Bitter Strike for California Graduate Student Employees

(NLNS)—On November 19th, the 1200 members of the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW-affiliated) at UC-Berkeley began a strike for permanent union recognition of AGSE, an action that would substantially shut down teaching on campus for the rest of the semester and significantly disrupt final grading. Over 70% of all classrooms were empty in the first weeks of the strike, while other classrooms were often half-filled at best (except in a few hard science departments like chemistry and engineering where few employees struck). In those first weeks of the strike, well over two-thirds of undergraduates stayed off campus in support of their graduate student instructors. Sproul Plaza, the teeming campus bazaar of student groups that emerged a generation ago out of the struggles of the Free Speech Movement, spoke loudly in its silence and emptiness in support of the graduate student strike. Within a week of AGSE’s initial walk-out, UC-Santa Cruz’s Graduate Student Employees Association (GSEA/UAW) began a parallel strike on their campus.

Unfortunately, the nine-campus UC system-wide administration preferred union-busting tactics to collective bargaining. Despite the obvious impact of the removal of graduate student labor, the UC President’s Office continued to maintain that AGSE members were not legitimate employees who deserved a contract to protect their wages or working conditions. In the week before the strike began, the AGSE Executive Board had thought they had the makings of a deal with the Berkeley administration; instead, the UC President’s office stepped in, ended all serious negotiations, and as the strike wore on, took back even the partial concessions granted to AGSE after a 1989 two-day walk- out, such as dues deductions for AGSE members and any form of mutually agreed upon workplace conditions and rules.

With no resolution of the strike in sight, undergraduates began crossing the picket line in massive numbers in the week before final exams. With threats of reprisals against union strikers and with some professors scabbing in place of graduate student employees, the picket lines weakened and some AGSE members crossed the line to grade finals. In the end, around 10% of grades at UC Berkeley were issued as “in progress” due to the strike, mostly concentrated in the humanities and social sciences. With semester-to-semester appointments, the AGSE strike ended in January with the hiring of the Spring semester appointees who will now have to vote on where to go from here.

Within AGSE/UAW, strong criticism was leveled against the Executive Board on three points: undemocratic over-centralized leadership, a lack of community outreach, and a narrow vision and organizing strategy that ignored issues of diversity and the California state budget crisis that could have broadened support for AGSE. The strike itself was started with no debate of alternative tactics, goals or timelines; no amendments were allowed for the original strike authorization vote in October and balloting was started at the beginning of the meeting, so most people were no longer present by the time the floor was open for debate. No serious outreach was made to local community organizations or union locals; AGSE failed even to affiliate with the local Central Labor Council (although the local Joint Council of the Teamsters honored the strike and refused deliveries to Berkeley). And with over $500 million of budget cuts to the University of California in the last few years and a doubling of student fees, it was inevitable that undergraduate students would refuse to sacrifice their own grades for a union strike that was so conspicuously silent on issues of concern to them.

With the largest disruption of the UC system since the Vietnam War, the AGSE and GSEA strikes cannot be called complete defeats, but they are set-backs that need to be evaluated. With broader alliances with undergraduates and community members and a more inclusive vision of who has a stake in the education conditions in the UC system, graduate student unionism can build on the lessons of this strike in California.

For the January 20th AGSE meeting, I am proposing for discussion the following organizing strategy. I welcome any friendly amendments, comments, or co- endorsements. What we need at this point are fundamental debates on long-term strategy for this union.

Proposed AGSE Organizing Strategy

Context: In evaluating the strike of Fall 1992, the resistance of the UC President’s Office and the Regents was the critical element in our failure to achieve permanent recognition of our union. Any organizing strategy must attack that resistance. To do that, the following plan concentrates on three major areas: building a multi- campus presence towards a threatened strike in Spring 1994; creating a broad multi-issue agenda around education in California that will strengthen undergraduate, community and media support for our efforts; and filing an initiative to democratize the Regents that will force accountability by the voters for any actions by the Regents.

1) Multi-Campus Organizing Drive:

The whole AGSE membership will be enlisted to help to organize at campuses across the state, with a strong emphasis on organizing UCLA. AGSE members in each department will have primary responsibility for contacting grad students at corresponding departments at other campuses. The primary focus of such organizing phone calls and E-Mail contact will be to recruit lead organizers for each department across the state. Once those primary organizers are recruited, subsequent phone calls can be directed to assist on-campus grad student organizers as needed, hopefully supplemented by staff support as UAW is able to provide.

Primary recruitment of lead organizers would occur in Spring 1993. Fall 1993 would be devoted to achieving majority status on campuses, especially UCLA and Davis to assure that we have majority status among all graduate student employees across the state. With that status, we could then move to demand that the Office of the President recognize the UAW as the bargaining agent for all graduate student employees in the state.

2) Create Broad Issue Alliance Around Education in California:

With well over $1 billion in budget cuts for higher education in California over the last few years along with a doubling of student fees, there is ample room for a broad alliance to fight budget cuts in which AGSE/UAW could be a key leader. Such an alliance would preserve one-on-one instruction by GSIs (i.e. our jobs) while fighting to keep a college education affordable and accessible in order to make sure that undergraduates see our struggle as a struggle they should support even into finals if necessary. A strong emphasis would be placed on maintaining a diverse student population which is threatened by enrollment reductions, thereby building community support by those seeking to make UC a less elite and more diverse institution. Such a mobilization would create both on and off-campus alliances that would strengthen any planned strike action in the Spring of 1994. By raising broader political issues around education, the media would be more likely to follow our struggle more closely. Spring 1993 would be the primary time to raise these issues during the budget mobilizations around the state, although they could continue into Fall 1993 and would be intertwined with any strike actions in the Spring of 1994.

3) Democratize the Regents Initiative:

The Regents (and therefore the UC President’s Office) will resist recognition of AGSE/UAW as long as they are absolutely without accountability. An initiative at the California ballot would force accountability on the Regents for any disruption of the campus due to an AGSE strike. While the actual ballot election would not have occurred by Spring 1994 (since the earliest state of voting on such an initiative would be June 1994), the Regents would know that they would be fired if they are seen as either uncaring or incompetent.

AGSE would spend Spring 1993 in discussions with other groups, such as faculty, community groups, undergraduates and the statewide UC Student’s Association to work out the exact details of such an initiative. Signatures would be collected in Fall 1993 and the first month or two of 1994 to be qualified by March 1994 (and our threatened strike).

Overall Timeline:

February and March 1993: Develop organizing plans for each UC campus in the state. Develop organizing teams in each UCB department (and Santa Cruz department if possible) to call graduate student employees in corresponding departments across the state. Begin campaign on campus around budget cuts in coalition with ASUC, other staff unions, supportive faculty, and other community groups concerned about budget cuts across the state. Open discussions on Democratize-the-Regents Initiative. APRIL 1993: Help convene lead organizers from each UC campus to plan fall union organizing campaigns. Develop budgets for UAW for planned staff support in organizing drives. Statewide rallies around budget cuts with possible one-day grad/undergrad teach-in. Link our fight to local community struggles over the budget cuts, especially K-12 education. MAY THRU JULY 1993: File Democratize-the- Regents Initiative with Attorney General for evaluation; receive back petitions in late August. Continue whatever organizing is possible over summer.

Fall 1993: Launch membership drives at each campus. UCB and UCSC (along with UCSD) should assist to the extent possible. Collect signatures to qualify Democratize-the-Regents Initiative for ballot. With majority membership drives at places like UCLA, UCD, etc., the bulk of petition collecting will happen at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Diego and non-UAW groups around the states.

January and February 1994: Finish the initiative drive and qualify it on the ballot. Open negotiations with the UC system over recognition and first contract with UAW. Give March 1st deadline for meeting our demands. Elect negotiations/strike committee on each campus. Link those demands to issues around the quality of education; reinforce AGSE/UAW links to undergraduates, unions on and off-campus, and community groups around the state. Build parallel undergraduate strike organization within each department.

March 1st 1994: Vote to either approve agreement with UC system or to grant authorization for statewide strike.

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