A message to UC Student-Workers Union – UAW 2865

The Teaching Assistants’ Association of UW-Madison — AFT 3220 proudly supports the University of California Student-Workers Union — UAW 2865 in their statewide strike to be held on April 2nd and 3rd. UAW 2865 is striking over several charges of unfair labor practices by the administrations of UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz regarding threats, intimidation, and retaliation for protected union activity. The strike also concerns administrations’ intransigent unwillingness to bargain over matters central to the working conditions and living standards of graduate employees, such as class sizes and appointment renewals.

Nationally, the degradation of academic work — growing contingency and adjunctification, the erosion of tenure for those lucky enough to get near it, the decline of faculty governance and the vast expansion of layers of corporate-style administration — has drastically heightened the imperative of organizing labor in the academy. Labor unions of academic workers are the main line of defense for academics’ rights, working conditions, and living standards, and are a key institution to the defense of public higher education writ large. The TAA- the first graduate employee union to collectively bargain- is now adapting to a public sector labor management regime where bargaining is formally off the table. But the willingness of our administration to negotiate will depend in no small part on the example provided by graduate workers’ unions at other campuses. In recognition of this, we stand in solidarity with UC Student-Workers Union – UAW 2865, and say: An injury to one is an injury to all, and your fight is ours.

The University Works because Graduate Students Do!