Speaker 1: Legal disclaimer. Okay, it's actually me, not the legal disclaiming
Speaker 1: guy from Medical advert. We just wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: both of our guests today are members of you a W,
Speaker 1: but they do not speak on behalf of you a W. Okay,
Speaker 1: enjoy the podcast. It could happen here. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: this podcast. It's podcast. We're doing a podcast. It's a podcast,
Speaker 1: and today it's podcast with me. I'm James, and I'm
Speaker 1: joined by Chris and I've joined by a couple of
Speaker 1: grad students from you See San Diego. Today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about grad students strikes. Were going to talk
Speaker 1: about the grad student strike Volk that's coming up at
Speaker 1: you See San Diego and some other grad students strikes
Speaker 1: that Chris and I have been part of back in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Okay, so I'm joined today. But Alex, Alex,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're studying I'm trying to get this correct
Speaker 1: cancer genomics a U C s D. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: That is correct? Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: And Tyler Bell as well. And Tyler you're a post
Speaker 1: doc and you're doing Outzheimer's research, right, yes, and you're
Speaker 1: both members of u a W. Yes, that's correct. I've
Speaker 1: been a member for at least two years. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm a member of the actual the subset of
Speaker 1: U a W that just formed representing student researchers in
Speaker 1: completing their PhDs. So we'll explain all the details of that,
Speaker 1: of course, start going forward. Yeah, I think maybe we
Speaker 1: should start there and explain kind of the economic relationship
Speaker 1: of PhD and post doc students to the university, like
Speaker 1: what what work they do. And as we were talking
Speaker 1: about beforehand, people might not even be familiar with the
Speaker 1: fact that you get paid by the university in many
Speaker 1: of these positions, right, So can you explain that how
Speaker 1: that works? Yeah, definitely. So Yeah, as you mentioned, UM,
Speaker 1: we do UH in our various roles as graduate students, UH,
Speaker 1: teachers and post docs, we do a lot of work,
Speaker 1: majority of the work in fact, that is critical for
Speaker 1: the university to function as it does UM, and we
Speaker 1: do that in a few different roles. Some of us
Speaker 1: are paid to teach or t A classes. We call
Speaker 1: those academic student employees who are represented by one of
Speaker 1: our unions U a W T eight six five. The
Speaker 1: rander of PhD students are actually paid directly to do
Speaker 1: their research, and this is usually funded up of grants
Speaker 1: or other money that the university has your march for research.
Speaker 1: So as we are progressing towards our degrees, we are
Speaker 1: doing work that is productive in our labs to get
Speaker 1: papers out, get grant funding coming in, and we receive
Speaker 1: a stipend to perform that work. Those students are known
Speaker 1: as graduate student researchers or gsrs, who are represented by
Speaker 1: a new union that just formed because it actually they
Speaker 1: became recently legal to form such a union in the
Speaker 1: state of California. We are represented by s are you
Speaker 1: bargaining for our first contract? And then we have the
Speaker 1: post docs, which Tyler can probably talk more about, who
Speaker 1: are students who have completed their I'm sorry I should
Speaker 1: were really clarified here. Not students they are. They are
Speaker 1: employees of the university who have completed their degree so
Speaker 1: are no longer students and arguing research work in labs,
Speaker 1: usually dragging their own projects forward under supervision of professors.
Speaker 1: So they are represented by a third union that's part
Speaker 1: of this sort of collective um organizing called U A
Speaker 1: w f G A ten. Well, you have postox unions, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. I think the one here that you
Speaker 1: see is actually the biggest and one of the first
Speaker 1: ones that formed. UM. I remember I was on a
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page, which I shouldn't use as an academic, but
Speaker 1: I totally saw us on there, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's ascinating because if there are
Speaker 1: all these like memes that you'll see as a graduate student,
Speaker 1: and then it's like when you finish your PhD, where
Speaker 1: it's like you always think that you're going to get
Speaker 1: off the like the grind, right, Like you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll do my m A and then I'll get off,
Speaker 1: and then I'll do my pH d and then people
Speaker 1: respect me and I'll be compensated for a massive amount
Speaker 1: of work I do, and then like I'll just finish
Speaker 1: this post doc and then you're like, oh, I'm fifty five,
Speaker 1: you know. Like it's all of those positions are heavily
Speaker 1: exploited by by universities that make a metric ship tourn
Speaker 1: of money from these people, who, as you say, do
Speaker 1: most of the work that keeps a university running. So
Speaker 1: perhaps we could talk about the issues that are at
Speaker 1: State that that are leading to this this strike authorization
Speaker 1: vote and maybe if we go through a little bit
Speaker 1: of a timeline as well, that would be great. Yes,
Speaker 1: maybe tell them, maybe you could like explain the fifty
Speaker 1: ten timeline and I can talk a little bit about this,
Speaker 1: are you and I guess kind of TwixT a five
Speaker 1: point Yeah. So chronologically the POSTALC we're up for their
Speaker 1: contract negotiation, which that's just to set our wages, benefits
Speaker 1: and workplace safety and other types of protections we want
Speaker 1: UM and that actually came up they think in September
Speaker 1: of UM, and I could be wrong with the date specifically.
Speaker 1: So much has changed. But we initially back in UM
Speaker 1: started actually asking people what they wanted to see in
Speaker 1: their new contract, like our members, because the union isn't
Speaker 1: like like I if I didn't care about the union
Speaker 1: or no one else care to what exist like, it's
Speaker 1: the post docs and we have to take out like
Speaker 1: a couple of hours a week to do this thing,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's twenty hours on top of our research
Speaker 1: which is forty hours. And so during that time we surveyed,
Speaker 1: everyone got the demands that people wanted, and the top
Speaker 1: two issues that people asked for that they want it
Speaker 1: changed was our wages, and also the housing. Um, we
Speaker 1: want it affordable housing because right now, um, you know,
Speaker 1: over of academic workers, including the post docs who you
Speaker 1: would think, you know, you have a PhD, this is
Speaker 1: the time you can finally have affordable housing and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about food scarcity and all these
Speaker 1: other things that you're worried about as a graduate student.
Speaker 1: So just take this in the context of like we're
Speaker 1: post docs, we're supposed to be like the most paid
Speaker 1: or at least a better off because we have our PhD.
Speaker 1: Think about like what that means for the graduate students
Speaker 1: and those that aren't yet at that stage yet. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when we went forward with our proposals, we
Speaker 1: um create a lot of other things that we thought
Speaker 1: were important, including things like transit UM bargaining demands to
Speaker 1: make public transit like affordable for post docs because currently
Speaker 1: we don't get any kind of like free paths for that.
Speaker 1: They don't even consider it um. In fact, you know,
Speaker 1: they probably think we all have cars, which isn't true
Speaker 1: because a lot of post docs are international scholars. We
Speaker 1: were also asking for child care support because currently, like
Speaker 1: a good bit of you know, our post docs have children. UM,
Speaker 1: which is normal because this is a normal like family
Speaker 1: creation time or whatever you wanna call it, but UM,
Speaker 1: and indeed it can be one of the only times
Speaker 1: as an academic when it when it really sort of
Speaker 1: doesn't massively to had voluntege your career to have stuff
Speaker 1: right exactly. And like post docs, like the whole proposition
Speaker 1: of a post doc was, you know, there's not enough
Speaker 1: faculty spots for once you get a PhD, and post
Speaker 1: docs now can last five if not longer, like five
Speaker 1: years or longer. And there's a new position called an
Speaker 1: academic researcher, which is a type of like title that
Speaker 1: you get when you can no longer be a post doc.
Speaker 1: But it's also because there's just not enough faculty, so
Speaker 1: they put you into a different title to do research.
Speaker 1: And UM collectively, both US post docs and people that
Speaker 1: are academic researchers, we don't get any affordable childcare, we
Speaker 1: don't have affordable housing UM, and our wages are below
Speaker 1: the cost of living. And currently we went through the
Speaker 1: proposals back then and we over time a year and
Speaker 1: a half have not really made any leeway on these
Speaker 1: proposals that actually changed the material conditions for post post docs.
Speaker 1: Like the university has been you know, bargaining in bad faith.
Speaker 1: That we have multiple UM unfair UM labor practice lawsuits
Speaker 1: against from our public relations board for the employers UM
Speaker 1: and three of those have been UM sorry, let me
Speaker 1: get those numbers right. Multiple of those have actually been
Speaker 1: successfully had complaints filed against the university. Some of the
Speaker 1: things that the university has done in particularly while we've
Speaker 1: been bargaining is one not bringing the information to the
Speaker 1: table that we request, like denying our request for information.
Speaker 1: They have also refused to bring the people that can
Speaker 1: make the type of decisions that we need to the table.
Speaker 1: And they've all also been making unilateral changes to things
Speaker 1: like bullying policies and other workplace issues without even being
Speaker 1: at the bargaining table. And the last thing that they've
Speaker 1: been doing during this process is serving members of our
Speaker 1: union outside of like the bargaining process, like we we
Speaker 1: don't know about it. I mean, we did find out
Speaker 1: about it, and then we followed the UM UH the
Speaker 1: complaint and so right now we're at a point where
Speaker 1: we've gotten a lot of things, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like moved on in terms of things that aren't compensation,
Speaker 1: in terms of our bargaining UM like things that we
Speaker 1: want such as bullying protections. That was something that we
Speaker 1: actually had to like have a big action for to
Speaker 1: actually get that on the table to move. So currently
Speaker 1: we won protections against bullying, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: pretty enormous because in academia, university says we're against bullying
Speaker 1: and that they have all these resources for you, but
Speaker 1: through resources always end at we're right, you're wrong. And UM.
Speaker 1: Now we have something in our contracts, not just for
Speaker 1: that post docs and acondic researchers, but also for UM
Speaker 1: the other bargaining units to actually protect us UM in
Speaker 1: a process that like we could grieve it as you know,
Speaker 1: UNI represented workers UM. And so right now, the reason
Speaker 1: that we had to authorize the strike, especially for our
Speaker 1: group as post docs and academic researchers, because they started
Speaker 1: bargaining kind of like maybe UM further along in that
Speaker 1: year with US, but they are kind of at the
Speaker 1: same place of like not getting the same type of
Speaker 1: responses and UM we just want them to actually come
Speaker 1: to the table, bring the people that can make the
Speaker 1: decisions so that we can have you know, affordable housing,
Speaker 1: fair wages to actually do the research that we do here.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say that we bring a
Speaker 1: lot of value to the university through grants, in particular
Speaker 1: as post talks. So we do most of the writing
Speaker 1: of research papers, conducting the experiments. UM. People think that
Speaker 1: if people think that faculties sit there and run a
Speaker 1: wet lab and actually do the you know, the work
Speaker 1: of the wet labs. UM. You know, that would be
Speaker 1: an amazing colquitty person, But they're really busy in terms
Speaker 1: of like having to write grants themselves. We do the
Speaker 1: bulk of the work and actually making the research happen. UM.
Speaker 1: We do a bulk of the training in terms of
Speaker 1: the graduate students and the undergrads that are in the lab,
Speaker 1: and so we provide an enormous value to the university.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, while we provide these values, UM,
Speaker 1: the university doesn't want to give us a fair living
Speaker 1: condition or affordable housing. And the last thing I'll say,
Speaker 1: and I'll let Alex talk about the other units, UM,
Speaker 1: is that you know, we bring a ton of value
Speaker 1: to the university because of the grants, and for every
Speaker 1: hundred dollars of that grant that is UM given to
Speaker 1: the university, the university charges things like the n I
Speaker 1: H you know, um, you know, fifty eight dollars and indirects.
Speaker 1: So this is a ghost money that we don't know
Speaker 1: where it goes. Our pis don't get to have a
Speaker 1: say over. And that's money that usually goes to things
Speaker 1: that capital projects that could go back to keeping you know, um,
Speaker 1: the post docs actually living in uh an Okay living situation.
Speaker 1: Can we just explain what capital projects are? So capital
Speaker 1: projects are things like you know, um, planning out building
Speaker 1: buildings that they want and other things things that aren't
Speaker 1: really like compensation based or employee based, you know, because
Speaker 1: the university, like you see as the biggest landowner and
Speaker 1: so they obviously we want more and more things that
Speaker 1: they can develop or lands that they can buy um,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what they kind of focus many
Speaker 1: of these indirects on. And I really don't know the
Speaker 1: clear picture on indirects, and that's kind of the problem
Speaker 1: is that we don't know where all this money kind
Speaker 1: of goes. It's they if people. Obviously lots of our
Speaker 1: listeners are in San Diego. The scale of construction at
Speaker 1: UCSD is incredible, Like I've been here for fifteen years
Speaker 1: now and I swear every time I go back there's
Speaker 1: a new building like and they can terms of student housing,
Speaker 1: it's really old student housing. I think that they've built.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and if I can jump in about one
Speaker 1: of those, which relates a lot to why graduate students
Speaker 1: have become more active on this campus. Um, three or
Speaker 1: four of those extraordinarily large buildings you're talking about, we're
Speaker 1: actually intended to be built as subsidized graduate student housing,
Speaker 1: where you would be you know, you get on a
Speaker 1: wait list, you're guaranteed once you get off the way,
Speaker 1: which you can live there for two years and pay
Speaker 1: below market rent. Um. That lasted for a little bit
Speaker 1: of time, but the university just a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago or so almost doubled um the price for those units.
Speaker 1: They tried to hide it behind saying that their capacity
Speaker 1: city increases. But um, what they're saying is for the
Speaker 1: same prices before, you can live with two people in
Speaker 1: a very small square footage studio apartment. UM. But really
Speaker 1: that studio is now just double UM. So that is
Speaker 1: one of the things, certainly that we are concerned about,
Speaker 1: is that, Yeah, money, what significant portion university's budget does
Speaker 1: go into these capital improvement projects. Which are nominally intended
Speaker 1: for student and UH and postdoc benefit um, but which
Speaker 1: tend to come back and and and not be quite
Speaker 1: as helpful in the long run. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: seems like they're just doing real estate speculation and then
Speaker 1: doing rent extraction from it, which, yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: something they've done, Like they did this. There's a very
Speaker 1: very similar thing in what like two thousand nine, like
Speaker 1: like again, like they built what I built into your building.
Speaker 1: It was affordable for a short period of time and
Speaker 1: then it suddenly became completely unaffordable. And like they've really
Speaker 1: consistently extracted rent from the people that they are under paying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those buildings were actually this this incident even got
Speaker 1: lot of faculty on our side because those buildings were
Speaker 1: a major um draw for how we were able to
Speaker 1: recruit new people to come and do research with us.
Speaker 1: As we were saying, yeah, the cost living here is
Speaker 1: really high. You're not going to get a huge stipend
Speaker 1: or salary, but we do have the subsurdised housing and
Speaker 1: people had actually already committed to do their PhD here
Speaker 1: in labs of the university, and then the rent increase
Speaker 1: came out that April or May and people said well no,
Speaker 1: and then they a bunch of people decommitted from programs,
Speaker 1: So it was it was a significant issue here, but
Speaker 1: they have not backed off of that. And the problem
Speaker 1: with like the university being one of the biggest landlords
Speaker 1: is that when they increase the rents for these even
Speaker 1: ground housing, it affects everyone else. So like prices, like
Speaker 1: my current rent, I live maybe a mile away from campus.
Speaker 1: My rent was seventeen hundred, which was eating up most
Speaker 1: of my income anyway, and it went up to and
Speaker 1: you know, this is directly tied to like the university
Speaker 1: setting a higher market rate UM, which then allows them
Speaker 1: to hurt everyone else that lives you know, not just
Speaker 1: in around UCSD, but also in San Diego generally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the big things about UM that we're trying
Speaker 1: to get the university to understand, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I'm proud of the demands that we're making UH
Speaker 1: in this round of bargaining is is the effect we
Speaker 1: have on the local economy and of people who aren't
Speaker 1: even affiliated with the university have their lives affected based
Speaker 1: on the rent and based on the cost of things
Speaker 1: because of the economic footprint that we have And as
Speaker 1: how we mentioned one of our demands is um uh
Speaker 1: some more subsidized transit passes. The university already subsidizes. It's
Speaker 1: a significant amount of transit, but it's not enough, and
Speaker 1: it's not enough to actually really make a difference in
Speaker 1: terms of emissions in our region. So we're trying to
Speaker 1: raise both our own working conditions as well as as
Speaker 1: make meaningful changes in the university's impact in the region.
Speaker 1: And in response to that, the university released in part
Speaker 1: a very funny statement the other day that accused us
Speaker 1: and used transit as an example, accused us of having
Speaker 1: a quote social justice agenda. So I wasn't quite sure
Speaker 1: if the university or um Rond de Santis wrote that
Speaker 1: particular release, but it was it was quite funny, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: Like the more thinking about this, right, this is a
Speaker 1: public university. Why are they even charging rent? They own
Speaker 1: the land, right, why are they even charging rent in
Speaker 1: the first place? Like what what is oh my god? Like, well,
Speaker 1: it's just the the housing example I brought up was
Speaker 1: funded through what they very proudly refer to as a
Speaker 1: public private partnership. So that's where the money is going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh great, it's going to investors. And recently for the
Speaker 1: post docs, their solution to our housing crisis was they
Speaker 1: obtained some building in downtown San Diego, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve or more miles away from campus, and the building
Speaker 1: starts at like rent of three thousand dollars or more.
Speaker 1: But like I said, building, yeah, with the one with
Speaker 1: the creepy bed in the closet that comes out and
Speaker 1: kills your cat. But know what it has like a
Speaker 1: closet that folds out. Okay, is that their extent to downtown. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to p R A and a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff about that building and they've been quite reticent
Speaker 1: to hand it over and toddly so addle. Is there
Speaker 1: any more contexts you wanted to add from your side
Speaker 1: about like is about sort of what is driving people
Speaker 1: to to ask for a strike authorization vote? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, our concerns as graduate students are certainly very
Speaker 1: similar to a lot of the concerns that postdoctoral students have,
Speaker 1: except that we make even less money than they do.
Speaker 1: So certainly UH urgent on the compensation side, our units
Speaker 1: are demanding a minimum UH graduate student stipend, a fifty
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars a year UM, whereas uh, none of
Speaker 1: us make more than thirty three or thirty four right now,
Speaker 1: and that's very dependent on the program and very dependent
Speaker 1: on your source of funding, so most make quite less
Speaker 1: than that. UM. We also of a number of other
Speaker 1: issues that have come up and cause problems for students
Speaker 1: that we want to be able to have a union
Speaker 1: in order to rectify. I mentioned that UM our Student
Speaker 1: Researchers United Union. It actually knew we're bargaining for our
Speaker 1: first contract, and we think we're going to be able
Speaker 1: to get a lot of practical benefits out of that,
Speaker 1: not just UM, you know, in terms of a contract,
Speaker 1: but actually something where we can have some parody and
Speaker 1: and some for some some some organization to come to
Speaker 1: back for us when the university creates issues. For example, Uh,
Speaker 1: the university has known this for a long time. But
Speaker 1: the payroll system that manages graduate students stipends and fellowships
Speaker 1: and and and and to stipend disbursements is a bit
Speaker 1: unreliable for reasons that they can't quite explain. Boy, when
Speaker 1: so I wasn't I wasn't a grad student, but I
Speaker 1: was an undergrad when our Chicago's grad students went on
Speaker 1: strike and that was a big thing of like people
Speaker 1: like people would get paid in the university would sometimes
Speaker 1: they they wouldn't get paid enough, it wouldn't get paid
Speaker 1: at all. There was another time where they actually get
Speaker 1: overpaid and the university wouldn't tell them and then they
Speaker 1: just take all the money out of their bank account
Speaker 1: and catastrophe. Yeah. Is it similar things here? Very much? So? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is at least My personal story with this is
Speaker 1: um uh pretty much ever since so, I applied for
Speaker 1: and received an H individual fellowship. For all the other
Speaker 1: nerds out there, I got. It's an firty one in
Speaker 1: i H fellowship. But essentially what that says is the
Speaker 1: n i H likes my research proposal and they are
Speaker 1: going to fund a portion of the rest of my PhD.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, I've offset the cost of my
Speaker 1: labor by bringing an extra few tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars to the university. Um However, the processing for that
Speaker 1: has not been smooth, and there are months where I
Speaker 1: simply have to remind them to pay me. And when
Speaker 1: that paycheck doesn't come through, my very hard working program coordinator,
Speaker 1: it's not her fault, but she has been open support tickets.
Speaker 1: She has to go through different levels of bureaucracy to
Speaker 1: find out where the hold up is. And so what
Speaker 1: that results in is people often times not getting significant
Speaker 1: portions of their stipend and tell well into the beginning
Speaker 1: of the first or second week of the month. UM.
Speaker 1: I personally am been lucky enough to you know, build
Speaker 1: up some savings living here UM, but many students, especially
Speaker 1: our first year is coming right out of college, have
Speaker 1: not been able to do that. And a lot of
Speaker 1: times at the first of the month we have people,
Speaker 1: you know, people will come to me and say they
Speaker 1: just didn't they I don't know why my stipends and
Speaker 1: I didn't work. I can't pay rent, or I can't
Speaker 1: get groceries. And these issues have been going on. This
Speaker 1: have not been one time things or sporadic things. These
Speaker 1: are things that have been continuously going on for years.
Speaker 1: And what we're really hoping for is that with the
Speaker 1: creation of this Student Researchers Union, that we will be
Speaker 1: able to not just you know, send polite emails and
Speaker 1: say hi, can you pay me if you get a chance,
Speaker 1: We will actually have a literal international union that will
Speaker 1: be sending those emails and say you know, you fix
Speaker 1: this or by the terms of the contract, we get X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z damages. UM, and we're hoping that that
Speaker 1: leads to improvements in the system as a as a whole,
Speaker 1: because it will get expensive. So yeah, that is certainly
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we formed s are you and
Speaker 1: are after a brief vote to strike for recognition because
Speaker 1: the university ignored the employee religious part of California, which
Speaker 1: resulted in some very spicy press releases from herbs which
Speaker 1: is great. Um, But we did eventually get recognition and
Speaker 1: and now hopefully in a couple in a month or so,
Speaker 1: we'll have a contract. Yeah, to explain for people as
Speaker 1: well who aren't familiar. If you're teaching right, you may
Speaker 1: not have been paid over the summer in some positions,
Speaker 1: like I know I was in mind, so like a
Speaker 1: late payment in September or even wait until October, like
Speaker 1: is you're already at the bottom of your savings, like
Speaker 1: there were there were full quarters that quarters at ECSD
Speaker 1: where like I lived in my car because it didn't
Speaker 1: make it all the way through the summer and the
Speaker 1: savings they had, you know, So it really is and
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are a lot of still like and
Speaker 1: how it's graduate students at UCSD because of the cost
Speaker 1: of living in the the waits are so divergent. Yeah, hey, Chris,
Speaker 1: you you know what won't make you live in your car?
Speaker 1: Oh God, there's no way that's It's going to be
Speaker 1: the washes that Harry Patrol again, Todd Gloria. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: this has brought you by Landlords Joy's adverts and we're back.
Speaker 1: And so what I wanted to talk about with some
Speaker 1: of the actions that have been taken by student organizations
Speaker 1: so far, and also some of the repercussions that have
Speaker 1: come from those actions, because again, student organizing is a
Speaker 1: little different, and I want people to understand that. So
Speaker 1: maybe if it makes sense to start with this wildcats stright,
Speaker 1: we can start there. If you want to start further back,
Speaker 1: then we can start fie it back to you. You know,
Speaker 1: is probably about the extent of my how far my
Speaker 1: experience goes back, Um, But I can tell kind of
Speaker 1: the story of that a little bit. Um. There was
Speaker 1: a movement that we referred to as COLA, which stands
Speaker 1: for a cost of living adjustment and convenient as very
Speaker 1: convenient acronym, which resulted in people coming to protest with
Speaker 1: empty bottles coke on a stick. And that was a
Speaker 1: really common science fantastic um. But that was a movement
Speaker 1: that started at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One
Speaker 1: of the for people aren't familiar with, you see, it
Speaker 1: is really actually mini campuses together in one system. In
Speaker 1: this particular one started at our campus in Santa Cruz,
Speaker 1: UM and it was what is called a wildcats strike,
Speaker 1: which is if you're not failily unions that is um
Speaker 1: UM at least in America, there are very uh careful
Speaker 1: rules that you have to follow of when exactly you
Speaker 1: are allowed to call a legally protected strike, and that's
Speaker 1: often dependent on your contract or the label laws of
Speaker 1: your state. UM. But it is possible for workers to
Speaker 1: get together without the explicit approval of their union and
Speaker 1: uh take the added risk that involves to hold a
Speaker 1: labor stoppage. So I'm not sure of the exact number,
Speaker 1: but somewhere between fifty and a hundred or two hundred
Speaker 1: or so t a s um SO teaching assistance at
Speaker 1: the Santa Cruz campus decided to withhold teaching and also
Speaker 1: final exam and UH semester or sorry quarter grades H
Speaker 1: for a quarter in I believe this would have been
Speaker 1: fall or fall UM and they held UM. They held
Speaker 1: they essentially daily pickets and protests UM at their central
Speaker 1: insrance of their campus. And this resulted in quite an
Speaker 1: extreme response from Santa Cruz administration, University of Santa Cruise
Speaker 1: administration and UH they called in the California Highway Patrol. UM.
Speaker 1: Also there's will I've asked, I'll send this to christ
Speaker 1: and James Pulton the footnotes. But there is a Vice
Speaker 1: article where someone did a lot of public records request
Speaker 1: and found out that the FBI was also involved, or
Speaker 1: at least FBI provided technology was involved. UM. There may
Speaker 1: have been sort of counter terrorism UH units involved in
Speaker 1: the state in interesting ways UM. But essentially there was
Speaker 1: a highly militarized response to what was essentially a few
Speaker 1: grand students not doing grades. UM. So this response, the
Speaker 1: images that came out of this, people getting arrested for
Speaker 1: being in the street and such UM started to actually
Speaker 1: provoke sympathy actions across the rest of the campus and
Speaker 1: there was really a campus wide or system wide movement
Speaker 1: starting to build. And then March of happened, and almost
Speaker 1: all of us are labs shut down, the campuses shut down. UH,
Speaker 1: those of us who work from home could UM, those
Speaker 1: of us who couldn't often had you know, many others
Speaker 1: a will to deal with, and that kind of killed UH.
Speaker 1: The pandemic essentially killed that movement. But at the same time, UM,
Speaker 1: you know these uh U A w twist at five
Speaker 1: and you could get ten already existed. SRU was starting
Speaker 1: to get formed at this time. We actually managed to
Speaker 1: get car check recognition during the pandemic where no one
Speaker 1: could actually go to one central point and get cards.
Speaker 1: So I'm quite proud of that. So we sort of
Speaker 1: rebuilt off of kind of UM, sort of the ashes
Speaker 1: of that movement. And even though it was not UM
Speaker 1: and I personally supported, but even though it was not
Speaker 1: a university sort of excuse me, certainly not university supported,
Speaker 1: but union supported uh movement. UM. I think it really
Speaker 1: helped a kind of UM plant seeds for graduate students
Speaker 1: and post docs having some you know, some degree of
Speaker 1: labor consciousness. When I was doing walkthroughs to get people
Speaker 1: signed up for the union, get people just quote on
Speaker 1: the strike, they would say, you know, they haven't obviously
Speaker 1: been keeping track of all the barguing, but say, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, is this like in Santa Cruz. I remember
Speaker 1: what they did and people would be and be ready,
Speaker 1: you know, to get involved. So um, it was a
Speaker 1: deferred kind of benefit given the pandemic, but I think
Speaker 1: it helps get a lot of the energy that we
Speaker 1: have today. Yeah, that's great to see, actually, because I
Speaker 1: know we really struggled with sort of political consciousness on
Speaker 1: the on the among the grad students in my time
Speaker 1: at E. C. S D. And yeah, I guess it
Speaker 1: makes us like that they remember, Like I were talking
Speaker 1: to some people who were sort of involved with it,
Speaker 1: and like watching the videos coming out of here, like
Speaker 1: that was I think, like probably the most intense military
Speaker 1: responsive I think I've ever seen to a strike at
Speaker 1: the US. It was wild. Like, Yeah, the university chancellor,
Speaker 1: chancellor of Santa Cruz at that time bragged or I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was bragged or complained that they
Speaker 1: were spending three hundred thousand dollars a day on that response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they went incredibly hard. And I want to kind of
Speaker 1: get into why, like the university is really really strongly
Speaker 1: strongly dislike strikes and partly because they rely heavily on
Speaker 1: underpaid graduate student labor, right and increasingly relying heavily on
Speaker 1: underpaid adjunct labor as well to take the place of
Speaker 1: these expensive tenure track positions. So, can we talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit about like what it means to strike
Speaker 1: as a grad student, because it's not the same to
Speaker 1: strike as a grad students is to strike if you
Speaker 1: work on a production lineup right, Like, it really can
Speaker 1: make a serious impact on your whole career, and it
Speaker 1: can make it a serious impact on your relationship preps
Speaker 1: with your with your supervisor or advisor or mentor, and
Speaker 1: so can you can you one of your both of
Speaker 1: you explained a little bit about the repercussion to come
Speaker 1: from striking as a graduate student. Yeah, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: share my thoughts. And then and then, um, tyl, you
Speaker 1: can maybe talk about what the what post docs are thinking?
Speaker 1: Um from the t a perspective, I think I don't
Speaker 1: want it. I'm not currently I'm currently a student researchers,
Speaker 1: so I'm not currently teaching. I think in that since
Speaker 1: it makes there's a little more cut and dry, it's
Speaker 1: you're not going to teach your discussion section and you're
Speaker 1: not going to grade your exams. As a very concrete
Speaker 1: things you can do that are sort of separate from
Speaker 1: your research work. For those of us paid to do research,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit um harder to figure out where
Speaker 1: exactly you're sometimes your labor for the university is, and
Speaker 1: where you're um uh kind of research and and and
Speaker 1: not wanting to sort of harm yourself. Like I know
Speaker 1: people who have planned their advancements to candidacy during this time,
Speaker 1: and I think they're still going through with that because
Speaker 1: we can say, well, that's more academic, that's more your
Speaker 1: personal kind of progress in life, and and so those
Speaker 1: sort of things will continue, um. But but I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the things, um that that's sort of
Speaker 1: um important, is is um sort of your day today
Speaker 1: work in the lab and not necessarily saying your research project,
Speaker 1: but on just sort of maintaining things, answering questions, communicating
Speaker 1: with collaborators, sharing your results with people, helping undergraduates in
Speaker 1: the lab, helping um, you know, prepare figures or prepare
Speaker 1: text for your advisor to submit grants and all these
Speaker 1: other things that are not necessarily like I am doing
Speaker 1: this particular you know thing for my degree UM, so
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people are worried about, especially
Speaker 1: because in the life sciences we have situations where we
Speaker 1: have experiments that go on for months and they cost
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars to run, and if you
Speaker 1: miss a time point on that we're throwing months of
Speaker 1: your life and out of the window, and that it
Speaker 1: hurts yourself really more than the university. So it's been
Speaker 1: a I think, especially because organizing grad super researchers is
Speaker 1: something new, at least in America. UM. I think it's
Speaker 1: something that in the coming years will be kind of
Speaker 1: considered more and people will kind of I think I hope.
Speaker 1: What I hope is people learn from our whatever our
Speaker 1: experience happens to be next week when we walk out
Speaker 1: and start to kind of calibrate, what does it look like?
Speaker 1: What is what is an effective work stoppage for a
Speaker 1: researcher look like? UM, and I think people are are
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of discussions, We've had programmed meetings.
Speaker 1: A bunch of students from my program got together and
Speaker 1: talked about this UM and I think it might end
Speaker 1: up looking different for different people, but really what we're
Speaker 1: trying to communicate is is don't do something that's going
Speaker 1: to um, you know, damage yourself. Um. But but but
Speaker 1: do what you can to disrupt normal operations. Show up
Speaker 1: at the picket, um uh. And and make sure you
Speaker 1: you communicate, you know, to everyone and around you why
Speaker 1: you're leaving, and and and you know, cause as much
Speaker 1: disruption as you can. That's kind of what our our
Speaker 1: thinking is at the moment. Yeah, and I thin, guys,
Speaker 1: you wanted to add tied. Yeah, so I wanted to
Speaker 1: add that. UM. So for this one, this strike, I mean,
Speaker 1: the reason that we're doing it is because they're not
Speaker 1: coming to the table in good faith. So I was
Speaker 1: going to correct my numbers. So we had twenties seven
Speaker 1: UM complaints that we filed with the California Public Unemployment
Speaker 1: Relations Board, and six of those were actually official complaints
Speaker 1: to the University of California. And so this strike is
Speaker 1: a little different because it's you know, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: have to explain to other people why this is so important,
Speaker 1: especially in such a short time frame. And so for
Speaker 1: post docs, like on a day to day basis, we
Speaker 1: do so much research that every day matters, and our
Speaker 1: employment schedules aren't very long. So I say that post
Speaker 1: docs are generally in there for five years, but p
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep a post talk for a
Speaker 1: year or two or longer, especially like I've noticed a
Speaker 1: pattern here in academia in general that post docs it's
Speaker 1: some people prefer to keep them a year and two
Speaker 1: years because by the time you asked for pay raises
Speaker 1: or the time you ask for curd development and to
Speaker 1: get to your next stage, you're not worth it to
Speaker 1: them anymore, and they change you out. So when I
Speaker 1: come in as a postalk, each position, I've come in
Speaker 1: everyday mattered and setting up my research experiment, setting up
Speaker 1: my papers, setting up what I was going to do
Speaker 1: for the job search, because you don't have that much time.
Speaker 1: It takes you know, six to eight months to get
Speaker 1: get even an initial interview for a faculty job UM,
Speaker 1: and that's a rare thing that you would get anyway.
Speaker 1: I think about two percent of post talks become faculty
Speaker 1: at this point, and so we're giving up a lot
Speaker 1: of Yeah, it's really bleak, and so like right now,
Speaker 1: I think the fact that we authorize a strike based
Speaker 1: on the UM bad faith bargaining. We did that because
Speaker 1: like things are so important, but we know what we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose. So if we have to strike for weeks,
Speaker 1: that is lost experiments, that's lost time to do our
Speaker 1: publications be competitive for this competitive job field. Um. And
Speaker 1: also we're gonna let down a lot of people because
Speaker 1: we're kind of anchors in our lab for the undergraduates
Speaker 1: and the under and the graduate students and also the
Speaker 1: text in our lab. And so if we're gone, the
Speaker 1: lab just kind of die, especially if the grass dudits
Speaker 1: walk out too. UM. But I think we know that
Speaker 1: the value that I would get personally for my career, UM,
Speaker 1: it isn't worth it if I see not only myself
Speaker 1: suffering each year and not being able to make my
Speaker 1: rent enable to feed myself, like eating one mill a
Speaker 1: day is um not really great. And being able to
Speaker 1: afford one UM wardrobe this entire two years of employment
Speaker 1: is not it either. UM. And I'm a post doc
Speaker 1: and I see the graduate students who I was a
Speaker 1: graduate student two years ago. There's not a real border there,
Speaker 1: UM and seeing them suffer. You know, most of us
Speaker 1: post talks don't want to see anyone else have to
Speaker 1: go through that. So it's worth the lost time and
Speaker 1: it's kind of been calculable what I could say what
Speaker 1: we would lose because grants are so up in the air.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're talking millions of dollars for a
Speaker 1: grant cycle being lost if a post talk can't you know,
Speaker 1: submit the application. We're talking you know, uh what Alex said,
Speaker 1: how expensive dise equipment experiments are in these big labs
Speaker 1: UM in biology and engineering. So it's really immeasurable. And
Speaker 1: I think it's on the UC to come to the
Speaker 1: table and good faith and say, hey, let's not do
Speaker 1: that's that's not ruin their research and their teaching UM,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing that we're here to support UM.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say that overall, we're only
Speaker 1: less than one percent of u see's total budget. So
Speaker 1: what is it to give us a fair wage and
Speaker 1: a good housing so we can continue to not UM,
Speaker 1: to continue to con your door research and teaching and
Speaker 1: not have to go on strike and lose all of this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's very fair. You know what else, it
Speaker 1: only pays out one percent of their income to employee.
Speaker 1: The Washington State Higher Patrol no ites not they pay Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's disappointing. Isn't it. Yeah, we're back. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think you've done a really excellent job of explaining sort
Speaker 1: of what's at stake and what people can stand to lose.
Speaker 1: I know it can be very confusing. Also as a teacher,
Speaker 1: I will add, like what do you do when you're
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to communicate right like, so, like what
Speaker 1: about when your students email you? That can be very difficult,
Speaker 1: or especially if it comes towards the time when you're
Speaker 1: writing application letters or your writing letters of support for
Speaker 1: your your b A. Students who want to go into
Speaker 1: an m A. Or PhD program, like you don't want
Speaker 1: like many of us teach as much out of vocation
Speaker 1: as for the thirty ye old grand a year. We
Speaker 1: can make it a place where the cost of living
Speaker 1: is insane, and so like we want to help those
Speaker 1: people because we care about our students and and so
Speaker 1: it can be very hard for us to go on strike.
Speaker 1: I will say that we're very fortunate in the community
Speaker 1: college district here, which is a different system, and for
Speaker 1: people who aren't aware it's an entirely different university system,
Speaker 1: we have a very strong union and as a result,
Speaker 1: our I junk faculty here are I believe, some of
Speaker 1: the best paid in the country, the teacher the community
Speaker 1: college sometimes and it's exclusively thanks to a strong union
Speaker 1: and faculty being willing to back up that union. So
Speaker 1: like it does work, which is nice to see. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the actions that have been
Speaker 1: taken already and understand it. Some some folks occupied like
Speaker 1: a very busy intersection earlier this year in the spring,
Speaker 1: right you want to talk about that. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the action that we had um UM back in April
Speaker 1: UM to sort of raise awareness of the you know,
Speaker 1: issues with bargaining and some of the other things that
Speaker 1: we're going out at that time UM. And I was
Speaker 1: really impressive how well it went, actually UM in terms
Speaker 1: of the number of students who came out, number who
Speaker 1: are actually willing to participate in that. But yeah, we
Speaker 1: gotta several hundred people altogether marched down to UM the
Speaker 1: intersection for our San Diego listeners. That's via La Joya
Speaker 1: and Lajya Village Drive. Just so you can get a
Speaker 1: picture of how important of an intersection this was. Those
Speaker 1: of you who know it, UM and did not allow
Speaker 1: any cars at the intersection for an entire rush hour,
Speaker 1: which was fantastic. UM and we did Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: took uh. I hope that UM San Diego p D
Speaker 1: build UCSD for that because they had about fifty officers
Speaker 1: controlling traffic to helicopters. UM, it was quier response. I
Speaker 1: talked to an undercover up on the bridge over the
Speaker 1: highway they had. He was upset that he was missing something,
Speaker 1: some baseball game or something. I don't know. I could
Speaker 1: have had a real job just left. Yeah, I'm actually
Speaker 1: staring at that intersection right now. And if I could
Speaker 1: tell you how busy it is, Like we were terrified
Speaker 1: of what, Like safety was the most important thing, and
Speaker 1: I think we did a good job being sure everyone
Speaker 1: was safe. But like it's busy, it's it is a
Speaker 1: heartline over your My first day in America, I was
Speaker 1: walking with another grats to try and find some food
Speaker 1: and we tried to cross that road, goes stuck in
Speaker 1: the middle, got to jaywalking ticket and right I knew
Speaker 1: I had made a great choice in coming to California
Speaker 1: at that time. Yeah, that is that road takes like
Speaker 1: if you want to cross all three ways, because it's
Speaker 1: one of our one of our stupid California roads. We
Speaker 1: can only cross the intersection on three sides, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna go all the way around. That's going to be
Speaker 1: like five six, seven minutes winning at crosswalks. It's it's God.
Speaker 1: But but that's that's for maybe a different podcast, but
Speaker 1: nightmares here in San Diego. UM. I think there's one
Speaker 1: other action that we had that I would really want
Speaker 1: to highlight and and this was about, you know, related
Speaker 1: to a post dox. So maybe maybe Tyler can kind
Speaker 1: of film the details UM about the the action we
Speaker 1: had for UM for the UH postox redence. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't. I'm blanking on her name, but made maybe
Speaker 1: able to talk about There's been so many post docs
Speaker 1: and actions. So this is a really horrible case where
Speaker 1: someone who you know had brought up that there was
Speaker 1: data UH ethics issues in their lab, which obviously, as
Speaker 1: any post soccer graduate student telling your boss that they're
Speaker 1: doing something wrong never goes well. UM, but this person
Speaker 1: was bringing up this issue. This person also was U
Speaker 1: was pregnant and UM at that point the person, once
Speaker 1: they found out that this person was pregnant, UM had decided, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you need to leave by the end of the year, UM,
Speaker 1: which would make the make it to where the person
Speaker 1: would get deported because this was an international scholar UM
Speaker 1: in their third trime. Master UM, you know, in in January,
Speaker 1: and so it was income more insurance during her third trimester. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Alex, if if you have a good memory
Speaker 1: of the action, I'll let you speak about it, because
Speaker 1: it was pretty awesome. Yeah, it was pretty great. We
Speaker 1: got a ton of people to rally in the health
Speaker 1: sciences area of campus. UM people essentially set up little
Speaker 1: mini pickets of the relevant buildings UM basically not blocking
Speaker 1: the insurance, but making sure everyone went in New exactly
Speaker 1: you know why we were there and what the issue was.
Speaker 1: And they were eventually towards the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I was I wasn't there at that point, but they
Speaker 1: were able to actually get up to UM where UM
Speaker 1: the chair of her department's office in lab were UM
Speaker 1: and I there was nothing threatening that went on, but
Speaker 1: I do believe the cops were called nonetheless UM and
Speaker 1: and my understanding was this is just rumored. But he
Speaker 1: told someone that he really to them to leave because
Speaker 1: he had to get to the bathroom and didn't want
Speaker 1: to talk to the students. So that was funny part
Speaker 1: of the story. Um. But they did get him on
Speaker 1: video because they eventually were able to talk to the
Speaker 1: chair of the department and got him on video saying
Speaker 1: I think this person deserves an extension of their contract.
Speaker 1: And that day or two later UCSD did actually award
Speaker 1: this post doc um and extension of her contract. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that this is an incident that you never would have
Speaker 1: seen the light of day, um unless this had been raised, Uh,
Speaker 1: unless we hadn't already had this kind of activists kind
Speaker 1: of consciousness going on because of the ongoing bargaining and
Speaker 1: the union was able to post union was able to
Speaker 1: win kind of I think out of a really terrible situation,
Speaker 1: I think salvage probably one of the best outcome. She'll
Speaker 1: be able to have her child here um and look
Speaker 1: for new jobs in the meantime to um, you know
Speaker 1: whatever her family wants to do extended visa or or
Speaker 1: go back to their original country. But they essentially they
Speaker 1: have security, uh, some measure of security now which wouldn't
Speaker 1: have happened about uh raising a quite a disruption over it.
Speaker 1: And I also want to say that this was a
Speaker 1: post doc and the grad students came out to protect
Speaker 1: a post doc. So all these invisible lines at the
Speaker 1: university draws like obviously there were post docs there too,
Speaker 1: but if you think about the number of graduate students,
Speaker 1: like they are the immune system that has come out
Speaker 1: and saved a bunch of post docs through these actions.
Speaker 1: There was another action with someone that was being let
Speaker 1: go within four months of their employment, um in an
Speaker 1: inappropriate way. This person was kind of using their lab
Speaker 1: as that research mill I talked about only really hired
Speaker 1: women post docs and really did not treat them well,
Speaker 1: um despite doing research in women's health. And the grad
Speaker 1: students also came out for that, and we got to
Speaker 1: save that person from getting immediately fired and they're better
Speaker 1: off man. Hell yeah, yeah, it's great. I think that
Speaker 1: sort of directity is super important. And yeah, is the
Speaker 1: only thing to stop to university from just rampidly exploiting
Speaker 1: if you want, apart from like a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people at the very top. Actually, on that note, can
Speaker 1: I ask have you been working with like I guess,
Speaker 1: what's the tactical name for them, like the like the
Speaker 1: like the the other non student unions on campus. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like a f TEMs. Yeah yeah, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They Unfortunately most of the unions don't have sympathy strike
Speaker 1: or uh those sorts of things in their contract if
Speaker 1: if they cannot do an official strike if they're under contract.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they've definitely been helping in terms of kind
Speaker 1: of raising consciousness and awareness. I know, the ones that
Speaker 1: have the ability to, um, you know, maybe cancel their
Speaker 1: classes or use class time to teach about the strike
Speaker 1: or you know, do things like that have been um. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're that they're planning to do that. Um. What's
Speaker 1: nice as well is that this isn't really a union,
Speaker 1: but there's kind of a non university affiliated sort of
Speaker 1: group of faculty who you know, advocate for for for
Speaker 1: changes across the entire campus, and they're organizing a very
Speaker 1: large petition and letter writing campaign from faculty members supporting
Speaker 1: our action, which I think is is really critical because
Speaker 1: the university won't listen to us, but they may listen
Speaker 1: to if you get to a critical massive of professors
Speaker 1: supporting what we're doing. UM. So there's been uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not universal certainly, but but there's been a great deal
Speaker 1: of solidarity. But even coming from uh some of the
Speaker 1: people who who the university I think has relied on
Speaker 1: to be more on their side, which is the professors,
Speaker 1: like the Faculty Association. I think that's pretty awesome because
Speaker 1: you can imagine that you see, doesn't want them to
Speaker 1: ever unionize, but they obviously see the leaky pipeline where
Speaker 1: grass students are, you know, either not staying in their
Speaker 1: programs or post talks aren't coming. And you just you know,
Speaker 1: what you happen to have at the end of that
Speaker 1: is people that have generational wealth um at the end
Speaker 1: of it, who happened to stay in these programs. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what really motive the faculty to come
Speaker 1: out and say something because like you see, it says, oh,
Speaker 1: we support equity university, but then they have seen constantly
Speaker 1: the university not do anything materially to change that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good. It's good to see the fact that he's
Speaker 1: shooting up. And again that's it's sort of that's that's
Speaker 1: how we fix these things, right, is by staking together
Speaker 1: with sort of dearity, with organizing. So maybe to finish up,
Speaker 1: if we talk about what next week is going to
Speaker 1: look like, what next week might look like, I guess
Speaker 1: or I guess it'll it'll be this week by the
Speaker 1: time this comes out, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, So what
Speaker 1: can people look for and the on the timeline from
Speaker 1: u c s D from the university or from from
Speaker 1: from from the from the strike yeah, that's strike. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll have a number of pickets throughout campus UM mostly
Speaker 1: kind of trying to keep them geographically oriented, so everyone
Speaker 1: from the surrounding buildings just go to you know, one
Speaker 1: one specific spot. We've were doing, you know, sign up, organizing,
Speaker 1: strike pay, all those sorts of typical things have been
Speaker 1: going on this week. UM. And the walkout begins November
Speaker 1: for across you know, not just UCSD but all the campuses.
Speaker 1: So that's our total um UM bargaining unit membership across
Speaker 1: the three unions is for people of those voted on
Speaker 1: our strikeout vote voted yes. So we're expecting a pretty
Speaker 1: significant turnout of that entire membership to be on the
Speaker 1: picket line. UM. So that will there will be um,
Speaker 1: you know, those t as who are walking out will
Speaker 1: be that that will be the first disruption university feels
Speaker 1: before they feel a research disruption. They will very clearly
Speaker 1: see the teaching disruption and exams not taking place, grades
Speaker 1: not being entered, UH sections not being taught across every
Speaker 1: single campus and UM and that will certainly be UM
Speaker 1: UH something that they will UM have to deal with
Speaker 1: and and hopefully the size of the disruption in the
Speaker 1: first few days will convince them to come to the
Speaker 1: bargaining table in a reasonable way UM. And if not,
Speaker 1: we are prepared to continue until they do. And the
Speaker 1: other interesting part about what's gonna happen next week is
Speaker 1: that this is UM a picket line that is going
Speaker 1: to be not just including you know, researchers and instructors,
Speaker 1: but also people that support us. So there's a big
Speaker 1: conference downtown for a lot of neuroscientists and UM it's
Speaker 1: it's called SFN. I can't remember what that stands for, UM,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them are actually coming to the
Speaker 1: picket line to support us. I didn't know about that.
Speaker 1: That's great, Yeah, yeah, it's I think that's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was in San Diego, but UM,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be here and also, you know, vouch for
Speaker 1: us because you see does like we are the leading
Speaker 1: research group and we contribute to a lot of the
Speaker 1: research that are at these meetings. Anyway. UM. There's also
Speaker 1: going to be it's a child friendly picket line and
Speaker 1: for people with access needs, we're gonna have um, you know,
Speaker 1: virtual picketing and you'll know what that looks like. UM.
Speaker 1: It's still being developed, but I think that's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: As someone you know, with a disability to myself, it's
Speaker 1: exciting that other people can contribute to that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very cool to you guys to do that. It's very cool.
Speaker 1: How can people help, how can we support you? How
Speaker 1: can people find you? On the internet? Yeah, So, I
Speaker 1: think if you want to keep up with the strike news,
Speaker 1: there's three Twitter accounts, the s r U, you a
Speaker 1: w u W and you a W two week six five.
Speaker 1: I think they kind of share a lot of the
Speaker 1: same content sometimes because we're all kind of doing this together.
Speaker 1: But that's a good place to keep track of the news.
Speaker 1: I know there is a link to UM. There's a
Speaker 1: they've set up a Hardship strike fund. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: have that link off top of my head, but if
Speaker 1: you put the yeah to us later and if you
Speaker 1: go to fare you see now dot org it'll have
Speaker 1: all the information about what's happening, but also those type
Speaker 1: of links to UM. So if you want some contact,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty good. Yeah, and how about youtubo personally?
Speaker 1: Would you like to share your personal Twitter so or
Speaker 1: do you just want to stick with the the organizational once? Um,
Speaker 1: I would love to. I promise I'm not that fun.
Speaker 1: But minus Tyler Bell PhD. That's my dad. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm Alex t Winzl on Twitter. I once this is over,
Speaker 1: I'll probably go back to tweeting entirely about my work
Speaker 1: and pictures of buses. Twitter Alex, Yeah is a high
Speaker 1: value follow. Thank you. Alex gives live updates about transit
Speaker 1: and it's exciting. You see a train, it's all good.
Speaker 1: It pretty like hits at like five year old child.
Speaker 1: We have pretty much of buses in San Diego. Now
Speaker 1: what can I say here? Yeah? All right, thank you
Speaker 1: so much of your time, both of you. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Best to luck next week. Maybe I'll come
Speaker 1: up and bring you, I know, some souper like like
Speaker 1: an oil can that we can start firing on campus
Speaker 1: or something. Love it. Yeah, have one here, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I'm that all right? Yeah, best of black and we'll
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing what happens. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for thanks so much for talking to us. Hello podcast fans.
Speaker 1: I know you got to the end of the episode
Speaker 1: and you were thinking, not enough James, not enough strikes,
Speaker 1: not enough UCSD. So lucky you. I've been up to
Speaker 1: since you see San Diego today, and I've recorded with
Speaker 1: Tyler and Alex at the strike and we got some
Speaker 1: some audio of the strike going on as well. It
Speaker 1: was really amazing, really incredible to see that many people
Speaker 1: out never thought I to see that u CSD. So
Speaker 1: without further ado here made view with them all right,
Speaker 1: So here with Tyling Alex again, this time with more
Speaker 1: background noise. We're at the strike now. How many people
Speaker 1: are here roughly oh Man somewhere, probably around at least
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand right right now. Definitely a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand people out here. It's really impressive. Like I've
Speaker 1: read to u c s D if you haven't take
Speaker 1: that up yet, and like we did not get into
Speaker 1: so many people even when like people started hanging New
Speaker 1: Season around campus. I did. I didn't think so I
Speaker 1: did again. It is genuinely very impressive. And what's been happening, um,
Speaker 1: I think things have gone really well so far this
Speaker 1: since day two as we're recording this that we've been
Speaker 1: on strike. Um. There has been some progress of the
Speaker 1: bargaining table that I've heard, UM, but we do know
Speaker 1: that you see is going to try to drag this out.
Speaker 1: They think that they can outlast our momentum. But so
Speaker 1: far as you can really hear from the noise behind
Speaker 1: us and see all the different you know, uh, thousands
Speaker 1: of people converging from all the pict locations at across
Speaker 1: campus that they've been at since eight in the morning,
Speaker 1: I think our energy is going strong. Where do you think, Tyler? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think the energy is really strong here today. Uh.
Speaker 1: The UC did not expect us to come on day two,
Speaker 1: at which we know because at bargaining they canceled our
Speaker 1: meetings for today, um, because they didn't expect us show up.
Speaker 1: But somehow magically a meeting immerged around two o'clock today.
Speaker 1: And it may be due to the fact that two
Speaker 1: thousand people are out here pretty piste uh and one
Speaker 1: a fair contract. But yeah, I think the momentum it's
Speaker 1: pretty high. We actually did more disruption today, going directly
Speaker 1: talking to the deans and the faculty and screaming in
Speaker 1: their offices as I sat really comfy. But I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: first floor seminars didn't go well today, I'll put it
Speaker 1: that way. All right, there was something that I know
Speaker 1: the universe did about like intimidation and un friend lavorite practices,
Speaker 1: and you come to yeah, I can talk to generalities. UM,
Speaker 1: there's uh, well, the labor law that governs us is
Speaker 1: IS is a little bit complicated because some of us
Speaker 1: also receive, uh course credit for the work that we
Speaker 1: do that is protected under activity that protects our strike activity,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit of an anti labor practice
Speaker 1: in and of itself. There's no reason I have to
Speaker 1: sign up for twelve credits of just existing doing work.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any particular sense, but it's the way
Speaker 1: the inversity run things. So, UM, there has been some
Speaker 1: emails that are sent out that are are questionable legal
Speaker 1: correctness as to whether, um, we can be hurt in
Speaker 1: terms of our academic standing for participating on the strike.
Speaker 1: That is definitely not true. UM is if we are
Speaker 1: if the is activity that's governed under the what our
Speaker 1: union is sending us for UM. So we know we've
Speaker 1: had some issues with that. Tyler, I guess you could
Speaker 1: talk about maybe some other examples that have come out.
Speaker 1: It's on the postox side right now. The university has
Speaker 1: released like an f a Q of sorts in an
Speaker 1: email where it says, oh, well, you'll have to tell
Speaker 1: the niage that your postox aren't doing research and that
Speaker 1: they are funding needs to get pulled. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of a joke. There's no like reporting mechanism for that.
Speaker 1: It's more like a stipend for a living um. So
Speaker 1: we're telling people just to stay strong and uh, people
Speaker 1: see you kind of pass like the threats that they're making,
Speaker 1: and a lot of faculty see through it too. Okay,
Speaker 1: we just intercepted you. When you're going somewhere else, you
Speaker 1: would you like to introduce yourself? All right? So them
Speaker 1: post doc um, I'm pretty new in your C s C.
Speaker 1: I joined in April, and I came here having already
Speaker 1: done another post doc and a PhD in Europe. I
Speaker 1: joined the union almost instantly when I came here, since
Speaker 1: i've I was basically horrified, for lack of a better
Speaker 1: way to put it, so, I studied in the EU
Speaker 1: for ten years and my experience of academia is what
Speaker 1: I experienced there, which was decent working conditions, being able
Speaker 1: to save money, not having to spend fifty few salary
Speaker 1: on ransom. When I came here and experienced post stock life,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. So I believe. I met Tyler
Speaker 1: when I came here for the first time and we
Speaker 1: did this orientation that was awesome and awesome horrifying at
Speaker 1: the same time. Sorry, it was awesome to meet you
Speaker 1: because I realized it was then that I learned how
Speaker 1: a labor union worked. My knowledge of labor unions was
Speaker 1: minimal up until the point that I moved here, so
Speaker 1: minimal that I didn't even know what labor unions in
Speaker 1: the EU functioned like until I came here and realized,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we are actually lucky to have a
Speaker 1: union that supports postdocs, and this is not the case
Speaker 1: in a lot of places in the US. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so. How has the strike action gone so far?
Speaker 1: It's been crazy. We've been planning this for so long.
Speaker 1: It's a bit surreal to be part of FIT. I
Speaker 1: think it's been going great. It's been very energizing, and
Speaker 1: it's been intense. Yeah, it's hard, right, None of us
Speaker 1: really want to be out here and strike, and the
Speaker 1: fact that so many people are putting work on hold
Speaker 1: just speaks to the intensity and seriousness of the problem
Speaker 1: and what we're striking for. Yeah, yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: very true. It's really impressive. How many people here I
Speaker 1: can't over Yeah some time. Yeah, very impressive. So let's see. Look,
Speaker 1: you guys know how the bargaining has gone and what
Speaker 1: we can expect from here. Well, what we would like
Speaker 1: would be for the U SEE to meet us at
Speaker 1: the bargaining table and give us a fair contract. But
Speaker 1: UM repeating that ad infinite UM bobby with whole labors
Speaker 1: is the plan thus far. But what's actually been happening
Speaker 1: is UM usually just hasn't been paying fair as you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been. It's been infuriating for me. It makes
Speaker 1: me very angry. It's very serree and especially I think
Speaker 1: if you're used to a sort of more sane labor context,
Speaker 1: to see them just make a gas lighting and righting
Speaker 1: and doing what I'm a fraise for it is illegal stuff.
Speaker 1: It's disrespectful, is what I think. Yeah, may think maybe
Speaker 1: illustrates instead of what they see post toxographed jazzing in
Speaker 1: economic gens. Yeah, as a workforce whose rights are not
Speaker 1: to be value to do a bulk of the work.
Speaker 1: It's it's very disrespectful, you know. I think it certainly
Speaker 1: speaks to uh. Like I said earlier, they're trying to
Speaker 1: outlast us, and they think that we will reach a
Speaker 1: certain point where we we no longer feel like we
Speaker 1: can avoid our work, that we can stay out here.
Speaker 1: And I think you would think that if that's their strategy,
Speaker 1: would realize that we are in a point of desperation,
Speaker 1: We are in a point of procarity, um, where we
Speaker 1: really need wages and compensation and and and workplace protections
Speaker 1: that meet the current economic situation that we live in,
Speaker 1: because right now that's not what we have. And currently
Speaker 1: at the bargaining table, they're kind like putting a lot
Speaker 1: of our labor reps and to like uh something that
Speaker 1: looks like like jaw like jig saw like type trap
Speaker 1: rooms where they have only for lesson hiding and no
Speaker 1: windows and then them not knowing whether or not they
Speaker 1: have to get a flight back because they're not going
Speaker 1: to meet with them that day. Um, them saying that
Speaker 1: they haven't reserved rooms even though that you know, they
Speaker 1: have so much power. Who's who's taking up a room
Speaker 1: from them, um to meet with them and actually come
Speaker 1: up with some proposals. I got to update that EDMUN
Speaker 1: wasn't bargaining because they couldn't reserve a room. What does
Speaker 1: that mean? There's forty eight thousand people on strike, the
Speaker 1: entire system isn't working. You mean it's your rooms also,
Speaker 1: you own the rooms. I'm I was that that was
Speaker 1: a fascinating update. I'm sorry, I just had to mention
Speaker 1: something about that. So that's just all we have to
Speaker 1: know right now is that they keep canceling meetings adding meetings.
Speaker 1: They're kind of just waiting us out and see how
Speaker 1: long we'll actually be on strike and whether or not
Speaker 1: we actually care about our contracts, which I think you
Speaker 1: being here today, you see how many people are out.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna leave this picket line throughout the week.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I think that's basically it. People aren't
Speaker 1: going to leave the picket line, and the energy is
Speaker 1: awesome because people are fed up. People are fed up,
Speaker 1: people are fed up being poor and homeless, and this
Speaker 1: is not why we come to grad school, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was very fortunate to have a good grad school experience,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm still in academia, but the majority
Speaker 1: of the people who come to the university spending savings.
Speaker 1: I know people with student loans back from India who
Speaker 1: are here to do a master's and are teeing doing research,
Speaker 1: killing themselves because they had a dream. They literally moved
Speaker 1: across the world to come here following a dream and
Speaker 1: our ending up being broken. That's that's heartbreaking from a
Speaker 1: university as big as this. Nobody deserves to be treated
Speaker 1: this way, and I think everybody here is feeling it.
Speaker 1: If you go to fair you see now dot org.
Speaker 1: There's a link to a strike fund right now, a
Speaker 1: hardship fund, and people can donate to that any amount
Speaker 1: they want to. And there's also we're taking donations to
Speaker 1: actually feed people out here. UM So people have questions
Speaker 1: about that, they can just email the links at that website.
Speaker 1: UM yeah. People. People are very very welcome to show
Speaker 1: up to the picket line to come help. All help
Speaker 1: is appreciated. You want to join us, you want to chant,
Speaker 1: you want to bring supplies, we'll be there. This is
Speaker 1: across all ten you see campuses, if you're near the
Speaker 1: picket line, if you want to show support and solidarity,
Speaker 1: come join us. Yeah, the virtual picketing is still happening,
Speaker 1: and what they've been actually doing is making sure people
Speaker 1: get here and nowhere to go since the picketing is
Speaker 1: so transient, like we're literally moving building to building as
Speaker 1: it's needed, and they're doing the calls for us and
Speaker 1: directing us, so which is a wild thing. But also
Speaker 1: the other thing is just people retweeting everything that we post,
Speaker 1: making sure that no one can silence us, because that's
Speaker 1: what you see. Once. Thank you so much for coming,
Speaker 1: Thanks for giving us this platform. The awareness is really
Speaker 1: critical to make sure that you see can't ignore us,
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for coming. It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.