The raises University of California graduate student workers won after last year’s historic work stoppage come with a big caveat: Those same UC workers will have to repay all the money they earned while they were on strike. The UC “may not legally pay our employees or gift them funds if they did not provide a service to the institution,” wrote Ryan King, a spokesperson for The University of California Office of the President, in an email to CalMatters Friday afternoon. He cited state and federal rules that forbid the university from paying employees who didn’t work.
The UC system signaled this move was imminent in comments to CalMatters the first week of January. But unions representing the striking workers allege that how the UC is going about this is all wrong. Rafael Jaime, president of the UAW 2865, the union of 19,000 teaching assistants, tutors and instructors, said the UC is violating state labor law by unilaterally docking pay without first allowing workers to review how much the university plans to claw back.
The UC is “well within their right to recover any money that was incorrectly paid out to workers who are on strike,” Jaime said in an interview Friday. “But there needs to be a fair process to make sure that workers aren’t left with additional hardships.” Lawyers representing the three unions that struck last year filed an unfair labor practice charge against the UC on Thursday with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board...
Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2023/01/uc-strike-dock-pay/.
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