Today at Trousdale more than 50 grad students picketed USC, many of them wore red shirts with the logo of the union that recently formed. On the back of the shirts, their motto --- “U-S-C works because we do.... " They carried signs warning USC’s administration -- “Lights out... last chance... out of the labs... into the streets... ready to strike.”
They’re advocating for access to union representatives, protections against discrimination, and mostly a livable wage.
Lauren White: I have two kids and one on the way,
Lauren White is a 30-year-old native Angelena. She’s a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in English.
White: It’s just difficult to survive, especially as a mom with with kids. I can’t even try to go out and get a second job to make ends meet because it’s not allowed with my contract.
White says she’s also fighting to get more protections into the grad student’s contracts.
White: Usually in the state of California, your baby, your newborn babies is covered under the mom’s insurance for the first 30 days. But USC has an exception to that. So when I had my son last year, he didn’t end up having any insurance coverage for the first 30 days because I didn’t know that that was like going to be an issue.
Other issues upset White. She says she felt discriminated against for being a mother.
White: I was told that I was the first person ever in my program to have a baby. And I had to give a reason for why I wanted to go on parental leave and the timing and stuff like that.
At the Exposition Metro stop today, 26-year-old computer science candidate Anand Balakrishnan picketed. He’s in the last year of his Ph.D. program working as a teacher’s assistant and a residential advisor.
Anand Balakrishnan: I was getting paid like near poverty levels during the whole pandemic and there was hyperinflation happening. I had to move a couple of times because I couldn’t make rent. You should be able to make a living wage, a living rent, pay rent, and also have good health care to be able to not worry about those things and just deal with research, which is a huge thing for us. See, we create so much intellectual property every single day for them.
Andrew McConnell Stott is the Dean of the Graduate School.
Andrew McConnell Stott: Our graduate students have received generous raises to a package that is already one of the most competitive in the country, and we’ve been bargaining with them since they formed a union in February, and we’ve been bargaining since April looking to reach agreement on a number of proposals that would enhance that competitive package even further.
5th-year Cinema and Media Studies Ph.D. candidate Jackie Johnson says she and her peers are at the heart of USC’s talent.
Jackie Johnson: We do very critical teaching labor and research labor for this university that is integral to its very mission.
If the negotiations don’t go well, Johnson says.
Johnson: Graduate student workers are prepared and willing to walk off the job should it come to that.
The next negotiations are this coming Monday, another is scheduled for the Monday after that. But if the talks are not successful, USC is preparing faculty and programs to continue teaching as close to normal as possible in case the graduate student workers do strike.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Sophie Sullivan