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MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 10–AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION OF WHAT FACULTY SHOULD DO IF TAs GO ON STRIKE; OTHER COMMENTS WELCOME
Inflation and cost of living are looming large, although I don't see graduate TAs getting 54k per year, but as a bargaining position, it's probably good to aim high. An LA Times piece here. Comments are open for more links or for information from those in the UC system knowledgeable about the issues, the negotiations, etc.
I’m a professor at one of the UC’s. I agree that 54K is unlikely to be successful – but it doesn’t make for a bad starting-point in negotiations.
Here at UCSD, the administration has been fairly callous about the cost of living for graduate students. Last year, the cost of graduate student housing skyrocketed – and the ‘affordable option’ the University offered involved paying the same cost as the previous year, but getting a roommate (effectively doubling the cost of on-campus housing).
I’ve been told by the administration that they have paid for negotiators to continue to work through the weekend. While there’s a chance a strike will be averted, I don’t think it’s particularly likely if the union is sticking to their $54K number. On a personal level, the strike will make teaching extremely difficult (which may be the point – after all!). I’m due to have in excess of 5,000 pages of student papers submitted over the next month. While the grading would ordinarily be shared by a half-dozen graduate students, the thought of getting through it all myself is a bit daunting, to say the least. We have been told that the University will offer support to professors, but they have not yet clarified what this support will involve.
There has been some discussion among professors about whether it is ethical to grade papers during the graduate student strikes. This isn’t (directly) because we are lazy or overwhelmed by the work, but rather because it would mean that professors were acting as strike-breakers, which some are hesitant to do. That said, my feeling is that most professors think the costs to undergraduates for not grading would be high enough (especially for international students and those on financial aid) that we will try to get it done ourselves.
When I got my MA and PhD (and CPhil) at UCLA in the late 90s/early aughts, the pay for 3/4 time work (TA + RA) was a little over $30k. The rent for a university-owned apartment came to about $16k per year, more than half my take-home pay (my spouse was unable to work). If rents have continued to climb like they have elsewhere (and those were considerably subsidized, about $600/month lower than comparable units in the same area), $54k may still be only double the rent, or perhaps even less. And everything else in west LA is expensive, too.
My son is a postdoc at UCLA; since the nature of his postdoc is that he's essentially just doing his own research he's not sure what the strike will mean for him, or how the University will feel much effect from his withholding his labor. I guess he still has a few days to figure that out.
I walked the picket line 40 years ago as a TA in Madison. It was a miserable 5 weeks, and we lost the strike. We didn't represent RAs, let alone postdocs, and frankly I think the situation of the three kinds of employee are pretty different. An RA in a lab field who stopped working for that long would be in danger of alienating his supervisor, which could kill off his own career. TAs are probably in the best position, of the three groups, of drawing a distinction between the work they are doing for their salary and the work they are doing as part of building their own research program.
I'm always surprised, when administrations oppose unionization or living wages and benefits for TAs, how little the arguments have changed since that time, or how ready some faculty are to echo those arguments. The latter is true even at my current institution, where faculty are unionized and where we have struck or threatened to strike several times over the years.
I shouldn’t have been, but I was still stunned by the UC administrations’ expectation that faculty will turn in final grades by the usual deadline, by hook or by crook. What’s worse, I think faculty will actually fall in line. It seems undeniable to me that any faculty who grades assignments in the place of the TAs who were hired to do that job is ipso facto a scab. This might seem less obvious for tenure-track faculty whose salaries are for more things than just teaching, but think about the lecturers (that’s UC-speak for adjunct faculty) in their midst who are teaching courses that have TAs. When they signed a contract at the beginning of the quarter, the work they were being hired to do did not include things like running sections and grading papers and exams. Now they are being asked to cover that work without any compensation, so far as I know. (Does the lack of compensation make it *better*?)
Now of course nobody is thinking that any faculty will actually, say, grade all the papers and final exams in a 240-student course themselves. (Can you imagine?) Instead the UC administrations are suggesting that faculty ‘modify’ any remaining assignments to make the grading of them easier, e.g., by turning an essay-style exam into a multiple-choice one. For final papers they have suggested using rubrics and “ask[ing] students to self-evaluate their submitted work using the rubrics” (gee, I wonder what grade they will give themselves?). In other words, it’s going to be a joke, or an outrage, depending on how hard the modified assignments turn out to be compared to the original plan. Either way I don’t see why any faculty should do it. It's still doing the kind of work TAs were assigned to do; and now you are changing your expectations for students in your class at the last minute, too. (What if a student hates multiple choice exams?) This isn’t March 2020 all over again; the reason you are being asked to scramble and alter your courses to finish them up is to blunt the force of the TA strike. Period. Even if you hate the TA union and think you are under no obligation to not impede their strike efforts, you arguably should not comply with the UC’s expectations. By doing whatever’s necessary to turn final grades in on time, you effectively would be saving the union from the most painful effects of its chosen action. This could very well serve to prolong the strike since neither party will be incentivized by the undergraduate demands for their grades to get back to the bargaining table. Say it with me, UC instructors: it's not my fault that the undergrads aren't getting their grades. It's either the UC administrations' or the TAs' fault.
I agree with Works at a UC (and disagree, very strongly, with Samuel Elgin) that professors should categorically refuse to change their assignments such that TAs are not needed or grade work in lieu of the TAs. It is unfortunate that undergraduate students will bear the brunt of the effects of the strike (the student workers are aware of this, and did not make the decision to strike lightly) but in order for the strike to be successful, its effects must be felt by someone. The proper response by faculty who sympathize with their students (and the students themselves) who need grades for whatever reason is to apply pressure to the UC administration to strike a deal with the Union, not to undermine the Union's bargaining efforts by either doing or eliminating TA work.
Cannot someone mark only the work of those students who really need it? That would seem a solidaric and feasible course of action.
The only real leverage academics have when taking industrial action is to effect students – through their fees, they keep the show on the road. We have precious little other power. E.g. literally nobody cares if you delay publishing your little paper in Synthese by a few weeks. It follows then that if a lecturer or professor changes their plans to undermine the effect of TA strikes on students, you are actively fighting against the strike. You are helping your employer ride out industrial action. You are taking an anti-strike stance. This is basic stuff.
Surprising numbers cited in these comments. I don't remember enough about the 1/2, 3/4 designations, but I'm pretty sure that none of the graduate student fellowships, TA salaries, or regents' dissertation fellowship we received at Irvine between 2001 and 2006 came close even to $20,000 a year. LPS is in the School of Social Sciences, which I think had graduate student support comparable to the School of Humanities had at the time. And I think the support packages at Irvine were very similar to those at UCLA and UCSD. There were options for PhD candidates to do adjunct teaching in the summer sessions, though, which paid on top of the annual stipends.
One thing that doesn't seem to have changed is the need for continuous and intensive union bargaining.
Not sure 7 'UK view' was intended as a response to my question – probably not. But it made me wonder whether I should have taken the time to explain that support from the general public, and especially groups affected by strike action, is an important factor.
My question was: Cannot someone mark only the work of those students who really need it? The obvious answer to my question is 'yes', and I think it is the right thing to do if you want to support the TA strike; of course, you must not define 'really need it' too broadly, or else you will mark the work of too many students in this situation.
What is the UC faculty union advising here? When grad students were on strike last year at my university, we were given clear instructions about how stand in solidarity with the grad students.
Chris Newfield, who wrote an interesting contrarian book on university budgets some years back, runs a blog about UC budgetary doings. I went there to see if he had any insight into the strike, and was surprised to see nothing there:
https://utotherescue.blogspot.com/
For those of you in California: is this labor action being seen as a big deal? Or is everyone other than the students and postdocs involved treating it as a nothingburger? (It seems like a big deal to me.)
Stan, the obvious answer is no. Not doing the work of your TAs is the bare minimum of respecting their right to strike (for which sound philosophical justifications exist). If you decide to do their work, you are actively undermining their efforts to put pressure on the administration. This is strikebreaking, plain and simple. Maybe an analogy helps. Let us assume the workers of a delivery company decide to strike. You are basically arguing that goods should nevertheless be delivered to the customers who are most in need of their purchases. Hence, somebody would have to cross the picket line and do the work. And to reply to potential objection: students at American universities are very much seen and see themselves as customers.
I would even question whether not doing TAs work already amounts to showing solidarity. I believe that solidarity demands an active effort on your side. Not crossing the picket line for your work, joining the academic workers at the picket line, or canceling classes would be solidary actions. Moreover, I believe that departments should think about collective responses to the labor struggle of academic workers, also to protect their weakest members.
A well rounded news article with all the updates so far:
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