From the Santa Cruz Lookout: It’s been a little more than year since University of California graduate student workers ended their historic six-week strike and ratified a new contract that included significant raises and increases in child care subsidies. But the union representing nearly 2,000 graduate students at UC Santa Cruz who voted overwhelmingly to reject the contract says it’s continuing to press for a better deal to help teaching assistants, tutors and researchers who are struggling with the region’s high cost of living.
More than 60% of the University of California’s 36,000 graduate student workers voted to support the contract, which was ratified Dec. 23, 2022, and expires May 31, 2025. The deal increased minimum pay for academic student employees from about $23,250 to about $34,000 for nine months of part-time work. Child care reimbursements were set to $1,350 per quarter, plus $1,350 for summer. However, the contract also exacerbated a rift among UC campuses, with representatives from UCSC, UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced urging their members to reject the deal. More than 80% of Santa Cruz’s union members voted against it.
UCSC unit chair Jack Davies previously told Lookout he thought the majority of the campus membership voted against the deal because of the higher cost of living in Santa Cruz and workers’ confidence that they could win more concessions by continuing with the strike. In addition, Davies said many Santa Cruz graduate student workers were against the new contract implementing a tier system for the first time among the campuses – UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco were given a higher base pay starting at $36,500. The UC attributed the tier system to higher costs of living in those areas and the need to compete for top talent.
UCSC’s United Auto Workers 2865 head steward Rebecca Gross told Lookout recently that while the gains from the new contract were significant, graduate student workers are still struggling to make ends meet in Santa Cruz. ...Gross said the union isn’t yet ready to publicize what it’s planning to do, but that in January it would announce an action planned to take place in the winter quarter.
Full article at https://lookout.co/uc-grad-student-strike-one-year-later-ucsc-workers-still-pressing-for-better-deal/.
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