UC Student Instructors Plan Strike · 30 November 2003
By Matt Krupnick--Contra Costa Times, 11/27
A strike by as many as 10,000 student instructors, readers and tutors could disrupt final exams at the University of California next month.
The protest, scheduled to begin next week, comes as contract talks have broken down over the university's refusal to allow union members to strike on behalf of other labor groups.
After working without a contract since it expired Sept. 30, graduate students say they're ready to walk out during the schools' most crucial weeks.
Most graduate-student workers are represented by the United Auto Workers union.
Negotiations are "just not happening," said union spokesman Rajan Mehta, a math doctoral student at UC Berkeley. "It's really up to the university."
University officials said the "sympathy-strike" restriction was never included in past contracts because it hadn't occurred to university officials that employees would need to be told not to strike out of sympathy with other workers.
Most union contracts include no-strike clauses that prohibit employees from picketing, but until recently employees were not explicitly banned from sympathy strikes, said Paul Schwartz, a spokesman for the university system.
Finals at the system's nine undergraduate campuses start the week of Dec. 8, and university administrators have warned professors they might need to adapt if a strike occurs. The union includes graduate students who teach classes and grade tests and papers.
"It's the last week of classes, and students will be trying to get ready for finals," said UC Berkeley spokeswoman Janet Gilmore. "Obviously we have to be concerned because of the timing involved."
About 30 state legislators signed a letter to university administrators last week, asking them not to change the no-strike policy.
Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said she wants the matter resolved before the Legislature has to intervene. Lawmakers stepped in during a similar strike in 1998.
"We're just hoping at this point that the university administrators will go ahead and reach a settlement," said Hancock, one of the letter's authors. "We want them to know we don't think they have to pick this fight."
University and union spokespeople said a strike could delay some tests and the grading process, but several UC Berkeley professors said Wednesday they were not worried.
Teaching assistants don't control enough of Sanjay Govindjee's classes to cause a problem, but the civil-engineering professor said he would rather have them around during the last weeks of the semester.
"I'd just rather not see people strike," he said.
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