The UC Student Worker Strike

James and Mia talk to Alex and Tyler from UC San Diego about this week’s strike, what’s at stake, and how you can support 48,000 striking student workers.

 https://www.fairucnow.org/support/ 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Legal disclaimer. Okay, it's actually me, not the legal disclaiming
guy from Medical advert. We just wanted to mention that
both of our guests today are members of you a W,
but they do not speak on behalf of you a W. Okay,
enjoy the podcast. It could happen here. It's it's it's

(00:36):
this podcast. It's podcast. We're doing a podcast. It's a podcast,
and today it's podcast with me. I'm James, and I'm
joined by Chris and I've joined by a couple of
grad students from you See San Diego. Today we're going
to talk about grad students strikes. Were going to talk
about the grad student strike Volk that's coming up at
you See San Diego and some other grad students strikes
that Chris and I have been part of back in

(00:58):
the Middle Ages. Okay, so I'm joined today. But Alex, Alex,
you're you're you're studying I'm trying to get this correct
cancer genomics a U C s D. Is that correct?
That is correct? Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're welcome.
And Tyler Bell as well. And Tyler you're a post
doc and you're doing Outzheimer's research, right, yes, and you're

(01:20):
both members of u a W. Yes, that's correct. I've
been a member for at least two years. But yeah,
and I'm a member of the actual the subset of
U a W that just formed representing student researchers in
completing their PhDs. So we'll explain all the details of that,
of course, start going forward. Yeah, I think maybe we

(01:41):
should start there and explain kind of the economic relationship
of PhD and post doc students to the university, like
what what work they do. And as we were talking
about beforehand, people might not even be familiar with the
fact that you get paid by the university in many
of these positions, right, So can you explain that how
that works? Yeah, definitely. So Yeah, as you mentioned, UM,

(02:06):
we do UH in our various roles as graduate students, UH,
teachers and post docs, we do a lot of work,
majority of the work in fact, that is critical for
the university to function as it does UM, and we
do that in a few different roles. Some of us
are paid to teach or t A classes. We call
those academic student employees who are represented by one of

(02:30):
our unions U a W T eight six five. The
rander of PhD students are actually paid directly to do
their research, and this is usually funded up of grants
or other money that the university has your march for research.
So as we are progressing towards our degrees, we are
doing work that is productive in our labs to get
papers out, get grant funding coming in, and we receive

(02:50):
a stipend to perform that work. Those students are known
as graduate student researchers or gsrs, who are represented by
a new union that just formed because it actually they
became recently legal to form such a union in the
state of California. We are represented by s are you
bargaining for our first contract? And then we have the
post docs, which Tyler can probably talk more about, who

(03:12):
are students who have completed their I'm sorry I should
were really clarified here. Not students they are. They are
employees of the university who have completed their degree so
are no longer students and arguing research work in labs,
usually dragging their own projects forward under supervision of professors.
So they are represented by a third union that's part
of this sort of collective um organizing called U A

(03:35):
w f G A ten. Well, you have postox unions, yeah,
that's so cool. I think the one here that you
see is actually the biggest and one of the first
ones that formed. UM. I remember I was on a
Wikipedia page, which I shouldn't use as an academic, but
I totally saw us on there, and I was like, yeah,

(03:58):
and I think it's it's ascinating because if there are
all these like memes that you'll see as a graduate student,
and then it's like when you finish your PhD, where
it's like you always think that you're going to get
off the like the grind, right, Like you're like, oh,
I'll do my m A and then I'll get off,
and then I'll do my pH d and then people
respect me and I'll be compensated for a massive amount
of work I do, and then like I'll just finish

(04:19):
this post doc and then you're like, oh, I'm fifty five,
you know. Like it's all of those positions are heavily
exploited by by universities that make a metric ship tourn
of money from these people, who, as you say, do
most of the work that keeps a university running. So
perhaps we could talk about the issues that are at
State that that are leading to this this strike authorization

(04:41):
vote and maybe if we go through a little bit
of a timeline as well, that would be great. Yes,
maybe tell them, maybe you could like explain the fifty
ten timeline and I can talk a little bit about this,
are you and I guess kind of TwixT a five
point Yeah. So chronologically the POSTALC we're up for their
contract negotiation, which that's just to set our wages, benefits
and workplace safety and other types of protections we want

(05:03):
UM and that actually came up they think in September
of UM, and I could be wrong with the date specifically.
So much has changed. But we initially back in UM
started actually asking people what they wanted to see in
their new contract, like our members, because the union isn't
like like I if I didn't care about the union

(05:24):
or no one else care to what exist like, it's
the post docs and we have to take out like
a couple of hours a week to do this thing,
and sometimes it's twenty hours on top of our research
which is forty hours. And so during that time we surveyed,
everyone got the demands that people wanted, and the top
two issues that people asked for that they want it
changed was our wages, and also the housing. Um, we

(05:46):
want it affordable housing because right now, um, you know,
over of academic workers, including the post docs who you
would think, you know, you have a PhD, this is
the time you can finally have affordable housing and you
don't have to worry about food scarcity and all these
other things that you're worried about as a graduate student.
So just take this in the context of like we're
post docs, we're supposed to be like the most paid

(06:08):
or at least a better off because we have our PhD.
Think about like what that means for the graduate students
and those that aren't yet at that stage yet. Um.
And so when we went forward with our proposals, we
um create a lot of other things that we thought
were important, including things like transit UM bargaining demands to
make public transit like affordable for post docs because currently

(06:30):
we don't get any kind of like free paths for that.
They don't even consider it um. In fact, you know,
they probably think we all have cars, which isn't true
because a lot of post docs are international scholars. We
were also asking for child care support because currently, like
a good bit of you know, our post docs have children. UM,
which is normal because this is a normal like family

(06:50):
creation time or whatever you wanna call it, but UM,
and indeed it can be one of the only times
as an academic when it when it really sort of
doesn't massively to had voluntege your career to have stuff
right exactly. And like post docs, like the whole proposition
of a post doc was, you know, there's not enough
faculty spots for once you get a PhD, and post

(07:12):
docs now can last five if not longer, like five
years or longer. And there's a new position called an
academic researcher, which is a type of like title that
you get when you can no longer be a post doc.
But it's also because there's just not enough faculty, so
they put you into a different title to do research.
And UM collectively, both US post docs and people that

(07:33):
are academic researchers, we don't get any affordable childcare, we
don't have affordable housing UM, and our wages are below
the cost of living. And currently we went through the
proposals back then and we over time a year and
a half have not really made any leeway on these
proposals that actually changed the material conditions for post post docs.

(07:54):
Like the university has been you know, bargaining in bad faith.
That we have multiple UM unfair UM labor practice lawsuits
against from our public relations board for the employers UM
and three of those have been UM sorry, let me
get those numbers right. Multiple of those have actually been
successfully had complaints filed against the university. Some of the

(08:16):
things that the university has done in particularly while we've
been bargaining is one not bringing the information to the
table that we request, like denying our request for information.
They have also refused to bring the people that can
make the type of decisions that we need to the table.
And they've all also been making unilateral changes to things
like bullying policies and other workplace issues without even being

(08:38):
at the bargaining table. And the last thing that they've
been doing during this process is serving members of our
union outside of like the bargaining process, like we we
don't know about it. I mean, we did find out
about it, and then we followed the UM UH the
complaint and so right now we're at a point where
we've gotten a lot of things, you know, kind of

(08:59):
like moved on in terms of things that aren't compensation,
in terms of our bargaining UM like things that we
want such as bullying protections. That was something that we
actually had to like have a big action for to
actually get that on the table to move. So currently
we won protections against bullying, which is kind of like
pretty enormous because in academia, university says we're against bullying

(09:22):
and that they have all these resources for you, but
through resources always end at we're right, you're wrong. And UM.
Now we have something in our contracts, not just for
that post docs and acondic researchers, but also for UM
the other bargaining units to actually protect us UM in
a process that like we could grieve it as you know,
UNI represented workers UM. And so right now, the reason

(09:44):
that we had to authorize the strike, especially for our
group as post docs and academic researchers, because they started
bargaining kind of like maybe UM further along in that
year with US, but they are kind of at the
same place of like not getting the same type of
responses and UM we just want them to actually come
to the table, bring the people that can make the

(10:04):
decisions so that we can have you know, affordable housing,
fair wages to actually do the research that we do here.
And I just want to say that we bring a
lot of value to the university through grants, in particular
as post talks. So we do most of the writing
of research papers, conducting the experiments. UM. People think that
if people think that faculties sit there and run a
wet lab and actually do the you know, the work

(10:26):
of the wet labs. UM. You know, that would be
an amazing colquitty person, But they're really busy in terms
of like having to write grants themselves. We do the
bulk of the work and actually making the research happen. UM.
We do a bulk of the training in terms of
the graduate students and the undergrads that are in the lab,
and so we provide an enormous value to the university.
But at the same time, while we provide these values, UM,

(10:46):
the university doesn't want to give us a fair living
condition or affordable housing. And the last thing I'll say,
and I'll let Alex talk about the other units, UM,
is that you know, we bring a ton of value
to the university because of the grants, and for every
hundred dollars of that grant that is UM given to
the university, the university charges things like the n I

(11:07):
H you know, um, you know, fifty eight dollars and indirects.
So this is a ghost money that we don't know
where it goes. Our pis don't get to have a
say over. And that's money that usually goes to things
that capital projects that could go back to keeping you know, um,
the post docs actually living in uh an Okay living situation.

(11:29):
Can we just explain what capital projects are? So capital
projects are things like you know, um, planning out building
buildings that they want and other things things that aren't
really like compensation based or employee based, you know, because
the university, like you see as the biggest landowner and
so they obviously we want more and more things that
they can develop or lands that they can buy um,

(11:52):
and that's kind of what they kind of focus many
of these indirects on. And I really don't know the
clear picture on indirects, and that's kind of the problem
is that we don't know where all this money kind
of goes. It's they if people. Obviously lots of our
listeners are in San Diego. The scale of construction at
UCSD is incredible, Like I've been here for fifteen years

(12:13):
now and I swear every time I go back there's
a new building like and they can terms of student housing,
it's really old student housing. I think that they've built.
But yeah, and if I can jump in about one
of those, which relates a lot to why graduate students
have become more active on this campus. Um, three or
four of those extraordinarily large buildings you're talking about, we're

(12:35):
actually intended to be built as subsidized graduate student housing,
where you would be you know, you get on a
wait list, you're guaranteed once you get off the way,
which you can live there for two years and pay
below market rent. Um. That lasted for a little bit
of time, but the university just a couple of years
ago or so almost doubled um the price for those units.

(12:57):
They tried to hide it behind saying that their capacity
city increases. But um, what they're saying is for the
same prices before, you can live with two people in
a very small square footage studio apartment. UM. But really
that studio is now just double UM. So that is
one of the things, certainly that we are concerned about,
is that, Yeah, money, what significant portion university's budget does

(13:18):
go into these capital improvement projects. Which are nominally intended
for student and UH and postdoc benefit um, but which
tend to come back and and and not be quite
as helpful in the long run. Yeah, I mean it
seems like they're just doing real estate speculation and then
doing rent extraction from it, which, yeah, and this is
something they've done, Like they did this. There's a very

(13:40):
very similar thing in what like two thousand nine, like
like again, like they built what I built into your building.
It was affordable for a short period of time and
then it suddenly became completely unaffordable. And like they've really
consistently extracted rent from the people that they are under paying. Yeah,
and those buildings were actually this this incident even got
lot of faculty on our side because those buildings were

(14:03):
a major um draw for how we were able to
recruit new people to come and do research with us.
As we were saying, yeah, the cost living here is
really high. You're not going to get a huge stipend
or salary, but we do have the subsurdised housing and
people had actually already committed to do their PhD here
in labs of the university, and then the rent increase
came out that April or May and people said well no,

(14:25):
and then they a bunch of people decommitted from programs,
So it was it was a significant issue here, but
they have not backed off of that. And the problem
with like the university being one of the biggest landlords
is that when they increase the rents for these even
ground housing, it affects everyone else. So like prices, like
my current rent, I live maybe a mile away from campus.

(14:46):
My rent was seventeen hundred, which was eating up most
of my income anyway, and it went up to and
you know, this is directly tied to like the university
setting a higher market rate UM, which then allows them
to hurt everyone else that lives you know, not just
in around UCSD, but also in San Diego generally. Yeah.

(15:07):
One of the big things about UM that we're trying
to get the university to understand, and one of the
reasons I'm proud of the demands that we're making UH
in this round of bargaining is is the effect we
have on the local economy and of people who aren't
even affiliated with the university have their lives affected based
on the rent and based on the cost of things
because of the economic footprint that we have And as

(15:27):
how we mentioned one of our demands is um uh
some more subsidized transit passes. The university already subsidizes. It's
a significant amount of transit, but it's not enough, and
it's not enough to actually really make a difference in
terms of emissions in our region. So we're trying to
raise both our own working conditions as well as as
make meaningful changes in the university's impact in the region.
And in response to that, the university released in part

(15:50):
a very funny statement the other day that accused us
and used transit as an example, accused us of having
a quote social justice agenda. So I wasn't quite sure
if the university or um Rond de Santis wrote that
particular release, but it was it was quite funny, you know, Okay,
Like the more thinking about this, right, this is a

(16:11):
public university. Why are they even charging rent? They own
the land, right, why are they even charging rent in
the first place? Like what what is oh my god? Like, well,
it's just the the housing example I brought up was
funded through what they very proudly refer to as a
public private partnership. So that's where the money is going. Yeah,

(16:32):
oh great, it's going to investors. And recently for the
post docs, their solution to our housing crisis was they
obtained some building in downtown San Diego, which is, you know,
twelve or more miles away from campus, and the building
starts at like rent of three thousand dollars or more.
But like I said, building, yeah, with the one with

(16:54):
the creepy bed in the closet that comes out and
kills your cat. But know what it has like a
closet that folds out. Okay, is that their extent to downtown. Yeah.
I've been trying to p R A and a bunch
of stuff about that building and they've been quite reticent
to hand it over and toddly so addle. Is there

(17:17):
any more contexts you wanted to add from your side
about like is about sort of what is driving people
to to ask for a strike authorization vote? Yeah, definitely.
I mean, our concerns as graduate students are certainly very
similar to a lot of the concerns that postdoctoral students have,
except that we make even less money than they do.
So certainly UH urgent on the compensation side, our units

(17:41):
are demanding a minimum UH graduate student stipend, a fifty
four thousand dollars a year UM, whereas uh, none of
us make more than thirty three or thirty four right now,
and that's very dependent on the program and very dependent
on your source of funding, so most make quite less
than that. UM. We also of a number of other
issues that have come up and cause problems for students

(18:04):
that we want to be able to have a union
in order to rectify. I mentioned that UM our Student
Researchers United Union. It actually knew we're bargaining for our
first contract, and we think we're going to be able
to get a lot of practical benefits out of that,
not just UM, you know, in terms of a contract,
but actually something where we can have some parody and
and some for some some some organization to come to

(18:24):
back for us when the university creates issues. For example, Uh,
the university has known this for a long time. But
the payroll system that manages graduate students stipends and fellowships
and and and and to stipend disbursements is a bit
unreliable for reasons that they can't quite explain. Boy, when
so I wasn't I wasn't a grad student, but I

(18:46):
was an undergrad when our Chicago's grad students went on
strike and that was a big thing of like people
like people would get paid in the university would sometimes
they they wouldn't get paid enough, it wouldn't get paid
at all. There was another time where they actually get
overpaid and the university wouldn't tell them and then they
just take all the money out of their bank account
and catastrophe. Yeah. Is it similar things here? Very much? So? Yeah, yeah,

(19:13):
there is at least My personal story with this is
um uh pretty much ever since so, I applied for
and received an H individual fellowship. For all the other
nerds out there, I got. It's an firty one in
i H fellowship. But essentially what that says is the
n i H likes my research proposal and they are

(19:33):
going to fund a portion of the rest of my PhD.
So in a sense, I've offset the cost of my
labor by bringing an extra few tens of thousands of
dollars to the university. Um However, the processing for that
has not been smooth, and there are months where I
simply have to remind them to pay me. And when
that paycheck doesn't come through, my very hard working program coordinator,

(19:57):
it's not her fault, but she has been open support tickets.
She has to go through different levels of bureaucracy to
find out where the hold up is. And so what
that results in is people often times not getting significant
portions of their stipend and tell well into the beginning
of the first or second week of the month. UM.
I personally am been lucky enough to you know, build
up some savings living here UM, but many students, especially

(20:21):
our first year is coming right out of college, have
not been able to do that. And a lot of
times at the first of the month we have people,
you know, people will come to me and say they
just didn't they I don't know why my stipends and
I didn't work. I can't pay rent, or I can't
get groceries. And these issues have been going on. This
have not been one time things or sporadic things. These
are things that have been continuously going on for years.

(20:44):
And what we're really hoping for is that with the
creation of this Student Researchers Union, that we will be
able to not just you know, send polite emails and
say hi, can you pay me if you get a chance,
We will actually have a literal international union that will
be sending those emails and say you know, you fix
this or by the terms of the contract, we get X,

(21:05):
Y and Z damages. UM, and we're hoping that that
leads to improvements in the system as a as a whole,
because it will get expensive. So yeah, that is certainly
one of the reasons we formed s are you and
are after a brief vote to strike for recognition because
the university ignored the employee religious part of California, which
resulted in some very spicy press releases from herbs which

(21:26):
is great. Um, But we did eventually get recognition and
and now hopefully in a couple in a month or so,
we'll have a contract. Yeah, to explain for people as
well who aren't familiar. If you're teaching right, you may
not have been paid over the summer in some positions,
like I know I was in mind, so like a
late payment in September or even wait until October, like

(21:48):
is you're already at the bottom of your savings, like
there were there were full quarters that quarters at ECSD
where like I lived in my car because it didn't
make it all the way through the summer and the
savings they had, you know, So it really is and
I'm sure there are a lot of still like and
how it's graduate students at UCSD because of the cost

(22:08):
of living in the the waits are so divergent. Yeah, hey, Chris,
you you know what won't make you live in your car?
Oh God, there's no way that's It's going to be
the washes that Harry Patrol again, Todd Gloria. Okay, yeah,

(22:31):
this has brought you by Landlords Joy's adverts and we're back.
And so what I wanted to talk about with some
of the actions that have been taken by student organizations

(22:52):
so far, and also some of the repercussions that have
come from those actions, because again, student organizing is a
little different, and I want people to understand that. So
maybe if it makes sense to start with this wildcats stright,
we can start there. If you want to start further back,
then we can start fie it back to you. You know,
is probably about the extent of my how far my

(23:13):
experience goes back, Um, But I can tell kind of
the story of that a little bit. Um. There was
a movement that we referred to as COLA, which stands
for a cost of living adjustment and convenient as very
convenient acronym, which resulted in people coming to protest with
empty bottles coke on a stick. And that was a
really common science fantastic um. But that was a movement
that started at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One

(23:36):
of the for people aren't familiar with, you see, it
is really actually mini campuses together in one system. In
this particular one started at our campus in Santa Cruz,
UM and it was what is called a wildcats strike,
which is if you're not failily unions that is um
UM at least in America, there are very uh careful

(23:56):
rules that you have to follow of when exactly you
are allowed to call a legally protected strike, and that's
often dependent on your contract or the label laws of
your state. UM. But it is possible for workers to
get together without the explicit approval of their union and
uh take the added risk that involves to hold a
labor stoppage. So I'm not sure of the exact number,

(24:19):
but somewhere between fifty and a hundred or two hundred
or so t a s um SO teaching assistance at
the Santa Cruz campus decided to withhold teaching and also
final exam and UH semester or sorry quarter grades H
for a quarter in I believe this would have been
fall or fall UM and they held UM. They held

(24:45):
they essentially daily pickets and protests UM at their central
insrance of their campus. And this resulted in quite an
extreme response from Santa Cruz administration, University of Santa Cruise
administration and UH they called in the California Highway Patrol. UM.
Also there's will I've asked, I'll send this to christ

(25:07):
and James Pulton the footnotes. But there is a Vice
article where someone did a lot of public records request
and found out that the FBI was also involved, or
at least FBI provided technology was involved. UM. There may
have been sort of counter terrorism UH units involved in
the state in interesting ways UM. But essentially there was
a highly militarized response to what was essentially a few

(25:30):
grand students not doing grades. UM. So this response, the
images that came out of this, people getting arrested for
being in the street and such UM started to actually
provoke sympathy actions across the rest of the campus and
there was really a campus wide or system wide movement
starting to build. And then March of happened, and almost

(25:51):
all of us are labs shut down, the campuses shut down. UH,
those of us who work from home could UM, those
of us who couldn't often had you know, many others
a will to deal with, and that kind of killed UH.
The pandemic essentially killed that movement. But at the same time, UM,
you know these uh U A w twist at five
and you could get ten already existed. SRU was starting

(26:12):
to get formed at this time. We actually managed to
get car check recognition during the pandemic where no one
could actually go to one central point and get cards.
So I'm quite proud of that. So we sort of
rebuilt off of kind of UM, sort of the ashes
of that movement. And even though it was not UM
and I personally supported, but even though it was not
a university sort of excuse me, certainly not university supported,

(26:33):
but union supported uh movement. UM. I think it really
helped a kind of UM plant seeds for graduate students
and post docs having some you know, some degree of
labor consciousness. When I was doing walkthroughs to get people
signed up for the union, get people just quote on
the strike, they would say, you know, they haven't obviously
been keeping track of all the barguing, but say, oh yeah,
I remember, is this like in Santa Cruz. I remember

(26:55):
what they did and people would be and be ready,
you know, to get involved. So um, it was a
deferred kind of benefit given the pandemic, but I think
it helps get a lot of the energy that we
have today. Yeah, that's great to see, actually, because I
know we really struggled with sort of political consciousness on
the on the among the grad students in my time

(27:17):
at E. C. S D. And yeah, I guess it
makes us like that they remember, Like I were talking
to some people who were sort of involved with it,
and like watching the videos coming out of here, like
that was I think, like probably the most intense military
responsive I think I've ever seen to a strike at
the US. It was wild. Like, Yeah, the university chancellor,
chancellor of Santa Cruz at that time bragged or I

(27:39):
don't know if it was bragged or complained that they
were spending three hundred thousand dollars a day on that response. Yeah,
they went incredibly hard. And I want to kind of
get into why, like the university is really really strongly
strongly dislike strikes and partly because they rely heavily on
underpaid graduate student labor, right and increasingly relying heavily on

(28:02):
underpaid adjunct labor as well to take the place of
these expensive tenure track positions. So, can we talk about
a little bit about like what it means to strike
as a grad student, because it's not the same to
strike as a grad students is to strike if you
work on a production lineup right, Like, it really can
make a serious impact on your whole career, and it
can make it a serious impact on your relationship preps

(28:24):
with your with your supervisor or advisor or mentor, and
so can you can you one of your both of
you explained a little bit about the repercussion to come
from striking as a graduate student. Yeah, I'm happy to
share my thoughts. And then and then, um, tyl, you
can maybe talk about what the what post docs are thinking?
Um from the t a perspective, I think I don't

(28:48):
want it. I'm not currently I'm currently a student researchers,
so I'm not currently teaching. I think in that since
it makes there's a little more cut and dry, it's
you're not going to teach your discussion section and you're
not going to grade your exams. As a very concrete
things you can do that are sort of separate from
your research work. For those of us paid to do research,
it's a little bit um harder to figure out where

(29:08):
exactly you're sometimes your labor for the university is, and
where you're um uh kind of research and and and
not wanting to sort of harm yourself. Like I know
people who have planned their advancements to candidacy during this time,
and I think they're still going through with that because
we can say, well, that's more academic, that's more your
personal kind of progress in life, and and so those

(29:29):
sort of things will continue, um. But but I think
it's one of the things, um that that's sort of
um important, is is um sort of your day today
work in the lab and not necessarily saying your research project,
but on just sort of maintaining things, answering questions, communicating

(29:51):
with collaborators, sharing your results with people, helping undergraduates in
the lab, helping um, you know, prepare figures or prepare
text for your advisor to submit grants and all these
other things that are not necessarily like I am doing
this particular you know thing for my degree UM, so
I know a lot of people are worried about, especially
because in the life sciences we have situations where we

(30:13):
have experiments that go on for months and they cost
tens of thousands of dollars to run, and if you
miss a time point on that we're throwing months of
your life and out of the window, and that it
hurts yourself really more than the university. So it's been
a I think, especially because organizing grad super researchers is
something new, at least in America. UM. I think it's

(30:33):
something that in the coming years will be kind of
considered more and people will kind of I think I hope.
What I hope is people learn from our whatever our
experience happens to be next week when we walk out
and start to kind of calibrate, what does it look like?
What is what is an effective work stoppage for a
researcher look like? UM, and I think people are are
We've had a lot of discussions, We've had programmed meetings.

(30:56):
A bunch of students from my program got together and
talked about this UM and I think it might end
up looking different for different people, but really what we're
trying to communicate is is don't do something that's going
to um, you know, damage yourself. Um. But but but
do what you can to disrupt normal operations. Show up
at the picket, um uh. And and make sure you
you communicate, you know, to everyone and around you why

(31:18):
you're leaving, and and and you know, cause as much
disruption as you can. That's kind of what our our
thinking is at the moment. Yeah, and I thin, guys,
you wanted to add tied. Yeah, so I wanted to
add that. UM. So for this one, this strike, I mean,
the reason that we're doing it is because they're not
coming to the table in good faith. So I was

(31:39):
going to correct my numbers. So we had twenties seven
UM complaints that we filed with the California Public Unemployment
Relations Board, and six of those were actually official complaints
to the University of California. And so this strike is
a little different because it's you know, it's interesting to
have to explain to other people why this is so important,

(32:01):
especially in such a short time frame. And so for
post docs, like on a day to day basis, we
do so much research that every day matters, and our
employment schedules aren't very long. So I say that post
docs are generally in there for five years, but p
I don't want to keep a post talk for a
year or two or longer, especially like I've noticed a

(32:22):
pattern here in academia in general that post docs it's
some people prefer to keep them a year and two
years because by the time you asked for pay raises
or the time you ask for curd development and to
get to your next stage, you're not worth it to
them anymore, and they change you out. So when I
come in as a postalk, each position, I've come in
everyday mattered and setting up my research experiment, setting up

(32:43):
my papers, setting up what I was going to do
for the job search, because you don't have that much time.
It takes you know, six to eight months to get
get even an initial interview for a faculty job UM,
and that's a rare thing that you would get anyway.
I think about two percent of post talks become faculty
at this point, and so we're giving up a lot
of Yeah, it's really bleak, and so like right now,

(33:06):
I think the fact that we authorize a strike based
on the UM bad faith bargaining. We did that because
like things are so important, but we know what we're
gonna lose. So if we have to strike for weeks,
that is lost experiments, that's lost time to do our
publications be competitive for this competitive job field. Um. And
also we're gonna let down a lot of people because
we're kind of anchors in our lab for the undergraduates

(33:27):
and the under and the graduate students and also the
text in our lab. And so if we're gone, the
lab just kind of die, especially if the grass dudits
walk out too. UM. But I think we know that
the value that I would get personally for my career, UM,
it isn't worth it if I see not only myself
suffering each year and not being able to make my

(33:49):
rent enable to feed myself, like eating one mill a
day is um not really great. And being able to
afford one UM wardrobe this entire two years of employment
is not it either. UM. And I'm a post doc
and I see the graduate students who I was a
graduate student two years ago. There's not a real border there,
UM and seeing them suffer. You know, most of us

(34:10):
post talks don't want to see anyone else have to
go through that. So it's worth the lost time and
it's kind of been calculable what I could say what
we would lose because grants are so up in the air.
But you know, we're talking millions of dollars for a
grant cycle being lost if a post talk can't you know,
submit the application. We're talking you know, uh what Alex said,

(34:31):
how expensive dise equipment experiments are in these big labs
UM in biology and engineering. So it's really immeasurable. And
I think it's on the UC to come to the
table and good faith and say, hey, let's not do
that's that's not ruin their research and their teaching UM,
because that's the thing that we're here to support UM.
And I just want to say that overall, we're only

(34:51):
less than one percent of u see's total budget. So
what is it to give us a fair wage and
a good housing so we can continue to not UM,
to continue to con your door research and teaching and
not have to go on strike and lose all of this. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's very fair. You know what else, it
only pays out one percent of their income to employee.

(35:15):
The Washington State Higher Patrol no ites not they pay Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's disappointing. Isn't it. Yeah, we're back. Yeah, So I
think you've done a really excellent job of explaining sort

(35:36):
of what's at stake and what people can stand to lose.
I know it can be very confusing. Also as a teacher,
I will add, like what do you do when you're
you're not supposed to communicate right like, so, like what
about when your students email you? That can be very difficult,
or especially if it comes towards the time when you're
writing application letters or your writing letters of support for
your your b A. Students who want to go into

(35:58):
an m A. Or PhD program, like you don't want
like many of us teach as much out of vocation
as for the thirty ye old grand a year. We
can make it a place where the cost of living
is insane, and so like we want to help those
people because we care about our students and and so
it can be very hard for us to go on strike.
I will say that we're very fortunate in the community

(36:19):
college district here, which is a different system, and for
people who aren't aware it's an entirely different university system,
we have a very strong union and as a result,
our I junk faculty here are I believe, some of
the best paid in the country, the teacher the community
college sometimes and it's exclusively thanks to a strong union
and faculty being willing to back up that union. So

(36:42):
like it does work, which is nice to see. But
let's talk about some of the actions that have been
taken already and understand it. Some some folks occupied like
a very busy intersection earlier this year in the spring,
right you want to talk about that. Yeah, that was
the action that we had um UM back in April

(37:04):
UM to sort of raise awareness of the you know,
issues with bargaining and some of the other things that
we're going out at that time UM. And I was
really impressive how well it went, actually UM in terms
of the number of students who came out, number who
are actually willing to participate in that. But yeah, we
gotta several hundred people altogether marched down to UM the

(37:24):
intersection for our San Diego listeners. That's via La Joya
and Lajya Village Drive. Just so you can get a
picture of how important of an intersection this was. Those
of you who know it, UM and did not allow
any cars at the intersection for an entire rush hour,
which was fantastic. UM and we did Yeah, yeah, I

(37:47):
took uh. I hope that UM San Diego p D
build UCSD for that because they had about fifty officers
controlling traffic to helicopters. UM, it was quier response. I
talked to an undercover up on the bridge over the
highway they had. He was upset that he was missing something,
some baseball game or something. I don't know. I could

(38:10):
have had a real job just left. Yeah, I'm actually
staring at that intersection right now. And if I could
tell you how busy it is, Like we were terrified
of what, Like safety was the most important thing, and
I think we did a good job being sure everyone
was safe. But like it's busy, it's it is a
heartline over your My first day in America, I was

(38:33):
walking with another grats to try and find some food
and we tried to cross that road, goes stuck in
the middle, got to jaywalking ticket and right I knew
I had made a great choice in coming to California
at that time. Yeah, that is that road takes like
if you want to cross all three ways, because it's
one of our one of our stupid California roads. We
can only cross the intersection on three sides, so we're

(38:54):
gonna go all the way around. That's going to be
like five six, seven minutes winning at crosswalks. It's it's God.
But but that's that's for maybe a different podcast, but
nightmares here in San Diego. UM. I think there's one
other action that we had that I would really want
to highlight and and this was about, you know, related
to a post dox. So maybe maybe Tyler can kind
of film the details UM about the the action we

(39:18):
had for UM for the UH postox redence. I can't.
I can't. I'm blanking on her name, but made maybe
able to talk about There's been so many post docs
and actions. So this is a really horrible case where
someone who you know had brought up that there was
data UH ethics issues in their lab, which obviously, as

(39:38):
any post soccer graduate student telling your boss that they're
doing something wrong never goes well. UM, but this person
was bringing up this issue. This person also was U
was pregnant and UM at that point the person, once
they found out that this person was pregnant, UM had decided, oh, well,
you need to leave by the end of the year, UM,

(39:58):
which would make the make it to where the person
would get deported because this was an international scholar UM
in their third trime. Master UM, you know, in in January,
and so it was income more insurance during her third trimester. Yeah,
and so Alex, if if you have a good memory
of the action, I'll let you speak about it, because
it was pretty awesome. Yeah, it was pretty great. We

(40:19):
got a ton of people to rally in the health
sciences area of campus. UM people essentially set up little
mini pickets of the relevant buildings UM basically not blocking
the insurance, but making sure everyone went in New exactly
you know why we were there and what the issue was.
And they were eventually towards the end of the day.
I was I wasn't there at that point, but they

(40:41):
were able to actually get up to UM where UM
the chair of her department's office in lab were UM
and I there was nothing threatening that went on, but
I do believe the cops were called nonetheless UM and
and my understanding was this is just rumored. But he
told someone that he really to them to leave because
he had to get to the bathroom and didn't want

(41:03):
to talk to the students. So that was funny part
of the story. Um. But they did get him on
video because they eventually were able to talk to the
chair of the department and got him on video saying
I think this person deserves an extension of their contract.
And that day or two later UCSD did actually award
this post doc um and extension of her contract. But yeah,

(41:25):
that this is an incident that you never would have
seen the light of day, um unless this had been raised, Uh,
unless we hadn't already had this kind of activists kind
of consciousness going on because of the ongoing bargaining and
the union was able to post union was able to
win kind of I think out of a really terrible situation,
I think salvage probably one of the best outcome. She'll
be able to have her child here um and look

(41:48):
for new jobs in the meantime to um, you know
whatever her family wants to do extended visa or or
go back to their original country. But they essentially they
have security, uh, some measure of security now which wouldn't
have happened about uh raising a quite a disruption over it.
And I also want to say that this was a

(42:08):
post doc and the grad students came out to protect
a post doc. So all these invisible lines at the
university draws like obviously there were post docs there too,
but if you think about the number of graduate students,
like they are the immune system that has come out
and saved a bunch of post docs through these actions.
There was another action with someone that was being let
go within four months of their employment, um in an

(42:30):
inappropriate way. This person was kind of using their lab
as that research mill I talked about only really hired
women post docs and really did not treat them well,
um despite doing research in women's health. And the grad
students also came out for that, and we got to
save that person from getting immediately fired and they're better
off man. Hell yeah, yeah, it's great. I think that

(42:53):
sort of directity is super important. And yeah, is the
only thing to stop to university from just rampidly exploiting
if you want, apart from like a hundred and fifty
people at the very top. Actually, on that note, can
I ask have you been working with like I guess,
what's the tactical name for them, like the like the
like the the other non student unions on campus. Oh,

(43:17):
it's like a f TEMs. Yeah yeah, like yeah, yeah.
They Unfortunately most of the unions don't have sympathy strike
or uh those sorts of things in their contract if
if they cannot do an official strike if they're under contract.
But yeah, they've definitely been helping in terms of kind

(43:38):
of raising consciousness and awareness. I know, the ones that
have the ability to, um, you know, maybe cancel their
classes or use class time to teach about the strike
or you know, do things like that have been um. Uh,
they're they're that they're planning to do that. Um. What's
nice as well is that this isn't really a union,
but there's kind of a non university affiliated sort of

(44:01):
group of faculty who you know, advocate for for for
changes across the entire campus, and they're organizing a very
large petition and letter writing campaign from faculty members supporting
our action, which I think is is really critical because
the university won't listen to us, but they may listen
to if you get to a critical massive of professors

(44:23):
supporting what we're doing. UM. So there's been uh, you know,
not universal certainly, but but there's been a great deal
of solidarity. But even coming from uh some of the
people who who the university I think has relied on
to be more on their side, which is the professors,
like the Faculty Association. I think that's pretty awesome because

(44:43):
you can imagine that you see, doesn't want them to
ever unionize, but they obviously see the leaky pipeline where
grass students are, you know, either not staying in their
programs or post talks aren't coming. And you just you know,
what you happen to have at the end of that
is people that have generational wealth um at the end
of it, who happened to stay in these programs. And
I think that's what really motive the faculty to come

(45:04):
out and say something because like you see, it says, oh,
we support equity university, but then they have seen constantly
the university not do anything materially to change that. Yeah, yeah,
it's good. It's good to see the fact that he's
shooting up. And again that's it's sort of that's that's
how we fix these things, right, is by staking together

(45:25):
with sort of dearity, with organizing. So maybe to finish up,
if we talk about what next week is going to
look like, what next week might look like, I guess
or I guess it'll it'll be this week by the
time this comes out, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, So what
can people look for and the on the timeline from
u c s D from the university or from from
from from the from the strike yeah, that's strike. Yeah. Well,

(45:47):
we'll have a number of pickets throughout campus UM mostly
kind of trying to keep them geographically oriented, so everyone
from the surrounding buildings just go to you know, one
one specific spot. We've were doing, you know, sign up, organizing,
strike pay, all those sorts of typical things have been
going on this week. UM. And the walkout begins November

(46:08):
for across you know, not just UCSD but all the campuses.
So that's our total um UM bargaining unit membership across
the three unions is for people of those voted on
our strikeout vote voted yes. So we're expecting a pretty
significant turnout of that entire membership to be on the
picket line. UM. So that will there will be um,

(46:31):
you know, those t as who are walking out will
be that that will be the first disruption university feels
before they feel a research disruption. They will very clearly
see the teaching disruption and exams not taking place, grades
not being entered, UH sections not being taught across every
single campus and UM and that will certainly be UM
UH something that they will UM have to deal with

(46:55):
and and hopefully the size of the disruption in the
first few days will convince them to come to the
bargaining table in a reasonable way UM. And if not,
we are prepared to continue until they do. And the
other interesting part about what's gonna happen next week is
that this is UM a picket line that is going

(47:18):
to be not just including you know, researchers and instructors,
but also people that support us. So there's a big
conference downtown for a lot of neuroscientists and UM it's
it's called SFN. I can't remember what that stands for, UM,
but a lot of them are actually coming to the
picket line to support us. I didn't know about that.
That's great, Yeah, yeah, it's I think that's pretty exciting.

(47:40):
I didn't know it was in San Diego, but UM,
they're gonna be here and also, you know, vouch for
us because you see does like we are the leading
research group and we contribute to a lot of the
research that are at these meetings. Anyway. UM. There's also
going to be it's a child friendly picket line and
for people with access needs, we're gonna have um, you know,
virtual picketing and you'll know what that looks like. UM.

(48:01):
It's still being developed, but I think that's pretty exciting.
As someone you know, with a disability to myself, it's
exciting that other people can contribute to that. Yeah, it's
very cool to you guys to do that. It's very cool.
How can people help, how can we support you? How
can people find you? On the internet? Yeah, So, I
think if you want to keep up with the strike news,
there's three Twitter accounts, the s r U, you a

(48:24):
w u W and you a W two week six five.
I think they kind of share a lot of the
same content sometimes because we're all kind of doing this together.
But that's a good place to keep track of the news.
I know there is a link to UM. There's a
they've set up a Hardship strike fund. UM. I don't
have that link off top of my head, but if

(48:44):
you put the yeah to us later and if you
go to fare you see now dot org it'll have
all the information about what's happening, but also those type
of links to UM. So if you want some contact,
so it's pretty good. Yeah, and how about youtubo personally?
Would you like to share your personal Twitter so or
do you just want to stick with the the organizational once? Um,

(49:08):
I would love to. I promise I'm not that fun.
But minus Tyler Bell PhD. That's my dad. Yeah, and
I'm Alex t Winzl on Twitter. I once this is over,
I'll probably go back to tweeting entirely about my work
and pictures of buses. Twitter Alex, Yeah is a high
value follow. Thank you. Alex gives live updates about transit

(49:31):
and it's exciting. You see a train, it's all good.
It pretty like hits at like five year old child.
We have pretty much of buses in San Diego. Now
what can I say here? Yeah? All right, thank you
so much of your time, both of you. I really
appreciate it. Best to luck next week. Maybe I'll come
up and bring you, I know, some souper like like

(49:51):
an oil can that we can start firing on campus
or something. Love it. Yeah, have one here, let's do it.
I'm that all right? Yeah, best of black and we'll
look forward to hearing what happens. Thank you so much
for thanks so much for talking to us. Hello podcast fans.
I know you got to the end of the episode

(50:11):
and you were thinking, not enough James, not enough strikes,
not enough UCSD. So lucky you. I've been up to
since you see San Diego today, and I've recorded with
Tyler and Alex at the strike and we got some
some audio of the strike going on as well. It
was really amazing, really incredible to see that many people
out never thought I to see that u CSD. So

(50:33):
without further ado here made view with them all right,
So here with Tyling Alex again, this time with more
background noise. We're at the strike now. How many people
are here roughly oh Man somewhere, probably around at least
a couple of thousand right right now. Definitely a couple
of thousand people out here. It's really impressive. Like I've

(50:54):
read to u c s D if you haven't take
that up yet, and like we did not get into
so many people even when like people started hanging New
Season around campus. I did. I didn't think so I
did again. It is genuinely very impressive. And what's been happening, um,
I think things have gone really well so far this
since day two as we're recording this that we've been
on strike. Um. There has been some progress of the

(51:16):
bargaining table that I've heard, UM, but we do know
that you see is going to try to drag this out.
They think that they can outlast our momentum. But so
far as you can really hear from the noise behind
us and see all the different you know, uh, thousands
of people converging from all the pict locations at across
campus that they've been at since eight in the morning,
I think our energy is going strong. Where do you think, Tyler? Yeah,
so I think the energy is really strong here today. Uh.

(51:37):
The UC did not expect us to come on day two,
at which we know because at bargaining they canceled our
meetings for today, um, because they didn't expect us show up.
But somehow magically a meeting immerged around two o'clock today.
And it may be due to the fact that two
thousand people are out here pretty piste uh and one
a fair contract. But yeah, I think the momentum it's
pretty high. We actually did more disruption today, going directly

(52:00):
talking to the deans and the faculty and screaming in
their offices as I sat really comfy. But I'll say, yeah,
first floor seminars didn't go well today, I'll put it
that way. All right, there was something that I know
the universe did about like intimidation and un friend lavorite practices,
and you come to yeah, I can talk to generalities. UM,

(52:20):
there's uh, well, the labor law that governs us is
IS is a little bit complicated because some of us
also receive, uh course credit for the work that we
do that is protected under activity that protects our strike activity,
which is a little bit of an anti labor practice
in and of itself. There's no reason I have to
sign up for twelve credits of just existing doing work.
That doesn't make any particular sense, but it's the way

(52:41):
the inversity run things. So, UM, there has been some
emails that are sent out that are are questionable legal
correctness as to whether, um, we can be hurt in
terms of our academic standing for participating on the strike.
That is definitely not true. UM is if we are
if the is activity that's governed under the what our
union is sending us for UM. So we know we've

(53:01):
had some issues with that. Tyler, I guess you could
talk about maybe some other examples that have come out.
It's on the postox side right now. The university has
released like an f a Q of sorts in an
email where it says, oh, well, you'll have to tell
the niage that your postox aren't doing research and that
they are funding needs to get pulled. But that's kind
of a joke. There's no like reporting mechanism for that.

(53:22):
It's more like a stipend for a living um. So
we're telling people just to stay strong and uh, people
see you kind of pass like the threats that they're making,
and a lot of faculty see through it too. Okay,
we just intercepted you. When you're going somewhere else, you
would you like to introduce yourself? All right? So them
post doc um, I'm pretty new in your C s C.

(53:43):
I joined in April, and I came here having already
done another post doc and a PhD in Europe. I
joined the union almost instantly when I came here, since
i've I was basically horrified, for lack of a better
way to put it, so, I studied in the EU
for ten years and my experience of academia is what

(54:04):
I experienced there, which was decent working conditions, being able
to save money, not having to spend fifty few salary
on ransom. When I came here and experienced post stock life,
I couldn't believe it. So I believe. I met Tyler
when I came here for the first time and we
did this orientation that was awesome and awesome horrifying at

(54:27):
the same time. Sorry, it was awesome to meet you
because I realized it was then that I learned how
a labor union worked. My knowledge of labor unions was
minimal up until the point that I moved here, so
minimal that I didn't even know what labor unions in
the EU functioned like until I came here and realized,
oh my god, we are actually lucky to have a
union that supports postdocs, and this is not the case

(54:48):
in a lot of places in the US. Yeah, yeah,
that's so. How has the strike action gone so far?
It's been crazy. We've been planning this for so long.
It's a bit surreal to be part of FIT. I
think it's been going great. It's been very energizing, and
it's been intense. Yeah, it's hard, right, None of us
really want to be out here and strike, and the

(55:09):
fact that so many people are putting work on hold
just speaks to the intensity and seriousness of the problem
and what we're striking for. Yeah, yeah, I think that's
very true. It's really impressive. How many people here I
can't over Yeah some time. Yeah, very impressive. So let's see. Look,
you guys know how the bargaining has gone and what

(55:32):
we can expect from here. Well, what we would like
would be for the U SEE to meet us at
the bargaining table and give us a fair contract. But
UM repeating that ad infinite UM bobby with whole labors
is the plan thus far. But what's actually been happening
is UM usually just hasn't been paying fair as you know. Yeah,

(55:56):
it's it's been. It's been infuriating for me. It makes
me very angry. It's very serree and especially I think
if you're used to a sort of more sane labor context,
to see them just make a gas lighting and righting
and doing what I'm a fraise for it is illegal stuff.
It's disrespectful, is what I think. Yeah, may think maybe

(56:18):
illustrates instead of what they see post toxographed jazzing in
economic gens. Yeah, as a workforce whose rights are not
to be value to do a bulk of the work.
It's it's very disrespectful, you know. I think it certainly
speaks to uh. Like I said earlier, they're trying to
outlast us, and they think that we will reach a
certain point where we we no longer feel like we
can avoid our work, that we can stay out here.

(56:40):
And I think you would think that if that's their strategy,
would realize that we are in a point of desperation,
We are in a point of procarity, um, where we
really need wages and compensation and and and workplace protections
that meet the current economic situation that we live in,
because right now that's not what we have. And currently
at the bargaining table, they're kind like putting a lot

(57:00):
of our labor reps and to like uh something that
looks like like jaw like jig saw like type trap
rooms where they have only for lesson hiding and no
windows and then them not knowing whether or not they
have to get a flight back because they're not going
to meet with them that day. Um, them saying that
they haven't reserved rooms even though that you know, they
have so much power. Who's who's taking up a room
from them, um to meet with them and actually come

(57:21):
up with some proposals. I got to update that EDMUN
wasn't bargaining because they couldn't reserve a room. What does
that mean? There's forty eight thousand people on strike, the
entire system isn't working. You mean it's your rooms also,
you own the rooms. I'm I was that that was
a fascinating update. I'm sorry, I just had to mention
something about that. So that's just all we have to
know right now is that they keep canceling meetings adding meetings.

(57:42):
They're kind of just waiting us out and see how
long we'll actually be on strike and whether or not
we actually care about our contracts, which I think you
being here today, you see how many people are out.
No one's gonna leave this picket line throughout the week.
So yeah, yeah, I think that's basically it. People aren't
going to leave the picket line, and the energy is
awesome because people are fed up. People are fed up,
people are fed up being poor and homeless, and this

(58:04):
is not why we come to grad school, right. I mean,
I was very fortunate to have a good grad school experience,
and that's why I'm still in academia, but the majority
of the people who come to the university spending savings.
I know people with student loans back from India who
are here to do a master's and are teeing doing research,
killing themselves because they had a dream. They literally moved

(58:25):
across the world to come here following a dream and
our ending up being broken. That's that's heartbreaking from a
university as big as this. Nobody deserves to be treated
this way, and I think everybody here is feeling it.
If you go to fair you see now dot org.
There's a link to a strike fund right now, a
hardship fund, and people can donate to that any amount

(58:45):
they want to. And there's also we're taking donations to
actually feed people out here. UM So people have questions
about that, they can just email the links at that website.
UM yeah. People. People are very very welcome to show
up to the picket line to come help. All help
is appreciated. You want to join us, you want to chant,

(59:05):
you want to bring supplies, we'll be there. This is
across all ten you see campuses, if you're near the
picket line, if you want to show support and solidarity,
come join us. Yeah, the virtual picketing is still happening,
and what they've been actually doing is making sure people
get here and nowhere to go since the picketing is
so transient, like we're literally moving building to building as
it's needed, and they're doing the calls for us and

(59:27):
directing us, so which is a wild thing. But also
the other thing is just people retweeting everything that we post,
making sure that no one can silence us, because that's
what you see. Once. Thank you so much for coming,
Thanks for giving us this platform. The awareness is really
critical to make sure that you see can't ignore us,
So thank you so much for coming. It Could Happen

(59:47):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Thanks for listening.