
UC Santa Cruz Reinstates 41 Graduate Students After Months-Long Strike - sneeze-slayer
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8mdn/uc-santa-cruz-reinstates-41-graduate-students-after-months-long-strike
======
henriquez
I attended UCSC on and off over a period of 10 years. The level of blatant
corruption in the administration, both at the school and among the broader UC
system and regents, is something you would have to experience to believe. For
years the administration has been squeezing the life out of UCSC’s academic
programs (both grad students and instructors) while simultaneously awarding
administrative staff with new positions, titles, huge raises and lavish
lifestyles.

This is an incremental win for a very hard-working and talented group of
staffers, but hardly even a chip in the armor of the bloat and waste that is
the UC administrative complex. I’m actually low key ashamed to have a degree
from them.

~~~
hirundo
> This is an incremental win for a very hard-working and talented group of
> staffers

There is a large, high paying labor market for very hard-working and talented
staffers, about 40 minutes north on CA-17. I went directly from a UC campus to
a private Silicon Valley company, and learned more there, more broadly and
more quickly. I'd recommend it to those that feel the sacrifice to work in
academia is too high.

~~~
lgessler
There are some kinds of careers and questions that can only be pursued in
academia, so advising that grad students abandon ship really isn't a
satisfactory answer in general. Academia needs to be reformed.

~~~
zentiggr
"Academia progresses one funeral at a time"? Not sure how apt a rephrasing
that might be, never progressed past community college.

~~~
zentiggr
It just seems like there's an old guard of administrators that have grabbed
onto this huge source of money and are lining their pockets, and nothing
substantial will change until enough bodies swap out that the people who
actually want to provide a good affordable education are in the right seats.

Not suggesting the administrations get culled.

------
shajznnckfke
I’m happy for these students, and the housing stipend they managed to get will
help them, but I don’t think it’s a net positive overall. It just adds more
demand to the local housing market, so a different set of people on the
margins end up homeless. The only way to improve the situation is to build
more housing.

~~~
foogazi
UCSC is sitting on a lot of land while offloading housing onto Santa Cruz

~~~
shuckles
And as a state entity they can develop their land without approval from local
governments, one of the largest obstacles to new construction. UCSF has used
this to great effect in San Francisco.

~~~
whymsicalburito
That's interesting. UC employees aren't classified as state employees, they
are employed by the regents. CSU employees are state employees.

------
kepler1
While I am somewhat (and really, only somewhat) in support of the grad
students lobbying for better benefits, I am discouraged by UCSC essentially
walking back any penalties for violating their no-strike clause. They agreed
to terms, and actively chose to violate them.

All this does is incentivize other similar groups to do the same, and learn
that the longer and harder you go, the more likely you are to get what you
want. And that public institutions can be held hostage.

Add to that a frustration with a definite viewpoint-based forgiveness of the
approach. If students had been violating their contract for other kinds of
less popular speech, I highly doubt they would be forgiven like this. I'm not
glad to have public universities making those kinds of tacit judgement calls.

~~~
smnrchrds
What is this no-strike clause? I am not familiar with the story.

Was it something that each students individually decided whether to sign or
not and if they signed, they received a benefit for it? Or was it a non-
negotiable part of every contact that was forced on everyone if they wanted to
go to or stay in UCSC? If it is the latter, I don't see anything morally or
ethically wrong with violating it. Legal matters are of course another issue.

~~~
Veserv
Here is a link to the union, their collective bargaining agreement, and the
specific subsection.

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-
un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-units/bx/)

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-
un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-
units/bx/contract.html)

[https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-
un...](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-
units/bx/docs/bx_2010-2013_19_no-strikes.pdf)

So, it is a specific clause with its own sub-section in the contract that the
union made. From what I understand on how collective bargaining agreements
work in the US, this means that all UC grad students, including non-members,
are bound by the terms of the agreement as the union represents the entire UC
grad student unit (except UCSF) and thus is the sole, exclusive, legal
representative of all individuals in the unit regardless of whether they are
union members or not. As far as I know, there is no legal way for any
individual in the unit to be bound by a different agreement (except maybe if
the union and employer allows it?) as it is illegal for organizations to make
agreements with individuals in the unit without union approval.

