SAN DIEGO — The largest academic strike in United States history is now entering its third week. Nearly 48,000 grad students are participating in these strikes with a couple thousand students at UC San Diego taking part.
The top demand of teaching assistants, researchers and grad students is higher pay to afford housing. Some students say the strikes are affecting learning and research.
"The professors heavily rely on TAs and you can tell," said Kathy Deiko, a junior at UCSD.
Teaching assistants do a lot of the teaching and grading on campus but now students are feeling the impacts of their walk off.
"Our entire lab class got moved online. Like we can't do in-person labs now since there's no one to proctor us so it's that's a big thing it's so much harder to learn," said Justin Namao, a junior at UCSD.
As finals begin this week, grad student Joe Riley recognized undergrads are caught in the middle.
"The point of this strike is not to punish the undergrads, not to fail anyone we just need everyone here to stay in this fight all together," he said.
He said grad students are also the backbone of the research that happens at the universities. Now, the research is also on hold.
"These labs are getting million dollar a year grants, giving the university somewhere around a billion dollars a year but right now there's no work being done," said grad student Itai Maimon.
CBS 8 reached out to the UC System Monday and received the following statement.
"The University has held daily bargaining sessions with the United Auto Workers from Monday, Nov. 14 until Wednesday, Nov. 23 with a break for the Thanksgiving holiday. Parties will resume negotiations this week in the hopes of securing fair contracts for graduate students and academic employees. We have conducted over 50 bargaining sessions with the union since the Spring. During that time, we have secured 95 tentative agreements to date on issues ranging from workplace accessibility, to respectful work environments, to nondiscrimination in employment.
The proposals offered by the University to the UAW would place our graduate students and academic employees at the top of the pay scale across major public universities and on par with top private universities. Though we have reached many tentative agreements with the union, we remain apart on key issues related to tying wages and pay increases to housing costs and tuition remission for nonresident international students. The University continues to call for the UAW to join us in seeking neutral private mediation to help secure a contract. We are committed to achieving a fair and reasonable contract that honors the important contributions these bargaining unit members make toward UC’s mission of education, research, and providing quality patient care," said UC System Associate Director of Media Relations at the UC Office of the President.
WATCH RELATED: Thousands of UC workers strike at UC campuses (Nov. 2022).
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