UC Student Workers Vote To Allow Strike

Graduate student instructors, readers and tutors across the UC system cast a union vote this week which will likely result in the authorization of a strike if contract negotiations with the university come up short this spring.

The United Auto Workers Local 2865, which represents more than 12,000 student employees in the UC system, last struck in 2003 when they said UC failed to bargain with respect to the law while negotiating a three-year contract.

Though precise numbers of people who voted and the actual results were not disclosed, union local 2865 President Scott Bailey Clifthorne said the turnout was strong and the majority was supportive of the authorization.

“Almost everybody supports giving (union negotiators) that authority,” he said. “It shows the university our membership is informed, educated and active.”

The authorization vote, which required no quorum of voters but a two-thirds majority to pass, will have no immediate impact. Rather, it will serve as a bargaining tool when the union renegotiates a three-year contract in March.

University officials said the vote will not affect negotiations.

“We approach bargaining in good faith and on the premise that we’ll reach an agreement in an efficient, respectful manner,” wrote UC spokesperson Paul Schwartz in an e-mail.

Likely to be at issue in contract negotiations are compensation issues, especially as regards fee remissions, which graduate students receive when they work for the university.

The union’s current one-year contract, negotiated as a continuation last year, contains a “no strike” clause, but Bailey Clifthorne said if the university breaks labor law, as he alleged they have in the past, then they are eligible to strike.

“Our interpretation is that in the event of the university committing unfair labor practices, we as a union have the right to go on strike,” he said. “There won’t be a strike if the university doesn’t cause a strike.”

Bailey Clifthorne said UC has a reputation of committing a “garden variety of unfair labor practices,” including stalling and not sending negotiators with the power to make compromises.

Many union members said they voted to authorize the strike because they feel strongly about the issues likely to be discussed in the negotiations.

“I voted yes to give (the union) bargaining power. In order to sit down at the table and have power you have to have numbers,” said A.B. Wilkinson, a first-year history graduate student who does not currently work as a GSI. “We make things run and (the university) needs to respect that.”

But some students said they were ill-informed of the vote.

“I’m not voting because no one tried to convince me about anything,” said Justin Azadivar, a third-year graduate student in industrial engineering. Azadivar is not a member of the union but is a GSI for one course this semester. “Even if I wanted to vote, I don’t know how I would.”

The last time the union struck in October 2003 several hundred graduate students picketed and cancelled classes on several UC campuses. The union again threatened to strike in December of that year, but negotiations were continued at the 11th hour.

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