We further express our continued support of the graduate students should they vote to authorize an Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) strike. We urge the UC to engage in good-faith collective bargaining directly with UAW Local 2865 to avoid a system-wide graduate student strike that would severely impact every aspect of UC operations.

We condemn the UC administration’s use of militarized policing and violent force in responding to graduate student strike and protest actions. These measures demonstrate that the UCSC administration and UC Regents set little value on the health, well-being, and labor of precarious graduate student workers, particularly those vulnerable to deportation, detainment, or imprisonment because of their citizenship status.

Graduate student workers are essential to the collective mission and success of the UC system. They should be granted compensation that recognizes their contributions to the educational and research mandates that maintain the UC as a preeminent public university system, in a state with some of the highest costs of living in the country.

We urge the university to make every effort to curtail the ongoing and potential future disruptions this is causing for UC undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as campus-wide research activities, by engaging in good-faith negotiations with the UC graduate students and UAW Local 2865.

To learn more about the UC graduate student strike visit: https://payusmoreucsc.com/

Image by Woody Carroll.