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DECEMBER 8, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

What the UC Strikers Need to Do Differently

Go off-campus, says a veteran strike and bargaining maven, and visit the
offices of regents and legislators. And sit down and settle in there.

Finals week has arrived at the University of California, but there's
hardly anyone around
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to administer and grade the final exams. And it sure doesn't look like
UC is in the final week of the strike by 48,000 teaching and research
assistants, postdocs, and academic researchers. (Leaders of the latter
two groups have tentatively agreed to a proposed contract, but those two
groups have pledged to stay on the picket line until the administration
agrees to a contract that includes a living wage for its TAs and RAs.)

Coming to terms with the 12,000 postdocs and academic researchers
appears to have been an easier lift for UC's administrators than
presenting adequate terms to its grad student TAs and RAs, as much of
the funding for the former-but not the latter-comes from federal
agencies like the National Institutes of Health. The proposed postdoc
contract included increases that would raise the postdocs' yearly pay
to more than $60,000, which in the apocalyptically pricey coastal
California housing market at least guarantees a roof over one's head.
But the offers thus far to the TAs and RAs don't raise their
wages-which currently average about $20,000 to $25,000 a year-to
anything like what's required to live within commuting distance of any
of the UCs, with the sole exception of the Merced campus (well, possibly
Riverside as well).

One of UC's most stellar academic researchers, now ensconced at the
university's Berkeley Labor Center, is veteran union organizer and
negotiator Jane McAlevey. In a recent dialogue (which you can view here
<[link removed]>) with UC Santa Barbara history professor
Nelson Lichtenstein, the de facto dean of American labor historians,
McAlevey argued that the union leaders need to alter their strategy if
they're to win an acceptable contract for the grad student employees.
As things now stand, various members of the university's board of
regents have privately told union leaders that they support their
demands, and a number of state legislators have discreetly voiced
similar sentiments-but none of these prominent California liberals
appear to be pressuring UC President Michael Drake and the other UC
muck-a-mucks whom they directly oversee (the regents) or, more important
yet, fund (the legislators) to agree to a living wage for the TAs and
RAs. On-campus picketing may be well and good, McAlevey said, but the
picketers should really move on to occupying the regents' and
legislators' offices, since ultimately, it's these folks who are the
decision-makers and, accordingly, it's they who should be made to feel
the heat now largely directed at UC administrators.

And, of course, as I've noted
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before, the ultimate MIA figure in all this is Gov. Gavin Newsom, who
appoints the UC regents and whose office is currently drawing up the new
state budget from which UC will derive its customary multibillion-dollar
share. At minimum, strikers might want to consider putting pictures of
the well-coiffed Gavin on milk cartons or sending out search parties.
UC's workers, as well as its students, currently unsure about what to
do with their term papers, need him.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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Coalition Asks: Where Is Biden's NLRB?
<[link removed]>
There were high hopes when a Democratic majority returned to decide
labor law, but more than a year in, critical rulings have not been
issued, a group of labor lawyers and organizers say. BY DAVID DAYEN

A Democratic Judicial Makeover Depends on Blue Slips
<[link removed]>

Will Senate Democrats let Republicans use an arcane Senate
'tradition' to block Biden's judicial nominees? BY MILES
MOGULESCU

Q&A: Justice on the Brink
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Linda Greenhouse, the doyenne of Supreme Court journalism, considers the
crisis of confidence that has marred the Court's legitimacy. BY
GABRIELLE GURLEY

Cyborgs on the Highways
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A new book details the extreme forms of surveillance imposed on
long-haul truckers, robbing them of their power. BY ZEPHYR TEACHOUT

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