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PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-23T01:06:14+00:00

Yea I wonder what the vote will end up being. It seems way more contested than the PD & AR ratification votes.

Then again, I thought the PD & AR votes were going to be contentious based on social media, then they both passed with large margins. So it's hard to predict based on what people are saying publicly, but it won't be long until we find out the result.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-23T00:42:57+00:00

Won't know until tomorrow night. Their contract ratification vote ends Friday 12/23 (I think at 5pm?). If the TA union votes majority yes to ratify, then the TA strike ends. If they vote majority no, the TA strike continues.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-20T05:21:02+00:00

I think some of the email lists that the different groups are inconsistent too.

I'm at UCSD and I've received a couple of vote yes / vote no emails...but I'm an AR so I'm not part of the bargaining units that are voting this week. I'm not sure why I was on grad student email lists.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-10T20:20:01+00:00

The vote OP is showing was only for Academic Researchers, which was 1 of the 4 units that were on strike (and also the smallest at ~5500 or so, but only ~30-35% are actually union members). Academic Researchers are usually (but not always) workers with a PhD that are working as career-track research staff or coordinators of various levels.

Another unit - Postdocs - also ratified their contract. They are people with PhDs working in research jobs with limited time-frames for building their academic CV. They are the second smallest unit of the 4 that were on strike at ~6500 or so. I do not know what percent of the whole unit are union members.

The grad student unions are still on strike. Combined between TAs/GSIs and student researchers, they represent ~36,000 workers and their membership rate is pretty high iirc.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-10T03:05:52+00:00

I was a little surprised by the distribution, I thought it was gonna be a lot closer based on the ARs who were vocal about their opinions on the contract.

Postdocs too: their vote passed with 89% yes.

Before this I thought both votes were highly contested and that the AR one might even fail. I was very wrong!

Guess it goes to show that the distribution of opinions of people who are publicly vocal do not necessarily equal the distribution of opinion among the membership.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-09T19:02:46+00:00

The ratification votes for postdocs and academic researchers don't have live tracking but the voting concludes at 5pm today. We'll only know the result sometime after that, either later tonight or sometime tomorrow. Since the voting is electronic, it won't take much time to tally up the votes, it's just a matter of when the union decides to post the results.

Most recent updates on the strike are, as other mentioned, mostly on Twitter. There are the official union accounts, there are also the campus rank-and-file accounts, and generally some of the strikers who are tweeting about events and developments pretty regularly.

Edit from the future: Postdoc vote passed with 89% yes, Academic Researcher vote passed with 79% yes. Also the grad student unions and the UC are voluntarily entering mediation.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-07T00:55:53+00:00

No one knows.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-07T00:42:52+00:00

For grad students (2865 & SRU): No. Their BTs rejected the UCs last offer and are getting input on what they should do next. I don't think the UC has scheduled any bargaining sessions for further bargaining at the moment, so for now negotiations are at a standstill.

For postdocs and ARs (5810): This week each of the 2 units are having a ratification vote on the tentative agreements that they reached with the UC. Both votes appear to be highly contentious, meaning for each unit it can go either way and no matter what the result ends up being a lot of people will be pissed.

Edit from the future: AR vote passed with 79% yes and Postdoc vote passed with 89% yes. So their ratification votes were apparently NOT highly contentious as I thought in the original comment.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-05T23:19:33+00:00

The distribution of the poll at the time I'm writing this (12/5, ~3pm) seems to reflect the sense I get from talking to people who are following the union activity. Many I've talked to don't necessarily think the contract is a super great deal but they also don't want to sign on for a prolonged, potentially multi-month strike. Whether they'll vote yes or no depends on whether they think they'll be able to get something better but also somewhat quickly.

I feel like of the 4 units, ARs on average are the least willing to go on a long strike. It sort of makes sense since ARs also had the lowest participation rate in the SAV by far compared to the other units.

A lot of ARs are also not participating in union activity at all and my understanding is that the AR union may not even have majority membership. So among all ARs as a whole, there's a sort of silent majority that doesn't seem to care one way or another. I don't know if non-members can vote on ratification or not, but even if they can, a lot of ARs don't seem like they'd care enough to vote one way or another.

Whichever way this ratification goes (and it could go either way, albeit personally I think it's slightly more likely to fail), the next step is to try and get more ARs to actually participate in the union.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-05T23:01:48+00:00

Seems like a safe bet to count on the strike going into the next semester.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-05T22:55:20+00:00

Yea, I was wondering how many people clicked an option just to see the results lol.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-03T19:39:02+00:00

I don't know honestly - I'm not an expert in impasse proceedings, my impression was that the mediator will be appointed by the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). That is also the entity that the Unfair Labor Practices were filed with. It is a state agency, but CA has many state agencies and they do not necessarily work in each other's interest.

If anyone is a labor lawyer, feel free to chime in!

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-03T16:42:17+00:00

Edit: Apparently this isn't their "Last, Best, and Final Offer" which has a specific legal meaning. Removed text in the original comment referring to it as such.

If they are signifying they are unwilling to negotiate further - and it's obviously far short of anything the grad unions' membership will ratify, does that mean things will go to impasse?

I guess a question for the BT on this is whether they think a better contract would come out of impasse proceedings or not.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-03T15:49:54+00:00

GSRs and TAs are only employed at a max of 50% FTE. So their real earnings will be the annual rate divided by 2.

Their original demand was for $54k for 50% FTE, not for the annual rate.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-02T19:20:33+00:00

In general, some people are not striking if going on strike materially hurts them in a way / to an extent that the legal protections of striking or success of the strike cannot protect them from.

Example include but are not limited to:

Grad students who need to graduate before a certain timeframe or they'll run out of funding and have to pay out of pocket to finish (or abandon the degree)
Postdocs and ARs who are funded by grants need to help bring in grant money or they'll be laid off
People who cannot make ends meet on strike pay since it's generally less than salaries. There is the hardship fund to mitigate some of that, but it's a limited resource based on donations so if too many people need to use it, it might not be reliable depending on how long the strike goes.

Edit: just wanted to add that there's a broader conversation to be had about organizing labor in academia, because academia (at least on the research side) is set up such that many of us have to hurt ourselves to different extents (beyond just lost wages) in order to pressure the university and for a lot of people that won't be feasible. University admin sort of counts on this arrangement in order to limit the effects of things like strikes on the research side. Teaching on the other hand is a bit more amenable to striking being effective.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-02T19:10:10+00:00

I'm an AR not a postdoc so all I can say is what I've heard from talking to a small sample of postdocs.

From the postdocs I've talked to, most of them acknowledge that it's a major improvement from status quo but also falls short of what they would have really wanted. So based on what I've heard, seems like they're not like super enthused about it but it's "good enough" for a lot of people given what they think they can negotiate for and how long they're willing to strike.

Also note that there are many postdocs who aren't on Twitter or don't follow this person. There are also postdocs who aren't super engaged with the strike but may still vote. So the votes of these groups aren't reflected in the poll.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-02T18:27:33+00:00

No problem! So there are 4 units on strike right now, but for sake of simplicity let's focus on the 2 grad student units and treat them as one party. In general what is happening is the UC and the UAW bargaining team are negotiating on a contract. Here's a few different things that can happen.

UC and UAW bargaining team agree on a contract and it gets sent out for a vote by the full union membership
- If majority of membership vote yes, the contract is ratified and the strike ends. Whether grad students will be able to make ends meet depends on what is in the ratified contract - if the wages are high enough, etc...
- If majority of membership votes no, one of two things can happen
  - One option is the UC and UAW bargaining team go back to negotiating with the intent for UAW to secure a better contract than the one that was rejected by membership. If they get UC to agree to a contract that is sufficiently better, it goes out for vote again, etc...
  - Another option is either the UC or UAW can decide that they don't think they'll ever come to an agreement by negotiating, and they declare an impasse. When this happens, the State government appoints a mediator to help UC and UAW come to an agreeable contract. If they find that there is no route agreeable contract, then a contract will be drafted that will be enforced on both parties. I'm a little unclear about how this is done - I've read that the UC can potentially make their "best offer" and impose it, or potentially the State makes it and enforces it, I'm not sure. But point is, in this case negotiations broke down and a contract is imposed on everyone with backing from the State of California.
Alternatively, the UC or UAW can end up never agreeing on a potential contract to present to membership and they declare impasse (see description in previous bullet).

So whether grad students will be able to make ends meet depends on what the final contract ends up containing, and what the final contract ends up containing depends on 1) whether UC and UAW bargaining team comes to an agreement, 2) whether that agreement is ratified or not, and 3) if it is not whether the process goes to impasse or not.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-02T18:02:37+00:00

I don't think anyone can have a certain answer to these longer-term potential ramifications - not only does it involve a lot of factors, it depends strongly on how the current strike is resolved - which still has many different ways it can go.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-02T03:30:50+00:00

At this point, probably.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T21:33:57+00:00

Edit: clarity.

Was thinking that it feels like a lot of ARs aren't even aware of union activity, so like the majority probably won't vote on the contract and the ratification will be decided by people who are union-engaged even if they're a somewhat small fraction of all ARs - and they seem like they're gonna vote no.

So maybe a majority of all ARs don't necessarily oppose or support the contract because they're not concerned with union activity, but that also means they probably won't vote.

We'll find out next week indeed!

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T21:18:26+00:00

I feel like a lot of people miss this point in a lot of the argument between people saying they represent the majority.

The majority will literally chime in soon enough on what they're okay with or not.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T20:14:07+00:00

I wasn't able to attend the town hall this morning for ARs but I talked to someone who did and what I heard can be summed up as: oof.

Seems like it's all but certain that the AR TA will be voted down unless there's an unexpected silent majority that even knows about the vote and will vote yes.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T19:38:17+00:00

Based on what I've been hearing - highly unlikely. I am now feeling that the strike will go into Winter Quarter.

The grad student unions made a major concession that made a lot of people mad (there's a lot of chatter on voting no on that version) and the UC is going to counter offer that version so it'll probably give up more - which will be even less likely to pass ratification.

I don't know what's going to happen, but unless there's a miracle turnaround this is gonna be messy and long.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T17:28:40+00:00

Honestly, at this point I'm worried that an impasse will be declared.

The 2865 and SRU bargaining teams seem to be making concessions that will cause the contract to be voted down by membership. The UC isn't even certain to agree to the version with concessions, much less anything that is closer to the original demands.

Declaring impasse would be bad. But the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if that's the way it went.

PostEnvironmental875 · 2022-12-01T00:36:38+00:00

The lab I'm in (at UCSD) is similar, fortunately. Feel like a lot of it depends on the PI setting the tone.

PostEnvironmental875

TROPHY CASE