The UC Student Worker Strike

to talk about grad students strikes. Were going to talk about the grad student strike Volk that's coming up at you See San Diego and some other grad students strikes that Chris and I have been part of back in the Middle Ages. Okay, so I'm joined today. But Alex, Alex, you're you're you're studying I'm trying to get this correct cancer genomics a U C s D. Is that correct? That is correct? Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're welcome.

And Tyler Bell as well. And Tyler you're a post doc and you're doing Outzheimer's research, right, yes, and you're both members of u a W. Yes, that's correct. I've been a member for at least two years. But yeah, and I'm a member of the actual the subset of U a W that just formed representing student researchers in completing their PhDs. So we'll explain all the details of that,

of course, start going forward. Yeah, I think maybe we should start there and explain kind of the economic relationship of PhD and post doc students to the university, like what what work they do. And as we were talking about beforehand, people might not even be familiar with the fact that you get paid by the university in many of these positions, right, So can you explain that how

that works? Yeah, definitely. So Yeah, as you mentioned, UM, we do UH in our various roles as graduate students, UH, teachers and post docs, we do a lot of work, majority of the work in fact, that is critical for the university to function as it does UM, and we do that in a few different roles. Some of us are paid to teach or t A classes. We call those academic student employees who are represented by one of

our unions U a W T eight six five. The rander of PhD students are actually paid directly to do their research, and this is usually funded up of grants or other money that the university has your march for research. So as we are progressing towards our degrees, we are doing work that is productive in our labs to get papers out, get grant funding coming in, and we receive

a stipend to perform that work. Those students are known as graduate student researchers or gsrs, who are represented by a new union that just formed because it actually they became recently legal to form such a union in the state of California. We are represented by s are you bargaining for our first contract? And then we have the post docs, which Tyler can probably talk more about, who are students who have completed their I'm sorry I should

were really clarified here. Not students they are. They are employees of the university who have completed their degree so are no longer students and arguing research work in labs, usually dragging their own projects forward under supervision of professors. So they are represented by a third union that's part of this sort of collective um organizing called U A w f G A ten. Well, you have postox unions, yeah,

that's so cool. I think the one here that you see is actually the biggest and one of the first

ones that formed. UM. I remember I was on a Wikipedia page, which I shouldn't use as an academic, but I totally saw us on there, and I was like, yeah, and I think it's it's ascinating because if there are all these like memes that you'll see as a graduate student, and then it's like when you finish your PhD, where it's like you always think that you're going to get off the like the grind, right, Like you're like, oh, I'll do my m A and then I'll get off, and then I'll do my pH d and then people

respect me and I'll be compensated for a massive amount of work I do, and then like I'll just finish this post doc and then you're like, oh, I'm fifty five, you know. Like it's all of those positions are heavily exploited by by universities that make a metric ship tourn of money from these people, who, as you say, do

most of the work that keeps a university running. So perhaps we could talk about the issues that are at State that that are leading to this this strike authorization vote and maybe if we go through a little bit of a timeline as well, that would be great. Yes, maybe tell them, maybe you could like explain the fifty ten timeline and I can talk a little bit about this, are you and I guess kind of TwixT a five

point Yeah. So chronologically the POSTALC we're up for their contract negotiation, which that's just to set our wages, benefits and workplace safety and other types of protections we want UM and that actually came up they think in September of UM, and I could be wrong with the date specifically.

So much has changed. But we initially back in UM started actually asking people what they wanted to see in their new contract, like our members, because the union isn't like like I if I didn't care about the union or no one else care to what exist like, it's the post docs and we have to take out like a couple of hours a week to do this thing, and sometimes it's twenty hours on top of our research

which is forty hours. And so during that time we surveyed, everyone got the demands that people wanted, and the top two issues that people asked for that they want it

changed was our wages, and also the housing. Um, we want it affordable housing because right now, um, you know, over of academic workers, including the post docs who you would think, you know, you have a PhD, this is the time you can finally have affordable housing and you don't have to worry about food scarcity and all these other things that you're worried about as a graduate student.

So just take this in the context of like we're post docs, we're supposed to be like the most paid or at least a better off because we have our PhD. Think about like what that means for the graduate students

and those that aren't yet at that stage yet. Um. And so when we went forward with our proposals, we um create a lot of other things that we thought were important, including things like transit UM bargaining demands to make public transit like affordable for post docs because currently we don't get any kind of like free paths for that. They don't even consider it um. In fact, you know, they probably think we all have cars, which isn't true

because a lot of post docs are international scholars. We were also asking for child care support because currently, like a good bit of you know, our post docs have children. UM, which is normal because this is a normal like family creation time or whatever you wanna call it, but UM, and indeed it can be one of the only times as an academic when it when it really sort of doesn't massively to had voluntege your career to have stuff

right exactly. And like post docs, like the whole proposition of a post doc was, you know, there's not enough faculty spots for once you get a PhD, and post docs now can last five if not longer, like five years or longer. And there's a new position called an academic researcher, which is a type of like title that you get when you can no longer be a post doc. But it's also because there's just not enough faculty, so they put you into a different title to do research.

And UM collectively, both US post docs and people that are academic researchers, we don't get any affordable childcare, we don't have affordable housing UM, and our wages are below the cost of living. And currently we went through the proposals back then and we over time a year and a half have not really made any leeway on these proposals that actually changed the material conditions for post post docs. Like the university has been you know, bargaining in bad faith.

That we have multiple UM unfair UM labor practice lawsuits against from our public relations board for the employers UM and three of those have been UM sorry, let me get those numbers right. Multiple of those have actually been successfully had complaints filed against the university. Some of the things that the university has done in particularly while we've been bargaining is one not bringing the information to the table that we request, like denying our request for information.

They have also refused to bring the people that can make the type of decisions that we need to the table. And they've all also been making unilateral changes to things like bullying policies and other workplace issues without even being at the bargaining table. And the last thing that they've been doing during this process is serving members of our union outside of like the bargaining process, like we we

don't know about it. I mean, we did find out about it, and then we followed the UM UH the complaint and so right now we're at a point where we've gotten a lot of things, you know, kind of like moved on in terms of things that aren't compensation, in terms of our bargaining UM like things that we want such as bullying protections. That was something that we actually had to like have a big action for to

actually get that on the table to move. So currently we won protections against bullying, which is kind of like pretty enormous because in academia, university says we're against bullying and that they have all these resources for you, but through resources always end at we're right, you're wrong. And UM.

Now we have something in our contracts, not just for that post docs and acondic researchers, but also for UM the other bargaining units to actually protect us UM in a process that like we could grieve it as you know,

UNI represented workers UM. And so right now, the reason that we had to authorize the strike, especially for our group as post docs and academic researchers, because they started bargaining kind of like maybe UM further along in that year with US, but they are kind of at the same place of like not getting the same type of responses and UM we just want them to actually come to the table, bring the people that can make the decisions so that we can have you know, affordable housing,

fair wages to actually do the research that we do here. And I just want to say that we bring a lot of value to the university through grants, in particular as post talks. So we do most of the writing of research papers, conducting the experiments. UM. People think that if people think that faculties sit there and run a wet lab and actually do the you know, the work of the wet labs. UM. You know, that would be an amazing colquitty person, But they're really busy in terms

of like having to write grants themselves. We do the bulk of the work and actually making the research happen. UM. We do a bulk of the training in terms of the graduate students and the undergrads that are in the lab, and so we provide an enormous value to the university. But at the same time, while we provide these values, UM, the university doesn't want to give us a fair living

condition or affordable housing. And the last thing I'll say, and I'll let Alex talk about the other units, UM, is that you know, we bring a ton of value to the university because of the grants, and for every hundred dollars of that grant that is UM given to the university, the university charges things like the n I H you know, um, you know, fifty eight dollars and indirects. So this is a ghost money that we don't know where it goes. Our pis don't get to have a

say over. And that's money that usually goes to things that capital projects that could go back to keeping you know, um, the post docs actually living in uh an Okay living situation.

Can we just explain what capital projects are? So capital projects are things like you know, um, planning out building buildings that they want and other things things that aren't really like compensation based or employee based, you know, because the university, like you see as the biggest landowner and so they obviously we want more and more things that they can develop or lands that they can buy um, and that's kind of what they kind of focus many

of these indirects on. And I really don't know the clear picture on indirects, and that's kind of the problem is that we don't know where all this money kind of goes. It's they if people. Obviously lots of our listeners are in San Diego. The scale of construction at UCSD is incredible, Like I've been here for fifteen years now and I swear every time I go back there's a new building like and they can terms of student housing, it's really old student housing. I think that they've built.

But yeah, and if I can jump in about one of those, which relates a lot to why graduate students have become more active on this campus. Um, three or four of those extraordinarily large buildings you're talking about, we're actually intended to be built as subsidized graduate student housing, where you would be you know, you get on a wait list, you're guaranteed once you get off the way, which you can live there for two years and pay

below market rent. Um. That lasted for a little bit of time, but the university just a couple of years ago or so almost doubled um the price for those units. They tried to hide it behind saying that their capacity city increases. But um, what they're saying is for the same prices before, you can live with two people in a very small square footage studio apartment. UM. But really

that studio is now just double UM. So that is one of the things, certainly that we are concerned about, is that, Yeah, money, what significant portion university's budget does go into these capital improvement projects. Which are nominally intended for student and UH and postdoc benefit um, but which tend to come back and and and not be quite

as helpful in the long run. Yeah, I mean it seems like they're just doing real estate speculation and then doing rent extraction from it, which, yeah, and this is something they've done, Like they did this. There's a very very similar thing in what like two thousand nine, like like again, like they built what I built into your building. It was affordable for a short period of time and then it suddenly became completely unaffordable. And like they've really

consistently extracted rent from the people that they are under paying. Yeah, and those buildings were actually this this incident even got lot of faculty on our side because those buildings were a major um draw for how we were able to recruit new people to come and do research with us. As we were saying, yeah, the cost living here is

really high. You're not going to get a huge stipend or salary, but we do have the subsurdised housing and people had actually already committed to do their PhD here in labs of the university, and then the rent increase came out that April or May and people said well no, and then they a bunch of people decommitted from programs, So it was it was a significant issue here, but

they have not backed off of that. And the problem with like the university being one of the biggest landlords is that when they increase the rents for these even ground housing, it affects everyone else. So like prices, like my current rent, I live maybe a mile away from campus.

My rent was seventeen hundred, which was eating up most of my income anyway, and it went up to and you know, this is directly tied to like the university setting a higher market rate UM, which then allows them to hurt everyone else that lives you know, not just in around UCSD, but also in San Diego generally. Yeah.

One of the big things about UM that we're trying to get the university to understand, and one of the reasons I'm proud of the demands that we're making UH in this round of bargaining is is the effect we have on the local economy and of people who aren't even affiliated with the university have their lives affected based on the rent and based on the cost of things because of the economic footprint that we have And as how we mentioned one of our demands is um uh

some more subsidized transit passes. The university already subsidizes. It's a significant amount of transit, but it's not enough, and it's not enough to actually really make a difference in terms of emissions in our region. So we're trying to raise both our own working conditions as well as as make meaningful changes in the university's impact in the region.

And in response to that, the university released in part a very funny statement the other day that accused us and used transit as an example, accused us of having a quote social justice agenda. So I wasn't quite sure if the university or um Rond de Santis wrote that particular release, but it was it was quite funny, you know, Okay, Like the more thinking about this, right, this is a public university. Why are they even charging rent? They own the land, right, why are they even charging rent in

the first place? Like what what is oh my god? Like, well, it's just the the housing example I brought up was funded through what they very proudly refer to as a public private partnership. So that's where the money is going. Yeah,

oh great, it's going to investors. And recently for the post docs, their solution to our housing crisis was they obtained some building in downtown San Diego, which is, you know, twelve or more miles away from campus, and the building starts at like rent of three thousand dollars or more. But like I said, building, yeah, with the one with the creepy bed in the closet that comes out and kills your cat. But know what it has like a

closet that folds out. Okay, is that their extent to downtown. Yeah. I've been trying to p R A and a bunch of stuff about that building and they've been quite reticent to hand it over and toddly so addle. Is there any more contexts you wanted to add from your side about like is about sort of what is driving people to to ask for a strike authorization vote? Yeah, definitely.

I mean, our concerns as graduate students are certainly very similar to a lot of the concerns that postdoctoral students have, except that we make even less money than they do.

So certainly UH urgent on the compensation side, our units are demanding a minimum UH graduate student stipend, a fifty four thousand dollars a year UM, whereas uh, none of us make more than thirty three or thirty four right now, and that's very dependent on the program and very dependent on your source of funding, so most make quite less than that. UM. We also of a number of other issues that have come up and cause problems for students that we want to be able to have a union

in order to rectify. I mentioned that UM our Student Researchers United Union. It actually knew we're bargaining for our first contract, and we think we're going to be able to get a lot of practical benefits out of that, not just UM, you know, in terms of a contract, but actually something where we can have some parody and and some for some some some organization to come to back for us when the university creates issues. For example, Uh,

the university has known this for a long time. But the payroll system that manages graduate students stipends and fellowships and and and and to stipend disbursements is a bit

unreliable for reasons that they can't quite explain. Boy, when so I wasn't I wasn't a grad student, but I was an undergrad when our Chicago's grad students went on strike and that was a big thing of like people like people would get paid in the university would sometimes they they wouldn't get paid enough, it wouldn't get paid at all. There was another time where they actually get overpaid and the university wouldn't tell them and then they just take all the money out of their bank account

and catastrophe. Yeah. Is it similar things here? Very much? So? Yeah, yeah, there is at least My personal story with this is um uh pretty much ever since so, I applied for and received an H individual fellowship. For all the other nerds out there, I got. It's an firty one in

i H fellowship. But essentially what that says is the n i H likes my research proposal and they are going to fund a portion of the rest of my PhD. So in a sense, I've offset the cost of my labor by bringing an extra few tens of thousands of dollars to the university. Um However, the processing for that has not been smooth, and there are months where I

simply have to remind them to pay me. And when that paycheck doesn't come through, my very hard working program coordinator, it's not her fault, but she has been open support tickets. She has to go through different levels of bureaucracy to find out where the hold up is. And so what that results in is people often times not getting significant portions of their stipend and tell well into the beginning

of the first or second week of the month. UM. I personally am been lucky enough to you know, build up some savings living here UM, but many students, especially our first year is coming right out of college, have not been able to do that. And a lot of times at the first of the month we have people, you know, people will come to me and say they just didn't they I don't know why my stipends and I didn't work. I can't pay rent, or I can't get groceries. And these issues have been going on. This

have not been one time things or sporadic things. These are things that have been continuously going on for years. And what we're really hoping for is that with the creation of this Student Researchers Union, that we will be able to not just you know, send polite emails and say hi, can you pay me if you get a chance, We will actually have a literal international union that will be sending those emails and say you know, you fix this or by the terms of the contract, we get X,

Y and Z damages. UM, and we're hoping that that leads to improvements in the system as a as a whole, because it will get expensive. So yeah, that is certainly one of the reasons we formed s are you and are after a brief vote to strike for recognition because the university ignored the employee religious part of California, which resulted in some very spicy press releases from herbs which is great. Um, But we did eventually get recognition and and now hopefully in a couple in a month or so,

we'll have a contract. Yeah, to explain for people as

well who aren't familiar. If you're teaching right, you may not have been paid over the summer in some positions, like I know I was in mind, so like a late payment in September or even wait until October, like is you're already at the bottom of your savings, like there were there were full quarters that quarters at ECSD where like I lived in my car because it didn't make it all the way through the summer and the savings they had, you know, So it really is and

I'm sure there are a lot of still like and how it's graduate students at UCSD because of the cost of living in the the waits are so divergent. Yeah, hey, Chris, you you know what won't make you live in your car? Oh God, there's no way that's It's going to be the washes that Harry Patrol again, Todd Gloria. Okay, yeah, this has brought you by Landlords Joy's adverts and we're back.

And so what I wanted to talk about with some of the actions that have been taken by student organizations so far, and also some of the repercussions that have come from those actions, because again, student organizing is a little different, and I want people to understand that. So maybe if it makes sense to start with this wildcats stright, we can start there. If you want to start further back,

then we can start fie it back to you. You know, is probably about the extent of my how far my experience goes back, Um, But I can tell kind of the story of that a little bit. Um. There was a movement that we referred to as COLA, which stands for a cost of living adjustment and convenient as very convenient acronym, which resulted in people coming to protest with empty bottles coke on a stick. And that was a really common science fantastic um. But that was a movement

that started at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of the for people aren't familiar with, you see, it

is really actually mini campuses together in one system. In this particular one started at our campus in Santa Cruz, UM and it was what is called a wildcats strike, which is if you're not failily unions that is um UM at least in America, there are very uh careful rules that you have to follow of when exactly you are allowed to call a legally protected strike, and that's often dependent on your contract or the label laws of

your state. UM. But it is possible for workers to get together without the explicit approval of their union and uh take the added risk that involves to hold a labor stoppage. So I'm not sure of the exact number, but somewhere between fifty and a hundred or two hundred or so t a s um SO teaching assistance at the Santa Cruz campus decided to withhold teaching and also final exam and UH semester or sorry quarter grades H for a quarter in I believe this would have been

fall or fall UM and they held UM. They held they essentially daily pickets and protests UM at their central insrance of their campus. And this resulted in quite an extreme response from Santa Cruz administration, University of Santa Cruise administration and UH they called in the California Highway Patrol. UM. Also there's will I've asked, I'll send this to christ

and James Pulton the footnotes. But there is a Vice article where someone did a lot of public records request and found out that the FBI was also involved, or at least FBI provided technology was involved. UM. There may have been sort of counter terrorism UH units involved in the state in interesting ways UM. But essentially there was a highly militarized response to what was essentially a few

grand students not doing grades. UM. So this response, the images that came out of this, people getting arrested for being in the street and such UM started to actually provoke sympathy actions across the rest of the campus and there was really a campus wide or system wide movement starting to build. And then March of happened, and almost

all of us are labs shut down, the campuses shut down. UH, those of us who work from home could UM, those of us who couldn't often had you know, many others a will to deal with, and that kind of killed UH. The pandemic essentially killed that movement. But at the same time, UM, you know these uh U A w twist at five and you could get ten already existed. SRU was starting

to get formed at this time. We actually managed to get car check recognition during the pandemic where no one could actually go to one central point and get cards. So I'm quite proud of that. So we sort of rebuilt off of kind of UM, sort of the ashes of that movement. And even though it was not UM and I personally supported, but even though it was not a university sort of excuse me, certainly not university supported,

but union supported uh movement. UM. I think it really helped a kind of UM plant seeds for graduate students and post docs having some you know, some degree of labor consciousness. When I was doing walkthroughs to get people signed up for the union, get people just quote on the strike, they would say, you know, they haven't obviously been keeping track of all the barguing, but say, oh yeah, I remember, is this like in Santa Cruz. I remember what they did and people would be and be ready,

you know, to get involved. So um, it was a deferred kind of benefit given the pandemic, but I think it helps get a lot of the energy that we

have today. Yeah, that's great to see, actually, because I know we really struggled with sort of political consciousness on the on the among the grad students in my time at E. C. S D. And yeah, I guess it makes us like that they remember, Like I were talking to some people who were sort of involved with it, and like watching the videos coming out of here, like that was I think, like probably the most intense military responsive I think I've ever seen to a strike at

the US. It was wild. Like, Yeah, the university chancellor, chancellor of Santa Cruz at that time bragged or I don't know if it was bragged or complained that they were spending three hundred thousand dollars a day on that response. Yeah,

they went incredibly hard. And I want to kind of get into why, like the university is really really strongly strongly dislike strikes and partly because they rely heavily on underpaid graduate student labor, right and increasingly relying heavily on underpaid adjunct labor as well to take the place of

these expensive tenure track positions. So, can we talk about a little bit about like what it means to strike as a grad student, because it's not the same to strike as a grad students is to strike if you work on a production lineup right, Like, it really can make a serious impact on your whole career, and it can make it a serious impact on your relationship preps with your with your supervisor or advisor or mentor, and so can you can you one of your both of

you explained a little bit about the repercussion to come from striking as a graduate student. Yeah, I'm happy to share my thoughts. And then and then, um, tyl, you can maybe talk about what the what post docs are thinking? Um from the t a perspective, I think I don't want it. I'm not currently I'm currently a student researchers, so I'm not currently teaching. I think in that since it makes there's a little more cut and dry, it's you're not going to teach your discussion section and you're

not going to grade your exams. As a very concrete things you can do that are sort of separate from your research work. For those of us paid to do research, it's a little bit um harder to figure out where exactly you're sometimes your labor for the university is, and where you're um uh kind of research and and and

not wanting to sort of harm yourself. Like I know people who have planned their advancements to candidacy during this time, and I think they're still going through with that because we can say, well, that's more academic, that's more your personal kind of progress in life, and and so those

sort of things will continue, um. But but I think it's one of the things, um that that's sort of um important, is is um sort of your day today work in the lab and not necessarily saying your research project, but on just sort of maintaining things, answering questions, communicating with collaborators, sharing your results with people, helping undergraduates in the lab, helping um, you know, prepare figures or prepare text for your advisor to submit grants and all these

other things that are not necessarily like I am doing this particular you know thing for my degree UM, so I know a lot of people are worried about, especially because in the life sciences we have situations where we have experiments that go on for months and they cost tens of thousands of dollars to run, and if you miss a time point on that we're throwing months of your life and out of the window, and that it

hurts yourself really more than the university. So it's been a I think, especially because organizing grad super researchers is something new, at least in America. UM. I think it's something that in the coming years will be kind of considered more and people will kind of I think I hope. What I hope is people learn from our whatever our experience happens to be next week when we walk out and start to kind of calibrate, what does it look like? What is what is an effective work stoppage for a

researcher look like? UM, and I think people are are We've had a lot of discussions, We've had programmed meetings. A bunch of students from my program got together and talked about this UM and I think it might end up looking different for different people, but really what we're trying to communicate is is don't do something that's going to um, you know, damage yourself. Um. But but but do what you can to disrupt normal operations. Show up

at the picket, um uh. And and make sure you you communicate, you know, to everyone and around you why you're leaving, and and and you know, cause as much disruption as you can. That's kind of what our our thinking is at the moment. Yeah, and I thin, guys, you wanted to add tied. Yeah, so I wanted to add that. UM. So for this one, this strike, I mean, the reason that we're doing it is because they're not coming to the table in good faith. So I was

going to correct my numbers. So we had twenties seven UM complaints that we filed with the California Public Unemployment Relations Board, and six of those were actually official complaints to the University of California. And so this strike is a little different because it's you know, it's interesting to have to explain to other people why this is so important,

especially in such a short time frame. And so for post docs, like on a day to day basis, we do so much research that every day matters, and our

employment schedules aren't very long. So I say that post docs are generally in there for five years, but p I don't want to keep a post talk for a year or two or longer, especially like I've noticed a pattern here in academia in general that post docs it's some people prefer to keep them a year and two years because by the time you asked for pay raises or the time you ask for curd development and to get to your next stage, you're not worth it to

them anymore, and they change you out. So when I come in as a postalk, each position, I've come in everyday mattered and setting up my research experiment, setting up my papers, setting up what I was going to do for the job search, because you don't have that much time. It takes you know, six to eight months to get get even an initial interview for a faculty job UM, and that's a rare thing that you would get anyway.

I think about two percent of post talks become faculty at this point, and so we're giving up a lot of Yeah, it's really bleak, and so like right now, I think the fact that we authorize a strike based on the UM bad faith bargaining. We did that because like things are so important, but we know what we're gonna lose. So if we have to strike for weeks, that is lost experiments, that's lost time to do our

publications be competitive for this competitive job field. Um. And also we're gonna let down a lot of people because we're kind of anchors in our lab for the undergraduates and the under and the graduate students and also the text in our lab. And so if we're gone, the lab just kind of die, especially if the grass dudits

walk out too. UM. But I think we know that the value that I would get personally for my career, UM, it isn't worth it if I see not only myself suffering each year and not being able to make my rent enable to feed myself, like eating one mill a day is um not really great. And being able to afford one UM wardrobe this entire two years of employment is not it either. UM. And I'm a post doc and I see the graduate students who I was a graduate student two years ago. There's not a real border there,

UM and seeing them suffer. You know, most of us post talks don't want to see anyone else have to go through that. So it's worth the lost time and it's kind of been calculable what I could say what we would lose because grants are so up in the air. But you know, we're talking millions of dollars for a grant cycle being lost if a post talk can't you know, submit the application. We're talking you know, uh what Alex said, how expensive dise equipment experiments are in these big labs

UM in biology and engineering. So it's really immeasurable. And I think it's on the UC to come to the table and good faith and say, hey, let's not do that's that's not ruin their research and their teaching UM, because that's the thing that we're here to support UM. And I just want to say that overall, we're only

less than one percent of u see's total budget. So what is it to give us a fair wage and a good housing so we can continue to not UM, to continue to con your door research and teaching and not have to go on strike and lose all of this. Yeah, yeah, I think it's very fair. You know what else, it only pays out one percent of their income to employee. The Washington State Higher Patrol no ites not they pay Yeah, yeah, yeah,

it's disappointing. Isn't it. Yeah, we're back. Yeah, So I think you've done a really excellent job of explaining sort of what's at stake and what people can stand to lose. I know it can be very confusing. Also as a teacher, I will add, like what do you do when you're you're not supposed to communicate right like, so, like what

about when your students email you? That can be very difficult, or especially if it comes towards the time when you're writing application letters or your writing letters of support for your your b A. Students who want to go into an m A. Or PhD program, like you don't want like many of us teach as much out of vocation

as for the thirty ye old grand a year. We can make it a place where the cost of living is insane, and so like we want to help those people because we care about our students and and so it can be very hard for us to go on strike.

I will say that we're very fortunate in the community college district here, which is a different system, and for people who aren't aware it's an entirely different university system, we have a very strong union and as a result, our I junk faculty here are I believe, some of the best paid in the country, the teacher the community college sometimes and it's exclusively thanks to a strong union and faculty being willing to back up that union. So

like it does work, which is nice to see. But let's talk about some of the actions that have been taken already and understand it. Some some folks occupied like a very busy intersection earlier this year in the spring, right you want to talk about that. Yeah, that was the action that we had um UM back in April UM to sort of raise awareness of the you know, issues with bargaining and some of the other things that

we're going out at that time UM. And I was really impressive how well it went, actually UM in terms of the number of students who came out, number who are actually willing to participate in that. But yeah, we gotta several hundred people altogether marched down to UM the intersection for our San Diego listeners. That's via La Joya and Lajya Village Drive. Just so you can get a

picture of how important of an intersection this was. Those of you who know it, UM and did not allow any cars at the intersection for an entire rush hour, which was fantastic. UM and we did Yeah, yeah, I took uh. I hope that UM San Diego p D build UCSD for that because they had about fifty officers controlling traffic to helicopters. UM, it was quier response. I talked to an undercover up on the bridge over the highway they had. He was upset that he was missing something,

some baseball game or something. I don't know. I could have had a real job just left. Yeah, I'm actually staring at that intersection right now. And if I could tell you how busy it is, Like we were terrified of what, Like safety was the most important thing, and I think we did a good job being sure everyone

was safe. But like it's busy, it's it is a heartline over your My first day in America, I was walking with another grats to try and find some food and we tried to cross that road, goes stuck in the middle, got to jaywalking ticket and right I knew I had made a great choice in coming to California at that time. Yeah, that is that road takes like if you want to cross all three ways, because it's

one of our one of our stupid California roads. We can only cross the intersection on three sides, so we're gonna go all the way around. That's going to be like five six, seven minutes winning at crosswalks. It's it's God. But but that's that's for maybe a different podcast, but nightmares here in San Diego. UM. I think there's one other action that we had that I would really want to highlight and and this was about, you know, related

to a post dox. So maybe maybe Tyler can kind of film the details UM about the the action we had for UM for the UH postox redence. I can't. I can't. I'm blanking on her name, but made maybe able to talk about There's been so many post docs and actions. So this is a really horrible case where someone who you know had brought up that there was data UH ethics issues in their lab, which obviously, as any post soccer graduate student telling your boss that they're

doing something wrong never goes well. UM, but this person was bringing up this issue. This person also was U was pregnant and UM at that point the person, once they found out that this person was pregnant, UM had decided, oh, well, you need to leave by the end of the year, UM, which would make the make it to where the person would get deported because this was an international scholar UM in their third trime. Master UM, you know, in in January,

and so it was income more insurance during her third trimester. Yeah, and so Alex, if if you have a good memory of the action, I'll let you speak about it, because it was pretty awesome. Yeah, it was pretty great. We got a ton of people to rally in the health sciences area of campus. UM people essentially set up little mini pickets of the relevant buildings UM basically not blocking the insurance, but making sure everyone went in New exactly you know why we were there and what the issue was.

And they were eventually towards the end of the day. I was I wasn't there at that point, but they were able to actually get up to UM where UM the chair of her department's office in lab were UM and I there was nothing threatening that went on, but I do believe the cops were called nonetheless UM and and my understanding was this is just rumored. But he told someone that he really to them to leave because he had to get to the bathroom and didn't want

to talk to the students. So that was funny part of the story. Um. But they did get him on video because they eventually were able to talk to the chair of the department and got him on video saying I think this person deserves an extension of their contract. And that day or two later UCSD did actually award

this post doc um and extension of her contract. But yeah, that this is an incident that you never would have seen the light of day, um unless this had been raised, Uh, unless we hadn't already had this kind of activists kind of consciousness going on because of the ongoing bargaining and the union was able to post union was able to win kind of I think out of a really terrible situation,

I think salvage probably one of the best outcome. She'll be able to have her child here um and look for new jobs in the meantime to um, you know whatever her family wants to do extended visa or or go back to their original country. But they essentially they have security, uh, some measure of security now which wouldn't have happened about uh raising a quite a disruption over it. And I also want to say that this was a post doc and the grad students came out to protect

a post doc. So all these invisible lines at the university draws like obviously there were post docs there too, but if you think about the number of graduate students, like they are the immune system that has come out and saved a bunch of post docs through these actions. There was another action with someone that was being let go within four months of their employment, um in an

inappropriate way. This person was kind of using their lab as that research mill I talked about only really hired women post docs and really did not treat them well, um despite doing research in women's health. And the grad students also came out for that, and we got to save that person from getting immediately fired and they're better off man. Hell yeah, yeah, it's great. I think that

sort of directity is super important. And yeah, is the only thing to stop to university from just rampidly exploiting if you want, apart from like a hundred and fifty people at the very top. Actually, on that note, can I ask have you been working with like I guess, what's the tactical name for them, like the like the like the the other non student unions on campus. Oh, it's like a f TEMs. Yeah yeah, like yeah, yeah.

They Unfortunately most of the unions don't have sympathy strike or uh those sorts of things in their contract if if they cannot do an official strike if they're under contract. But yeah, they've definitely been helping in terms of kind of raising consciousness and awareness. I know, the ones that have the ability to, um, you know, maybe cancel their classes or use class time to teach about the strike or you know, do things like that have been um. Uh,

they're they're that they're planning to do that. Um. What's nice as well is that this isn't really a union, but there's kind of a non university affiliated sort of group of faculty who you know, advocate for for for changes across the entire campus, and they're organizing a very large petition and letter writing campaign from faculty members supporting our action, which I think is is really critical because the university won't listen to us, but they may listen

to if you get to a critical massive of professors supporting what we're doing. UM. So there's been uh, you know, not universal certainly, but but there's been a great deal of solidarity. But even coming from uh some of the people who who the university I think has relied on to be more on their side, which is the professors,

like the Faculty Association. I think that's pretty awesome because you can imagine that you see, doesn't want them to ever unionize, but they obviously see the leaky pipeline where grass students are, you know, either not staying in their programs or post talks aren't coming. And you just you know, what you happen to have at the end of that is people that have generational wealth um at the end

of it, who happened to stay in these programs. And I think that's what really motive the faculty to come out and say something because like you see, it says, oh, we support equity university, but then they have seen constantly the university not do anything materially to change that. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's good to see the fact that he's shooting up. And again that's it's sort of that's that's how we fix these things, right, is by staking together

with sort of dearity, with organizing. So maybe to finish up, if we talk about what next week is going to look like, what next week might look like, I guess or I guess it'll it'll be this week by the time this comes out, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, So what can people look for and the on the timeline from u c s D from the university or from from

from from the from the strike yeah, that's strike. Yeah. Well, we'll have a number of pickets throughout campus UM mostly kind of trying to keep them geographically oriented, so everyone from the surrounding buildings just go to you know, one one specific spot. We've were doing, you know, sign up, organizing, strike pay, all those sorts of typical things have been going on this week. UM. And the walkout begins November for across you know, not just UCSD but all the campuses.

So that's our total um UM bargaining unit membership across the three unions is for people of those voted on our strikeout vote voted yes. So we're expecting a pretty significant turnout of that entire membership to be on the picket line. UM. So that will there will be um, you know, those t as who are walking out will be that that will be the first disruption university feels

before they feel a research disruption. They will very clearly see the teaching disruption and exams not taking place, grades not being entered, UH sections not being taught across every single campus and UM and that will certainly be UM UH something that they will UM have to deal with and and hopefully the size of the disruption in the first few days will convince them to come to the bargaining table in a reasonable way UM. And if not,

we are prepared to continue until they do. And the other interesting part about what's gonna happen next week is that this is UM a picket line that is going to be not just including you know, researchers and instructors, but also people that support us. So there's a big conference downtown for a lot of neuroscientists and UM it's it's called SFN. I can't remember what that stands for, UM, but a lot of them are actually coming to the picket line to support us. I didn't know about that.

That's great, Yeah, yeah, it's I think that's pretty exciting. I didn't know it was in San Diego, but UM, they're gonna be here and also, you know, vouch for us because you see does like we are the leading research group and we contribute to a lot of the research that are at these meetings. Anyway. UM. There's also going to be it's a child friendly picket line and for people with access needs, we're gonna have um, you know,

virtual picketing and you'll know what that looks like. UM. It's still being developed, but I think that's pretty exciting. As someone you know, with a disability to myself, it's exciting that other people can contribute to that. Yeah, it's very cool to you guys to do that. It's very cool. How can people help, how can we support you? How

can people find you? On the internet? Yeah, So, I think if you want to keep up with the strike news, there's three Twitter accounts, the s r U, you a w u W and you a W two week six five. I think they kind of share a lot of the same content sometimes because we're all kind of doing this together. But that's a good place to keep track of the news. I know there is a link to UM. There's a

they've set up a Hardship strike fund. UM. I don't have that link off top of my head, but if you put the yeah to us later and if you go to fare you see now dot org it'll have all the information about what's happening, but also those type of links to UM. So if you want some contact, so it's pretty good. Yeah, and how about youtubo personally? Would you like to share your personal Twitter so or do you just want to stick with the the organizational once? Um,

I would love to. I promise I'm not that fun. But minus Tyler Bell PhD. That's my dad. Yeah, and I'm Alex t Winzl on Twitter. I once this is over, I'll probably go back to tweeting entirely about my work and pictures of buses. Twitter Alex, Yeah is a high value follow. Thank you. Alex gives live updates about transit and it's exciting. You see a train, it's all good. It pretty like hits at like five year old child. We have pretty much of buses in San Diego. Now

what can I say here? Yeah? All right, thank you so much of your time, both of you. I really appreciate it. Best to luck next week. Maybe I'll come up and bring you, I know, some souper like like an oil can that we can start firing on campus or something. Love it. Yeah, have one here, let's do it. I'm that all right? Yeah, best of black and we'll look forward to hearing what happens. Thank you so much for thanks so much for talking to us. Hello podcast fans.

I know you got to the end of the episode and you were thinking, not enough James, not enough strikes, not enough UCSD. So lucky you. I've been up to since you see San Diego today, and I've recorded with Tyler and Alex at the strike and we got some some audio of the strike going on as well. It was really amazing, really incredible to see that many people

out never thought I to see that u CSD. So without further ado here made view with them all right, So here with Tyling Alex again, this time with more background noise. We're at the strike now. How many people are here roughly oh Man somewhere, probably around at least a couple of thousand right right now. Definitely a couple

of thousand people out here. It's really impressive. Like I've read to u c s D if you haven't take that up yet, and like we did not get into so many people even when like people started hanging New Season around campus. I did. I didn't think so I did again. It is genuinely very impressive. And what's been happening, um, I think things have gone really well so far this since day two as we're recording this that we've been

on strike. Um. There has been some progress of the bargaining table that I've heard, UM, but we do know that you see is going to try to drag this out. They think that they can outlast our momentum. But so far as you can really hear from the noise behind us and see all the different you know, uh, thousands of people converging from all the pict locations at across campus that they've been at since eight in the morning, I think our energy is going strong. Where do you think, Tyler? Yeah,

so I think the energy is really strong here today. Uh. The UC did not expect us to come on day two, at which we know because at bargaining they canceled our meetings for today, um, because they didn't expect us show up. But somehow magically a meeting immerged around two o'clock today. And it may be due to the fact that two thousand people are out here pretty piste uh and one a fair contract. But yeah, I think the momentum it's

pretty high. We actually did more disruption today, going directly talking to the deans and the faculty and screaming in their offices as I sat really comfy. But I'll say, yeah, first floor seminars didn't go well today, I'll put it that way. All right, there was something that I know the universe did about like intimidation and un friend lavorite practices,

and you come to yeah, I can talk to generalities. UM, there's uh, well, the labor law that governs us is IS is a little bit complicated because some of us also receive, uh course credit for the work that we do that is protected under activity that protects our strike activity, which is a little bit of an anti labor practice in and of itself. There's no reason I have to sign up for twelve credits of just existing doing work. That doesn't make any particular sense, but it's the way

the inversity run things. So, UM, there has been some emails that are sent out that are are questionable legal correctness as to whether, um, we can be hurt in terms of our academic standing for participating on the strike. That is definitely not true. UM is if we are if the is activity that's governed under the what our union is sending us for UM. So we know we've had some issues with that. Tyler, I guess you could talk about maybe some other examples that have come out.

It's on the postox side right now. The university has released like an f a Q of sorts in an email where it says, oh, well, you'll have to tell the niage that your postox aren't doing research and that they are funding needs to get pulled. But that's kind of a joke. There's no like reporting mechanism for that. It's more like a stipend for a living um. So we're telling people just to stay strong and uh, people see you kind of pass like the threats that they're making,

and a lot of faculty see through it too. Okay, we just intercepted you. When you're going somewhere else, you would you like to introduce yourself? All right? So them post doc um, I'm pretty new in your C s C. I joined in April, and I came here having already

done another post doc and a PhD in Europe. I joined the union almost instantly when I came here, since i've I was basically horrified, for lack of a better way to put it, so, I studied in the EU for ten years and my experience of academia is what I experienced there, which was decent working conditions, being able to save money, not having to spend fifty few salary on ransom. When I came here and experienced post stock life,

I couldn't believe it. So I believe. I met Tyler when I came here for the first time and we did this orientation that was awesome and awesome horrifying at the same time. Sorry, it was awesome to meet you because I realized it was then that I learned how

a labor union worked. My knowledge of labor unions was minimal up until the point that I moved here, so minimal that I didn't even know what labor unions in the EU functioned like until I came here and realized, oh my god, we are actually lucky to have a union that supports postdocs, and this is not the case in a lot of places in the US. Yeah, yeah, that's so. How has the strike action gone so far? It's been crazy. We've been planning this for so long. It's a bit surreal to be part of FIT. I

think it's been going great. It's been very energizing, and it's been intense. Yeah, it's hard, right, None of us really want to be out here and strike, and the fact that so many people are putting work on hold just speaks to the intensity and seriousness of the problem and what we're striking for. Yeah, yeah, I think that's very true. It's really impressive. How many people here I

can't over Yeah some time. Yeah, very impressive. So let's see. Look, you guys know how the bargaining has gone and what we can expect from here. Well, what we would like would be for the U SEE to meet us at the bargaining table and give us a fair contract. But UM repeating that ad infinite UM bobby with whole labors is the plan thus far. But what's actually been happening is UM usually just hasn't been paying fair as you know. Yeah, it's it's been. It's been infuriating for me. It makes

me very angry. It's very serree and especially I think if you're used to a sort of more sane labor context, to see them just make a gas lighting and righting and doing what I'm a fraise for it is illegal stuff. It's disrespectful, is what I think. Yeah, may think maybe illustrates instead of what they see post toxographed jazzing in economic gens. Yeah, as a workforce whose rights are not to be value to do a bulk of the work. It's it's very disrespectful, you know. I think it certainly

speaks to uh. Like I said earlier, they're trying to outlast us, and they think that we will reach a certain point where we we no longer feel like we can avoid our work, that we can stay out here. And I think you would think that if that's their strategy, would realize that we are in a point of desperation, We are in a point of procarity, um, where we really need wages and compensation and and and workplace protections that meet the current economic situation that we live in,

because right now that's not what we have. And currently at the bargaining table, they're kind like putting a lot of our labor reps and to like uh something that looks like like jaw like jig saw like type trap rooms where they have only for lesson hiding and no windows and then them not knowing whether or not they have to get a flight back because they're not going to meet with them that day. Um, them saying that they haven't reserved rooms even though that you know, they

have so much power. Who's who's taking up a room from them, um to meet with them and actually come up with some proposals. I got to update that EDMUN wasn't bargaining because they couldn't reserve a room. What does that mean? There's forty eight thousand people on strike, the entire system isn't working. You mean it's your rooms also, you own the rooms. I'm I was that that was a fascinating update. I'm sorry, I just had to mention

something about that. So that's just all we have to know right now is that they keep canceling meetings adding meetings. They're kind of just waiting us out and see how long we'll actually be on strike and whether or not we actually care about our contracts, which I think you being here today, you see how many people are out. No one's gonna leave this picket line throughout the week. So yeah, yeah, I think that's basically it. People aren't going to leave the picket line, and the energy is

awesome because people are fed up. People are fed up, people are fed up being poor and homeless, and this is not why we come to grad school, right. I mean, I was very fortunate to have a good grad school experience, and that's why I'm still in academia, but the majority of the people who come to the university spending savings. I know people with student loans back from India who are here to do a master's and are teeing doing research,

killing themselves because they had a dream. They literally moved across the world to come here following a dream and our ending up being broken. That's that's heartbreaking from a university as big as this. Nobody deserves to be treated this way, and I think everybody here is feeling it. If you go to fair you see now dot org. There's a link to a strike fund right now, a hardship fund, and people can donate to that any amount they want to. And there's also we're taking donations to

actually feed people out here. UM So people have questions about that, they can just email the links at that website. UM yeah. People. People are very very welcome to show up to the picket line to come help. All help is appreciated. You want to join us, you want to chant, you want to bring supplies, we'll be there. This is across all ten you see campuses, if you're near the picket line, if you want to show support and solidarity,

come join us. Yeah, the virtual picketing is still happening, and what they've been actually doing is making sure people get here and nowhere to go since the picketing is so transient, like we're literally moving building to building as it's needed, and they're doing the calls for us and directing us, so which is a wild thing. But also the other thing is just people retweeting everything that we post, making sure that no one can silence us, because that's

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