Forty-eight thousand academic workers went on strike across 10 University of California (UC) campuses Monday morning demanding adequate pay. The demonstrators included teaching assistants, tutors and other students employed by the UC system.
According to UC workers, protesters are demanding a more respectful work environment, childcare subsidies and public transit passes. The largest issue, however, comes down to wages.
The United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), which represents UC graduate students, has demanded base salaries of $54,000, nearly double their current average pay of $24,000. UAW is one of the largest and most diverse unions in North America, with members in virtually every sector of the economy.
In response to recent protests, UC has offered a salary increase of 7% during the first year, and 3% every consecutive year, but workers are not satisfied with their proposal.
“There are people living in student housing who are paying 70% of their income right back to the employer,” said Sam Hunter, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “Better learning conditions will allow us to spend more time working with our students, without being worried about whether we’re going to be able to pay rent next month or put food on the table tonight.”
UCLA workers began picketing around the Broad Art Center and Buche Hall at 8 a.m., where undergraduate and graduate students chanted, “What do we want? Fair contracts. When do we want them? Now.”
The protests halted classes on campus, as professors, researchers and TAs refused to teach courses until their demands were met.
“If you walk around this campus today, it feels very eerie. There’s not a lot of people here, so we’ve effectively stopped a U.S. university from functioning…that means a lot,” Dylan Dornfeld, a teaching assistant at UCLA, said. “This shows what collective power can do, and that’s what’s going on out here.”
Students at other UCs are experiencing similar effects of the protests. UC Berkeley students, like microbiology major Sabrina Hammond, have seen their discussion sections and office hours canceled.
“We’ve all been avoiding campus in solidarity, so we haven’t been using the libraries or academic buildings as much as possible, except when absolutely necessary to go to classes,” Hammond said.
According to Glassdoor, a website where employees can anonymously report their salaries, TAs at USC are paid around $37,000 per year – nearly 60% more than the typical UC salary. Even with an increase in rent and inflation, UCs have failed to expand their financial compensation for their employees.
Although USC’s average TA salary exceeds the UC’s, USC has seen protests held by employees demanding better pay. Last year, custodial workers together with USC’s Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) fought for a better contract, asking for fairer wages and benefits for their labor. There was no significant change from the custodians’ protests – yet, many UC workers are willing to strike until their employers meet their demands.
“A lot of people come to the UC for a great education, and we are the ones that deliver it,” Emma Gudmundson, a student employee at UCLA, said. “I believe that we’re not only fighting for the working conditions of our grad students and postdocs, we’re fighting for the learning conditions of our students as well.”