Will University of California Academic Workers End the Strike?

Last week, when the University of California and negotiators for striking academic workers announced a tentative agreement to end the work stoppage that began on Nov. 14, union representatives praised the proposed contract.

It was “a huge deal,” they said, with “incredible wage increases” that would finally give starving students a shot at paying the notoriously high rents, from San Diego to Berkeley.

Starting pay for graduate student researchers would leap nearly 57 percent to about $35,500 annually from about $22,000 over the next two years. The lowest-paid teaching assistants would start at about $34,000, far more than the current $23,000 or so. Pay for more experienced academic workers and those in particularly expensive areas would be substantially higher and come with broader workplace protections and greater benefits for health care, transportation and child care.

Not everyone on the 40-member bargaining team was on board, though.

Fifteen members voted against the deal, contending, among other issues, that the pay bumps and cost-of-living provisions were insufficient. They also felt that workers could win more given that they were part of the largest university-based walkout in national history. This week, as 36,000 rank-and-file teaching assistants, researchers and tutors voted on ratification, an opposition campaign emerged.

A Zoom call assembling critics drew several hundred participants. Calls to prolong the work stoppage went out across the 10-campus system. “I am part of hundreds of rank-and-file workers at Davis, and thousands across the U.C. system, who are fighting for something more — a truly fair contract,” Cole Manley, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Davis, wrote to me in an email.

Significant opposition appeared to arise from U.C. Santa Cruz, where a “wildcat” strike — one conducted without the backing of the union — representing the workers statewide ended three years ago with the firing of more than 70 graduate students who had refused to turn in fall grades as part of the labor action. (Most were eventually reinstated.)

But pushback also materialized on high-cost campuses such as Santa Barbara and newer campuses such as Merced, where a substantial number of students are the first in their families to attend college.

“Now is not the time to settle — we must keep fighting and leverage our full might to win our demands!” a group of Berkeley students opposing ratification recently exhorted on a website under the logo “Strike to Win.”

Initial demands by the striking workers included cost-of-living agreements explicitly tied to housing costs in California and a base pay of $54,000 a year for graduate students. Base pay in the current proposal is much lower. Opponents of the deal also complain that too few of the benefits take effect in the first year of the agreement.

“One of the main issues I have is that the major salary increase will not come to fruition until 2024,” Samia Errazzouki, 34, a doctoral candidate in history at U.C. Davis, told me. “When I signed up and voted to authorize the strike, my understanding was that we were negotiating to see the fruits immediately.”

Supporters of the proposed deal remain optimistic about ratification as the end of the voting window approaches on Friday.

“I’m really excited for this contract,” Aarthi Sekar, 34, a doctoral candidate in genetics and a member of the union bargaining team at U.C. Davis, said.

Besides the raises, she noted, student researchers, who unionized only recently, will get their first-ever contract, benefits for nonresident students will be codified for the first time and an often exploited student work force will finally get labor protections.

“It’s historic, frankly,” Ms. Sekar said. “To me, it’s transformative.”

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Under a red neon sign advertising “chop suey,” a line of customers often forms. They’re waiting to enter Mee Heng Low Noodle House, one of the oldest and most revered Chinese restaurants in the country.