From the Academic Student Employee union (UAW #2865) at UC Davis:

As an important step toward winning our bargaining demands for improved workload protections, UAW 2865 members around the state are having a grade-in/tutor-in during finals week.  Our action will demonstrate to the University of California just how much work it takes to ensure the students at UC Davis get the quality education they deserve. Come out and show your support for increased workload protections while you get your work done.

WHO: All TAs, Graders, Tutors and Grad Students
WHAT: Grade-in/Tutor-In
WHERE: Memorial Union Patio
WHEN: Tuesday, June 12, 11:30am – 1pm

As contract negotiations have progressed, the administration has stalled having any serious discussion over workload.  As enrollment has steadily increased statewide, class and section sizes have ballooned, creating more work for Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers. When we are overworked we cannot provide quality education to our students and we are slower to advance in our academic careers.  We are faced with pressure to speed up our work and do more with less. Employees want increased workload protections that would give the union a say over class and section size.

The Union has made several proposals to proactively prevent overworking that have not been addressed by the administration.  In addition to negotiating with UC administration over class and section sizes, TAs Tutors, and Readers also want to win the right to arbitrate over workload.  With the current contract, academic student employees cannot take workload grievances to arbitration, which means any workload disputes are settled by an internal university board rather than a neutral arbitrator.

We need to show the administration that the issue of workload is important to us and remind them how crucial our work is for the quality of education at the University of California.  Bring any exams or papers you need to grade or hold outdoor office hours/tutoring sessions and help send a strong message to the administration that they must address this key issue.

Grading makes finals week a crazy time of year for grad students who tutor or TA undergraduate classes, but most of the time the time that we put into that work is invisible to both the undergraduate students and the univeristy administration. The larger the section and the greater the workload, the harder it gets to do that grading to the best of one’s ability, and everyone on campus ends up losing as a result. As a way of raising the visibility of this critical work, and demonstrating to the administration that we are not just going to be pushovers in the rest of our contract negotiations this summer and into next fall quarter, please show up and get some grading done out on the MU patio. Similar events will be scheduled at the other quarter-based UC campuses, please feel free to post info in the comments.

This looks like a lot of fun, and a creative sort of protest to boot. See you all there!

originally at surf putah

—–

UPDATE The grade-in/tutor-in had a pretty good turnout for a finals week at noon (several TAs were busy proctoring final exams, and couldn’t make it), between 20 and 30 from my count, grading together on tables in the shade. The Enterprise had a reporter and photographer there interviewing some of the workers, and a fair number of curious undergraduates stopped by and wanted to know what was going on. All in all, a good way to get some visibility, and it beat grading in the office!

Here are a couple of pictures of the grade-in:

Sign 1: “Our Working Conditions =Student Learning Conditions”

Sign 2: “Education Without Exploitation”

A Teaching Moment:

ASE Graders At Work:

Well, we haven’t quite reached that milestone yet, but it is only a matter of time.  A very short time. 

As the costs for fixing the state’s troubled corrections system rocket higher, California is headed for a dubious milestone — for the first time the state will spend more on incarcerating inmates than on educating students in its public universities. Based on current spending trends, California’s prison budget will overtake spending on the state’s universities in five years. No other big state in the country spends close to as much on its prisons compared with universities.
***
“California is just off the charts compared with other states in corrections spending,” said Michael Jacobson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, a leading research organization. (SF Chron 5/22/07)

During the Arnold Administration, prison spending has leaped from just under $6B to an expected $10B in the 2007-2008 Budget. That kind of growth would make even a CEO of an Indian software firm jealous.

There are many, many reasons that our prison expenses are so out of line, even when compared to other states.  But one reason surely must be ToughOnCrime^TM:

“I’ll tell you what, it’s clearly not a statement of our priorities,” said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. “Our policies are hurting the economy of California. This is a disservice to our economy.”

Núñez blamed the prison spending on a get-tough-on-crime mentality among politicians that equates more prison spending with safer streets, when that is hardly the case.

First, congratulations to the Speaker for saying this.  This should be shouted from rooftops: ToughOnCrime^TM is ruining our prison system, and apparently our budget as well. ToughOnCrime^TM fails us when we try to rehabilitate prisoners, ToughOnCrime^TM fails us on race issues, ToughOnCrime^TM fails us on efficient use of resources.  Todd Spitzer, the outspoken OC Assemblyman, can crow all he wants about how Tough he is, but where has the success been for ToughOnCrime^TM?

(Crap… What’s going on in our institutions of higher learning? – promoted by atdleft)

In their ever-continuing quest to turn California’s public higher education into a de facto private institution, the University of California, not content with jacking up graduate student tuition yet another 10% (and nearly doubling fees since 2002), is now trying to stiff TAs, readers, and research assistants in the latest series of contract negotiations by freezing fee remissions and health insurance premiums:

The UAW Local 2865 bargaining team met Monday, April 16 with university representatives to discuss changes the university would like to make to our contract.

Unfortunately, the bargaining team was alarmed by the uncooperative, antiunion tactics of the university. The university is proposing to cut a number of critical benefits and roll back several groundbreaking union victories. Not only would these cuts and rollbacks have a negative financial impact on all our members, they would also undermine the ability of UC to continue to be competitive, encourage diversity, and attract the best and brightest.

FEE REMISSIONS
At the same time that we are proposing to expand the types of fees covered and who is eligible to receive remissions, the university is proposing to end full fee remissions for graduate-student employees, proposing instead to cap remissions. What this would mean is that whenever fees increase-which is the unfortunate trend-we would end up paying that increase out-of-pocket.

HEALTH INSURANCE
Additionally, under the current contract, many of us have our health insurance premium fully covered. Again, while we are proposing to expand the types of fees covered and who is eligible to receive remissions, the university is proposing to cap our health insurance premium remissions at a fixed dollar amount, thus transferring the rising cost of health care onto us. Given that the health plans at many campuses are already inadequate and steadily deteriorating, this proposal is unacceptable.

The university also made several proposals which would prevent teaching assistants, readers, and tutors from being informed of their rights, and which would limit our rights to express solidarity with workers in other campus unions.

The university is proposing to take us in the wrong direction. This is unacceptable. As bargaining continues, we will keep you informed of developments at the bargaining table and opportunities to participate in winning a great fourth contract.  If you have questions or would like to get more involved, please reply to this message or contact your campus office.

In solidarity,

UAW Local 2865 Bargaining Committee

This is not the first time that the university has tried this, but it is pretty bad news that they’re looking to freeze remissions while the fees continue skyrocketing this way. For most UC graduate students, fee remission and health care coverage when working for the university are the only way to make ends meet, and often their value is far greater than the actual pay that the work provides.

I have heard many fellow grad students wonder  aloud what the point of paying those union fees is. Here is my answer: the only reason why we even have health insurance and fee remissions when we work is that grad students organized and were willing to strike to make the point that the University of California does not run without our labor. The Regents do not just pay us out of the goodness of their hearts, and they will not continue to respect what gains we have negotiated in perpetuity, out of the goodness of their hearts. Only by organizing and demonstrating the value of the work that we do by being willing to deny it if need be, will we get the kind of pay and benefits that allow us to scratch out a public graduate school education.

Academic student employees are not asking for an unreasonable amount of pay or benefits here. The University of California has been utterly unreasonable in raising fees over the past several years, far beyond the rate of inflation and at the same time that executive and administration salaries and compensation have skyrocketed. This latest attempt to further wring more money out of already-indebted graduate students is unconscionable. I would hope that our elected representatives would take notice, in particular Davis’ own Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, and Lt. Governor John Garamendi, who is a Regent for the UC system (and whose son, John Garamendi, Jr., is an administrator at UC Merced, and reportedly considering challenging Lois Wolk for the 5th State Senate Seat). There are a lot of academic employees here in Yolo County, and we do vote.

If you are a grad student and interested in getting involved on any of the UC campuses, bookmark the Academic Student Employee union page. If this negotiation continues in this direction, we’re going to need as many students working together as we can to turn things around.

originally at surf putah

As the California Aggie reported today, State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) has just introduced a bill, SB 190, that would mandate that the CSU board of trustees and UC board of regents hold public, transparent deliberations on executive compensation. Given the repeated ethical violations and soaring payraises and benefits that the regents and trustees have voted for themselves over the past several years (and that to have the gall to make everyone else fill out ethics questionaires?), given the stagnant wages paid to professors, TAs, clerical and service workers by the same regents and trustees, and given the ever-skyrocketing tuition hikes at both the CSU and UC systems (not to mention the community coleges), I think this is a reform long overdue.

Public universities shoud not just be plum patronage positions for an unaccountable ruling class of free-floating executives, who vote each other raises with public monies. They are intended for the public good, to produce research for the people of the state of California, and to educate the youth of California. The state government and the university regents and trustees have reneged on this intent, and can no longer be trusted to conduct public affairs in private, free of all oversight and beyond reproach.

Thank you Senator Yee. It is time to remind the regents and trustees exactly who they work for, and for whose benefit the public university system is intended to work for.

originally at surf putah