SANTA CRUZ — Dozens of UC Santa Cruz teaching assistants fired during a wildcat strike can now be reinstated under an agreement between the administration and the graduate students’ union.
The Aug. 7 settlement between UCSC and the UAW 2865 union signals the end to one chapter of a contentious pay dispute and wildcat strike that began late in 2019.
Under the agreement, 41 teaching assistants fired in February for allegedly withholding grades became eligible to be rehired by their departments, had disciplinary records sealed and had their funding guarantees reinstated. In exchange, the union agreed to drop grievances filed on behalf of the students.
Disciplinary records will be expunged after two years or each student’s respective graduation date, whichever comes first. But participation in any unauthorized strike activity in the interim would void that part of the deal and could, once again, lead to their dismissal. Reached through mediation that came as part of a broader settlement, the agreement was reviewed by this news organization.
Both sides cast the deal as a step forward, albeit from perspectives that remain at odds.
“In large part, this is a win for Santa Cruz workers — for workers in general,” said Veronica Hamilton, the UAW 2865 unit chair and herself among the 41 fired students. The firings, Hamilton said, were an “excessive, punitive response” that “stoked the flames of resistance.”
Hamilton said she was grateful now, especially during a pandemic, that herself and other teaching assistants are able to return to work. “Some of our most brilliant scholars are able to return and that’s excellent,” she said.
In a Tuesday campus message, UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive and provost Lori Kletzer called the deal “an important step toward rebuilding community trust and moving beyond the discord created by the wildcat strike.”
After striking an initial conciliatory note, the two UCSC leaders emphasized their consistent stance that they could not negotiate with student workers striking without authorization of their union — and insisted the firings were just.
“There is no debate that those who were terminated violated their contract by withholding grades,” the message states. “These terminations were not unfair or unexpected as ample notice was provided and opportunities to submit grades were offered right up to the deadline — a deadline long after grades were due.”
Dozens of additional graduate students barred — but not dismissed — from spring appointments as part of the grading strike were given a path to reinstatement under a broader settlement reached last month.
Combined, the 75 students represented the defiant core of hundreds who withheld students’ fall course grades from their departments as they called for a monthly pay increase of $1,412 — igniting a “COLA4ALL” campaign that gained traction across the UC system.
The raise, strike organizers said, is needed to afford the high cost of living in Santa Cruz above and beyond their average take-home pay of about $2,400 a month during the academic year for what is, nominally, halftime employment. But their strike came without authorization of the students’ union, which is contractually barred from striking under most circumstances.
When the dust cleared, at least 20% of all course grades from the fall term were not submitted by a Dec. 18 deadline. Most of the larger group of teaching assistants, however, subsequently submitted grades in the face of an extended deadline and threats of academic and employment related sanctions.
With the hammer set to fall on the defiant grading strikers, graduate students staged a broader teaching strike Feb. 10. The effort brought hundreds of graduate students and their supporters to near-daily demonstrations at the UCSC entrance for weeks — at times, blocking access to the campus altogether. Their actions spurred similar campaigns at other UC campuses, and the movement gained a national media spotlight and support from major unions, public figures and thousands of students and faculty from across the nation.
While holding firm on its stance that it could not negotiate a pay raise outside the union contract, UCSC committed to a $2,500 annual housing stipend for its graduate students late in January and agreed to pursue further steps to address the students’ concerns.
Pandemic-related restrictions and the campus’ closure of in-person courses in March cooled the fervor around the strike and led to ongoing efforts shifting online, with UAW 2865 taking an increasingly front-seat role in a campaign that began without any union authorization. UAW 2865 is continuing to call for the UC to reopen negotiations, and is pursuing an unfair-labor practice charge against UCSC.
Tom Hintze, UAW 2865 Northern vice president, said last week’s settlement is a major step.
“We had actions across the state in solidarity with the fired workers at UC Santa Cruz,” said Hintze, who helped negotiate the settlement. “And we apply pressure in all different ways to the university to bring them to the table and be able to secure this deal to get these workers rehired.”
Hintze said he hoped the reinstatement deal would energize students across the state. But he acknowledged that now the effort to reopen wage negotiations is just one among a number of pressing issues that have cropped up since the start of the pandemic — campus reopenings, in-person classes, and questions related to visa status for international students under what he called “Trump’s xenophobic visa policies.”
For Hamilton, last week’s agreement means she now knows what she’ll be doing this fall — grading and leading discussion sections for roughly 60 students in a psychology of oppression and liberation course.
“The course is going to be online, as most courses at UCSC and across the country are,” Hamilton said. “So I’ll be learning how to teach online just like everybody else did in the spring quarter.”
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