March 4, 2010

A host of student and labor organizers spoke at the March 4, 2010 Strike and Day of Action- to protest the privatization, budget cuts and tuition increases at California’s public education system. Speakers included Yousef Baker (a graduate student in the Sociology Department), a professor from Asian studies, Megan White (the VP of the student group Campus Left), Armando Carmona from the UCSB Coalition, and many more such as speakers from the labor unions CUP, AFSCME, and UAW. A representative from the UCSB Black Student Union (BSU) spoke out about the recent racist/hate attacks launched against students of color at UCSD and other campuses. Walden Bello, a Filipino author/guest speaker and alter-globalization political activist, gave the closing speech.

 

1983 First UC TA Labor Union. In November 1983 the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) verified that a majority of graduate students at Berkeley had signed union cards, and the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE) was formed. The UC, arguing that graduate students were apprentices and not employees, refused to recognize that student employees were covered by California labor law. The AGSE filed an unfair labor charge with the PERB.

1987 AGSE affiliates with UAW. Seeking support from a bigger union AGSE agreed to affiliate with the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW).  A PERB judge ruled that Teaching Assistants (TAs), Research Assistants (RAs), Readers and Tutors were employees and did have the right to collective bargaining under the Higher Education Employer/Employee Relations Act (HEERA). This decision was later overruled. This began a protracted legal battle that continued for more than a decade.

 

The first University of California TA strike occurred at Berkeley in 1989.  UC Berkeley teacher assistance were organizing for health benefits. As a direct result of the strike the administration signed an agreement giving graduate students at Berkeley health benefits. Fearing that other campuses would immediately organize to get health benefits as well, the administration extended health benefits to graduate students system wide.

 

1990 PERB verified union card-signing majority at UC Santa Cruz.

1991 Fee Waiver. Berkeley’s graduate students won a partial fee waiver and other concessions. Again, in an effort to head off organizing on other campuses, the University extended the partial fee waiver to graduates system wide.  PERB verified union card-signing majority at UC San Diego.

 

1992 TA Strike. Student employees at UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley strike, but the effort lacked sufficient student support and the UC maintained its position that TA’s were not employees.

1993 Union organizing efforts began at UCSB.  PERB verified union card-signing majority at UC Davis. Within weeks of achieving majority a large number of local union activists at Davis became disillusioned with the UAW and grassroots organizing at campus all but died out for the next three or more years.

 

1994 PERB verified union card-signing majority at UCSB and UCLA.

About this time UCSB organizers started to become aware that the autocratic organizing tactics of the UAW staff might have been responsible for undermining student participation and grass roots organizing at Davis and other campuses.

 

During a system wide coalition meeting at Santa Cruz significant tension surfaced between student activists at Santa Cruz and Berkeley and the “professional” union and their followers over UAW staff’s conduct during the strikes at Berkeley and Santa Cruz in 1992. Student activists began to experience what has since become a pattern of selective exclusion of dissenters.

Graduate students at UCLA and UCSD held two-day walk-outs. Davis, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Berkeley did not to participate in the walk-outs. Berkeley’s AGSE, a fully chartered, UAW, dues-paying union local, failed to meet the mandated quorum at its strike-vote meeting. The strike failed to gain recognition from the University.

 

1997 

Concerned about the low level of support for previous TA strikes at other UC campuses, the UCSB union membership elected to set a 50% quorum for the upcoming strike vote to ensure that solidarity and student support for the action was truly widespread. Up until that time strike votes were typically taken at one meeting and had no quorums (excluding the chartered local at UC Berkeley).

 

UCSB’s First Strike Vote. A successful turnout at UCSB was organized by grads with very little support from UAW staff, lawyers or money. Over 500 UCSB student employees and unemployed grads voted in this strike-authorization vote, with about 80% of them voting in favor of the two-day strike.

 

Two Day Strike. Five of the nine campuses participated in “rolling” two day strikes (the campuses took turns striking over a period of weeks). This strike was relatively successful in that it received more media attention, but in the end it failed to gain recognition from the UC.

PERB verified union card-signing majority at UC Riverside.

 

Fall 1997 

In an effort to more tightly coordinate the intercampus campaign the UAW hired Tanya Mahn, Mike Miller and Molly Rhodes to act as regional coordinators. This lead to a sharp increase in the micro-management of the local student organizers on each campus.

1998 

PERB verified union card-signing majority at UC Irvine.

 

February 11, 1998 

UCSB student organizers commemorated the anniversary of the victory of the Flint Sit-down Strikers in 1937. Statements of support come in from Michael Moore, former California Governor Jerry Brown and Primo Herman, one of the original sit-down strikers.

 

May 1998 

A successful strike authorization vote turnout at UCSB. We not only surpassed our own 50% quorum but ended up showing very strong support for the strike with 82% in favor (497 in favor of the action, 104 opposed, and 8 abstentions).

 

Summer 1998 

Professional UAW organizing staff repeatedly threatened to pull all UAW resources, including funding for student organizing staff, if UCSB organizers did not follow the “organizing plan” to the letter. Since the UAW had never presented us with a written “organizing plan” the only way that local organizers could participate was to follow orders, one at a time, exactly as they came, without questioning them. Tensions over “organizing plans” escalated.At some point the UAW decreed that all communications between the organizers and the student body had to be approved by UAW staff. All communication between activists on different campuses was funneled through the UAW coalition meetings and regional coordinators.

 

In an effort to get tighter control over the campaign at UCSB the UAW appointed Mercedes Ibarra (never a graduate student) as UCSB’s organizing coordinator over the objections of campus organizers. Mercedes then unilaterally changed the time and location of our regularly scheduled weekly meetings without informing UCSB’s “troublesome” union leadership. Refusing to give up their union quietly, the UCSB organizers continued to meet at their regular time and place without the UAW staff. No more than three or four UCSB grads ever showed up at Mercedes’ meetings.

 

Fall 1998 

The UAW stopped funding the distribution of locally produced student union newsletters to all graduate students. Up until this point the newsletters were funded by the UAW but produced on each campus by the student organizers themselves. They served as an important forum for graduates to discuss workplace issues. Student produced newsletters were replaced later that Fall by a system wide UAW newsletter. This further tightened the UAW’s control over the flow of information to students.

UCSB’s ASE/UAW Strike Committee elected. The membership elected 11 grads from 11 different departments to act as the UCSB Strike Committee. UCSB was the only campus to elect a Strike Committee. This upset UAW staff in part because an elected Strike Committee should retain local authority to call and/or cancel a strike action on its campus. This right was not recognized by the UAW.

Halloween Massacre. Just weeks before the strike, UAW staffers waiving bogus legal documents raided Jay and Ted’s house, where our regular weekly meetings were held. They accused UCSB grads of “counter organizing” and confiscated all organizing documents including our union’s phone list. They erased the entire membership database from the Jay and Ted’s computers. This crippled ongoing strike organization efforts and seriously demoralized student activists.

 

During a system-wide coalition meeting at UCSB’s UCen, and just one month before the strike was scheduled to start, our newly elected Strike Committee and other UCSB grads were shut out of the coalition meeting in a “purge” orchestrated by UAW staff. Afterwards UAW misrepresented what happened at that meeting, claiming that UCSB organizers refused to follow the UAW’s organizing plan. Actually no “plan” was presented at that meeting and all 18 UCSB delegates unanimously voted to support it anyway. The UAW staff in charge decided that our vote to support the plan wasn’t sincere enough. They closed the meeting and reconvened elsewhere without the UCSB reps.

STUDENTS CONDEMN UC UNION BUSTING TACTICS.  UCSA Calls On Administration To Recognize Student Employee Unions

Elected student leaders from eight University of California campuses unanimously condemned the UC administration for failing to recognize the collective bargaining rights of 9,000 readers, tutors, and teaching assistants (TAs) who are affiliated with the UAW.  The UAW announced earlier this week that their members are preparing to strike if they don’t receive immediate recognition of their unions.

The student representatives of the University of California Student Association (UCSA), the systemwide student government which represents all 170,000 UC students, pledged their support for the strike and called upon UC President 

Richard Atkinson and all eight UC Chancellors to immediately recognize the unions in order to avert a massive walkout. Acknowledging that TA working conditions are undergraduate learning conditions, the students expressed grave concerns about the UC’s apparent decision to undermine undergraduate education with a protracted labor dispute.

At issue for undergraduates is the manner in which UC has chosen to handle the imminent strike.  UC administrators have encouraged faculty to hire strikebreakers to perform the teaching and grading labor of striking workers and to alter course syllabi.  Students argue that this amounts to grade manufacturing, not education.

“We’ve heard complaints from students who have professors replacing a 15 page term paper with a scantron final,” commented Haady Lashkari, Vice Chair of UCSA and an undergraduate Sociology major at UC Santa Barbara. ”Other students are terrified of having their work graded by a scab who isn’t familiar with the students or the course material. And the worst part is that everyone knows the administration is not doing anything to avert the strike.”

More than 4,700 UAW members authorized the strike by an 87 percent margin in a vote taken earlier this year. Votes were held at the Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Riverside, Irvine and San Diego campuses of the UC. If the strike occurs, it is expected to be the largest ever held by graduate students.

Following the purge our elected Strike Committee continued to hold “unauthorized” meetings that were open to all UCSB grads at the GSA lounge. UAW staffers tried to hold a simultaneous union meeting in the room just below the GSA lounge. Their effort failed and they ended up having to join the Strike Committee’s meeting. Several UCSB graduate students active in the union formally resigned from the UAW to seek other options.

Shortly after this labor union information stopped reaching most UCSB grads. Little or no information about the unionization effort or about the strike was released. From this point on even grads that were still interested in the union couldn’t get answers from the UAW on basic questions.

System Wide Strike. In a coordinated strike on all UC campuses UCSB grads withheld their labor during finals week and shut down many classes in a widely publicized strike. But the strike at UCSB, while ultimately successful, was less impressive than the high voter turnout in May (82%) would have indicated. The lack of information, communication and interference from the UAW staff in the months leading up to the strike caused massive confusion and disillusioned many campus organizers. But little of the frustration and unrest that grads felt at the time was expressed publicly for fear of jeopardizing the strike effort. Few of the striking UCSB grads even filled out the forms for UAW strike pay.

John Burton, President pro-tem of the California State Senate, and Antonio Villaraigosa, speaker of the Assembly, came out publicly in support graduate students rights as workers. They proposed a 45 day “cooling-off” period to end the strike.

 

Sold Out in mid Strike. Only four days into the strike (and one day before the UAW would have had to provide striking students with strike pay) the news media announced that the UAW had called off the strike and agreed to a 45 day cooling-off period.  Neither the graduate students nor their elected Strike Committee were consulted on the decision. No concessions were won and the terms of cooling off period were not announced.

 

UAW tried to get the proposed cooling-off period ratified by grad students. Only five UCSB grads attended the meeting. Three voted in favor, two against. It was a sham ratification vote.

Legal Victory! After a decade long legal battle HEERA ruled against the UC’s last legal appeal. It determined that grads were not apprentices, as the UC had claimed, but employees covered by California labor law. This effectively ended the UC’s legal case.

 

More than a decade later the University of California finally recognized grad student’s rights as employees. The UAW takes credit, but other factors clearly played a role:

1. a well publicized strike, organized by grads despite UAW staff interference

2. ruling by HEERA ending UC’s final legal appeal

3. political pressure from Senator John Burton and Rep. Antonio Villarigosa

4. election of California’s first democratic Governor in over a decade (Davis).

 

After months of deliberation and research six UCSB students officially formed United Student Labor as an independent labor union and democratic alternative to the UAW. The first USL membership cards are signed.

PERB Election. In a very weak victory with low voter turnout the UAW was elected as our exclusive bargaining agent. Out of the 1088 eligible grad student voters at UCSB only 184 voted yes and 130 no.

UCSB Bargaining Committee elected. Immediately after the election of the UAW, during finals week and with only two days notice, UAW staff supervised the nomination and election of UCSB’s Bargaining Committee. Only 30 grads showed up at the nearly unpublicized election, and eight of them were elected on the spot.

After repeatedly assuring our elected Bargaining Committee that our right to strike would be negotiated campus by campus, the UAW agreed to bargain away the right to strike on all UC campuses in favor of binding arbitration.

UCSB Strike Committee resigns. All of the UCSB graduates elected four months earlier to the Bargaining Committee resigned in protest of UAW’s willingness to negotiate away our right to strike. After this point virtually none of the original UCSB organizers were left to organize for the UAW. Some grads still argue that we need the UAW and its lawyers, but after this very few grads actually support the UAW’s tactics or treatment of students. See the Bargaining Committee Resignation letter at www.gsa.ucsb.edu

Without notifying graduate students UAW appointed two UCSB graduate students, Phil Zwerlinger of Dramatic Arts and Bill Ford of Political Science, to serve as observers at the local contract negotiations (neither student had participated in the strike or in union organizing on campus). The UAW and UC then continued secret contract negotiations on our campus without elected student representation.

 

Graduate students barred from negotiation. After finding out about the ongoing negotiations on their campus more than ten UCSB grads turned up to observe the negotiations. But UAW staff and the appointed student observer barred all of the students, including the GSA’s VP of Academic Affairs, from observing the negotiation of the student’s own contract on their own campus.

The Lock Out maneuver. In reaction to the possibility that the UAW might file an unfair labor practice grievance, the UC’s Office of Labor Relations threatened to pull the GSA’s funding unless they deny graduate students that are also members of United Student Labor the right to use the GSA lounge for their regularly scheduled labor meetings. The Office of Labor Relations argued that USL should not be allowed to use any campus facilities or even publish articles in the GSA Informer. The GSA steadfastly defended grads rights to use the grad lounge. Eventually the Dean of Students Office intervened and as a result USL has been allowed to use campus facilities (as is the right of any labor organization), but the issue still hasn’t been officially resolved.

 

During negotiations at an intensive bargaining retreat at Pacific Grove the UAW negotiators allegedly agreed to give up grievance and arbitration on matters related to discrimination on race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, and/or national origin. Elected graduate student representative Frank Wilderson, the only black person on the negotiating team, objected arguing that these additional concessions would leave grad students without either the right to strike or legal recourse to pursue issues of workplace discrimination.

Arrested. Frank Wilderson, still an elected student representative, was denied permission to observe the contract negotiations at Pacific Grove. When he refused to leave the meeting the UAW called in the conference center’s private security and then, eventually, two Pacific Grove police officers and a State of California Park Ranger. The officers were reluctant to arrest Wilderson on such a trivial charge, but the UAW negotiators insisted and Wilderson was handcuffed and removed from the premises.

UC struck agreement with CUE to award raises to clerical employees earning less than $40,000 and UPTE forged a new five year contract with wage increases and time off for work related education among the benefits.  The CUE agreement affects 11,800 clerical employees throughout the UC at a cost of $2.7 million.  Employees earning less than $30,000 will receive a 1.5% increase, those earning less than $32,000 will receive a 1% increases.  And workers in the $32,000-$40,000 bracket will gain .75%raise each year.  

 

The intensive negotiations between the UC and UAW at Pacific Grove end without a contract. The UAW’s self-imposed deadline for a contract passes.

Another Strike. In a series of press releases that came in the weeks following the collapse of the negotiations both the UC and the UAW indicated that they were still very far from reaching agreement on several important issues. The UAW has recently announced a new strike authorization drive across all UC campuses. However, this time we aren’t being asked to strike for the fundamental recognition of our rights as employees, but over the UAW-UC labor contract, the terms of which we are not allowed to know. We are expected to strike over contract negotiations that we have systematically been excluded from.

 

In an effort to get a contract signed the UAW began secret emergency meetings with the UC.  Elected student representative Frank Wilderson and other Berkeley students found out about the meetings and tried to attend. They were again barred from attending contract negotiations. When the students refused to leave the premises the UAW negotiators attempted to relocate the meeting. After an encounter in the parking lot between UAW negotiators and UC students, the students ended up filing charges with the police against UAW’s Tanya Mahn for assaulting a student with her car.