any protections afforded by labor law to the strikers would evaporate. Thus, striking for these students is more risky than it is for students who are already recognized by PERB as also being university employees. Protections offered by state labor law are available only to individuals who are employees.