CALIFORNIA, USA — The University of California agreed Friday with some 36,000 graduate student teaching assistants and other academic workers for increased pay and benefits that could potentially end a monthlong strike at the prestigious state system.
The strike disrupted classes at all 10 university system campuses and was the nation's largest strike of academic workers. The agreement still needs to be ratified before the strike officially ends.
The bargaining units said some workers would see up to 66% raises in their 2.5-year contracts.
The pay hikes and boost in benefits could have an impact beyond California. For several decades, colleges and universities have increasingly relied on faculty and graduate student employees to do teaching and research that had previously been handled by tenured track faculty — but without the same pay and benefits.
The agreement comes weeks after the UC system reached a similar deal with postdoctoral employees and academic researchers who make up about 12,000 of the 48,000 union members who walked off the job and onto picket lines on Nov. 14. That agreement will hike pay up to 29% and provide increased family leave, childcare subsidies and lengthened appointments to ensure job security, according to a statement from United Auto Workers Local 5810.
The academic workers had argued they couldn’t afford to live in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, and Berkeley, where housing costs are soaring with the current salaries.
The strike came at a time of increased labor action nationwide, not just in higher education but among workers at Starbucks, Amazon, and elsewhere and a groundswell of unionization efforts among graduate student employees at other universities.
This year, graduate student employees at MIT, Clark University, Fordham University, Mexico State University, Washington State University, and Worchester Polytechnical Institute voted in favor of unionization.
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