What happens when the long haul continues after the strike? Or, what happens when the contract settlement isn’t so good for your department? Often workers become fed up with the union. This disappointment is often well deserved, but veteran organizers tell us when the union breaks our hearts, to “stay steady, organize, and persevere”,¹ to look outward at our coworkers, not upward at the union leadership.

Here I present an account of organizing for “contract enforcement” after one such settlement. As a UAW member, participant and observer, I saw workers taking action and achieving a rare victory in a single department. My goal is to tell the story and convey what I learned, for other unionists in similar situations.

In 2022, a strike was settled and a contract ratified between the University of California and the newly unionized Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs) in UAW 4811. Over the next year, a struggle over contract enforcement and tens of millions of dollars would take place, affecting 1500 GSRs on the UC San Diego (UCSD) campus. Where many unionists fell into inactivity with post-strike frustration or placed their hopes in the grievance process to set the pace of contract implementation, workers in one UCSD department, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), built a campaign of action, with a coherent demand, targeted at the department level, with escalating actions and mass participation. And, crucially, we won $1 million yearly in additional raises beyond contractual obligations.

For the story of the 2022 strike itself, and what workers at SIO learned about striking as researchers, see a forthcoming companion article to this one in Science for the People, “A Strike Inquiry of Oceanography.”

Through the escalation of our campaign, its eventual repression, and the arbitration and concession that came afterwards, I chart the nonlinear course of this campaign in 6 key moments. I pay attention to what workers were doing, what I and other “self-appointed organizers” were doing, and where we all succeeded and failed. In the conclusions I comment on the handling of “wins”, criticisms of union leadership, and point to the importance of worker self-organization to the campaign’s success.

1: POST STRIKE OPPORTUNITY

The substance of the contract implementation dispute was in job appointments. The bureaucratic details are not important, what really matters is that there were multiple levers the university was using to underpay workers – in this case, appointments, which are typically 50% “full time equivalent” (FTE), or 20 hours per week, for graduate student researchers (GSRs).² Some departments historically appointed workers at lower %FTE, despite having similar work expectations, including 1500 workers in 7 departments at UCSD who were appointed at around 40% FTE. Around 200 of these workers were PhD students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

UAW 4811 leadership, optimistically, believed appointments could be standardized to 50% using the new contract language and “table talk”, resulting in a 25% raise for these workers! Workers at SIO, who were already appointed at the highest step (6 of 6), could expect a massive raise from ~$35,000 to ~$50,000 over 2.5 years. This was advertised to workers as a reason to ratify the contract, and most workers took leadership at their word, were generally satisfied with this raise package, and combined with a feeling of waning strike participation and “losing power”, mostly voted to ratify the contract. The contract was ratified in late December of 2022, and people went back to work.

By mid January, the union filed a grievance demanding 50% appointments, totaling $13 million in wages, yearly, for these 1500 workers. Overconfident union leadership told workers to sit tight and trust the process – no harm in waiting because they would get back pay. At their obligatory meeting 2 weeks after the grievance was filed, the university began its stall tactics. It was clear they were in no hurry to implement these raises, and why would they be? A reading of the contract showed, optimistically, they could stall a response for at least 6 months. In the end it would be close to double that.  

At SIO, the union organizing committee (OC) met to discuss, and became clear on one thing: workers couldn’t afford to wait that long. SIO was coming off a hot strike. Workers had built a strong collective knowledge of their conditions, including the fact that 66% of SIO grad workers are “rent burdened” and 39% of SIO grad workers rely on external assistance to pay their bills.³ Through this survey and discussions on the picket line, my coworkers had come to understand the raises were urgently needed to address the cost of living crisis in San Diego, which was severe.⁴ It was also clear to us in the OC that the university would not give up $13 million yearly without a fight, and that if we waited too long that workers would lose interest or turn against the union, and the university would close ranks between labor relations and the hopefully more reasonable SIO department leadership, who we hoped would give us the raises.⁵ 

We saw our coworkers name the raise as their number one concern post-strike – in a SIO union meeting on January 20 attended by 50 workers, attendees continuously raised concerns about 50% appointments, and were interested in the grievance proceedings. Some workers were discouraged: “We just went on strike and now we need to do more work to get the raise?! I already went on strike for that!” But overall workers were amenable to campaigning; they needed their raises immediately, and preferred action over waiting on a year-long grievance process. Our demand of the department was simple: “stop stalling and honor the contract”.

Our very first campaigning effort was to collectively write and circulate a demand letter, which took off blazingly fast, garnering 100 signatures from workers in the department in a single day (February 6), and 50 more throughout the week.⁶ This letter was put together by several members of the organizing committee, involving several meetings and a lengthy back-and-forth process crammed into a week. The draft was circulated on the SIO UAW slack app for comments, of which there were dozens. As one of the authors, I found language I proposed being “toned down” by my colleagues, but just as often the opposite occurred, and my fellow workers expanded on their frustrations. In retrospect I can see this process of collective writing wrote a better letter than any individual could have, having honed in on the right amount of antagonism to suit the collective energy. 

The speed and success can also be attributed to the size and unity of the SIO OC, which was around 30 people at that time, as well as high levels of support and interest in the campaign among regular workers. The letter became a key rhetorical tool for the rest of the campaign, and integrated past work done by diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as well as those of the SIO Graduate Student Council. It also anticipated and responded to counter-arguments from skeptics. 

This first step, collectively and proactively articulating the demand for raises, set the stage for events to come.

2: ADMIN’S RESPONSE

In the weeks that followed, there was no substantive response from the department, nor real developments in the grievance. Every year, new cohorts of students are invited to visit the department in February, usually with the help of current grad student workers. So, the SIO OC sent a letter to these incoming students, informing them of the wage dispute, CC’ing the SIO administration. Still, nothing. Some members of the OC, myself included, advocated for a picket for our demand, but most wouldn’t go for it. It became clear most of my coworkers needed to see a response from the admin before taking further action.

The second key moment arrived on February 22. In response to the letter and to rising tensions, the department chairs hosted a town hall to address concerns the day before SIO Open House, where prospective students would be hosted by the department. The town hall was meant to cool tensions. Instead the department chair first claimed that the department could not afford the raises, then that they didn’t even know the budget, and finally that we should be grateful to be paid at all. This response was so inflammatory, that it was effective agitation to simply tell workers what was said, word for word. 

Open house was, predictably, a disaster. The union presented details to all prospective students at a lunch event, but in addition, grad workers (who the department relied on to host prospective students) were just pissed in general, and they made it known during open house. In the background, numerous small actions of resistance were taking place. Flyers were posted regularly. Workers wore buttons, or signed their emails linking to the demand letter. Email exchanges on open listservs between antagonistic professors and union members occurred. Many workers directly expressed concerns to their faculty advisors and the administration. It was beginning to set in that the department was not sympathetic to the demand we made.

During this period, other than tabling and presenting at the open house, the union didn’t really organize any protests as such. We had meetings to discuss what the admin had said, and organizers did basic outreach, letting people know what was happening. In retrospect this made sense because the ball was in the admin’s court. Workers had made their demand and the admin was responding to it.

On March 16, finally, a plan to respond to the grievance was leaked from a faculty meeting. The campus-wide plan was to appoint new hires at 50% FTE, but at a much lower salary step, and to alter the appointment %FTE of current workers to match that pay.⁷ The result is a small raise, just 15-30% of the expected $10k raise – the raise workers went on strike for, fought for, and voted for – it was insulting.

The SIO Graduate Student Council conducted a poll on PhD student satisfaction with the department’s plan, and sent its conclusions to the chairs (sharing also with the student listserv) on March 22. In one day, the poll garnered 100 replies. The report was equal parts stunning and damning (workers rated the “offer,” on average “2.2 out of 10”).⁸

3. ESCALATING ACTION

The department chairs held a town hall to confirm this “generous raise”. Workers expressed disappointment, the chairs said not much new.  Shortly after, the department announced another town hall for April 4, not with the department chairs but the department director, a vice chancellor with real power over the dispute. At the same time, worker dissatisfaction was reaching a fever pitch. The third key moment had finally arrived, and the SIO OC started organizing a rally. 

Some of us in the OC had been advocating for action constantly – only now was it viable. It took repetition, but our coworkers were starting to understand that those in power would not move without a struggle. The ball was back in our court and when we called for action, workers were much more amenable. We moved to organize a march, cutting lists, making calls, sending mass texts, lining up speakers and making a plan. The day before the town hall, covered by a local photojournalist,⁹ 50 SIO workers delivered the demand letter, with its 150 signatures, to the office of the director. 

The next day, at the town hall, the SIO Director and assistant vice-chancellor were questioned by workers. Unionists recorded and shared a transcript of what was being said – admin blamed the union, blamed upper management, blamed workers, blamed the state budget, and denied at every turn. They also asserted that 40% appointments were now intentional work expectations – but had no adequate explanation for what this meant in practice. 

A worker who attended the event surmised in the union’s email digest that the Director had, after denying the demand for the raise, “framed our wages as competing with building maintenance for institutional resources.”¹⁰ Their summary: 

Our main takeaway is that SIO functions by exploiting and underpaying graduate workers, and refuses to alter this policy. SIO also refuses to advocate on our behalf, and asserts that the various consequences of their lack of advocacy (loss of trust between students and the department, failures of EDI goals, reduced research quality and capacity) are inevitable and accepted by institutional leadership.

Frustration over the response to admin fueled more discontent. When elected union leaders started planning a campus-wide direct action to disrupt an upcoming fundraiser, SIO workers volunteered en masse. On May 5, 60 UAW members engaged in a direct action disrupting a UCSD Alumni event, targeting the Chancellor in particular, hand-delivering him a “most overpaid worker” award.¹¹ While the event was conceived by UAW leadership and staff, many of the participants, perhaps 20, were from SIO, and it was very successful. 50% appointments featured among key demands for the event. 

This was the apex of organized union militancy at SIO, and it did not yield any immediate concessions. A “work to rule” strategy was discussed, but many workers expressed a sense of burnout and hopelessness. No doubt the end of the academic year in June contributed to a sense of slowing down, as many workers either take time off, or go on fieldwork during that time. Victory, it seems, had eluded us. Despite this, small acts of resistance continued, such as labor slogans written in sidewalk chalk around SIO, but it seemed the window of opportunity to win 50% appointments at SIO had closed, and the sequence had ended. But the UC admin had other plans.

4. RETALIATION

The next stage of union activity at SIO and UCSD was defined by UCSD administration’s decision to retaliate against union activists, starting with student conduct charges against 50 participants in the May 5 Alumni protest, and, shortly after, the arrest of 3 SIO workers on June 29 for, “allegedly writing slogans like ​“Living Wage Now” on a concrete campus building — in washable markers and chalk — during a peaceful protest almost a month earlier”.¹² UAW leadership bailed out the workers and immediately filed Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges. On July 10, 300 workers from across the state rallied at the courthouse for the charges to be dropped. A strike in response to the retaliation was discussed openly. 

Numerous emails circulated the SIO listservs, but activism was decidedly chilled, and completely refocused from the material demands to anti-retaliation demands, as demonstrated by part of an email from a unionist sent after the arraignment rally:

Throughout the strike and in the months since, chalk murals and messages have informed visitors and reminded SIO workers about ongoing contract enforcement fights. Despite no communication from SIO administration regarding chalking or protesting on campus, UCSD and SIO have suddenly chosen to escalate to felony charges. The decision to arrest three SIO workers crosses a line. It exhibits UCSD and SIO’s willingness to retaliate and use scare tactics and harassment to silence its workers. Free speech and the right to protest are essential foundations of academic freedom. Our livelihoods and well-being are in danger when we can be arrested for peacefully protesting contract violations. This act is the most extreme example yet of the blatant disrespect, intimidation, and union-busting tactics employed by UCSD and SIO.

At SIO, a strike in response to the retaliation was probably feasible. Workers were galvanized by the arrests and conduct charges towards their coworkers and friends. Many would say that they would not take further action to enforce the 50% demand, but would take further action in protest of the arrests, possibly even striking. It was actually very difficult to keep any contract-enforcement demands on the table at that point.For their part, the department admin said very little, claiming they would be subpoenaed if they did. This was only the latest in a long list of flimsy reasons to disengage from worker’s concerns. 

Outside SIO, many organized departments released strike readiness statements – such as the UC Berkeley Slavic department,¹³ or the entire UC Santa Cruz UAW Organizing Committee.¹⁴ A toolkit was circulated for similar organizing efforts in other departments¹⁵ along with a flyer.¹⁶ However, in a majority of departments, whose union activity had paused since the strike 6 months prior, strike readiness efforts were slow, and chilled by the arrests. 

Ultimately strike discussions didn’t materialize any further. Several months later, it was announced that UAW and UC San Diego had reached an agreement, and in October UAW announced that 

After months of resistance, UC San Diego has agreed to drop all student misconduct charges and to pursue no further legal action against the three workers arrested in June for allegedly chalking protest slogans on campus.¹⁷ 

Despite the obvious negative impacts of arrests and conduct charges, the decision of UCSD to pursue these did prolong the sequence of union activity at SIO, with renewed media interest and more acts of resistance. Even as a moment of defeat, it further solidified the collectivity of the union, prompting meetings, statements, and activity. However, by the end of it, 50% appointments were not on people’s minds, and the campaign was over. Yet the story did not end there.

5. ARBITRATION

In November of 2023, binding arbitration for 50% began, led on the UAW side by the executive board and staff, in the technical and opaque arena of confidential meetings with the arbitrator, and occasionally the UC representatives. Many workers were tapped to assist in evidence gathering – sample appointment letters, old emails, etc – giving presentations on how the appointments work, answering questions of the arbitrator. Many were optimistic, having been told the “table talk” and other evidence was on their side, and that they could expect to see quality settlement offers soon. 

Here is my limited view of how things went, from outside the process: high level UC management (in charge of their case) had basically no idea how appointments, research — any of it — actually worked. They probably hoped to make it sound so complicated that the arbitrator couldn’t possibly intervene the way we wanted. Workers had a rising fear of a “wildcard ruling” that wouldn’t actually solve the problem –  and confidence in our position began to drop. Fear of a wildcard was probably shared by the UC representatives, as both sides decided to enter mediation. 

In mediation, expectations for the settlement dropped remarkably. A worker who went to an early January info session with the arbitration team shared this update to the SIO department:

At this point, it seems unlikely that we will receive 50% time appointments, and almost impossible that we will receive any sort of backpay. Not only that, but the UC negotiators are hoping that we will drop the step grievance,¹⁸ which will allow them to pay first year students at whichever step they want (which of course means, the lowest step they can get away with).

A mediated settlement was agreed on in late January 2024 which achieved a very limited version of our goals:

1. Current workers appointed at less than 50% would have their appointments set to 50%
2. New workers would be appointed at 50%, but could be appointed at a lower salary step. 
3. No back pay for the full year of underpayment

Workers present at the time of settlement would get their raise (but no back pay) – but new hires would be placed at a lower salary step, creating a tier system between current workers and new hires that would wipe the raises out by the time current workers finished their programs. 

Losing back pay was a major blow, even if anticipated, but when we learned we may have to accept the step demotion, it made the entire grievance seem like a loss. Rank and file department leaders across campus, many of whom had trusted the grievance process from day 1, reported a pervasive sense of having let their coworkers down, having misunderstood and then misrepresented the grievance.¹⁹ 

Throughout the arbitration process, and somewhat unlike the initial talks about the 50% grievance a year prior, the arbitration team and UAW leadership were relatively transparent and sober in their assessments of our position, to their credit. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that arbitration discouraged everyone, and resulted in an unsatisfying deal, as we were struggling against our employer where they are the strongest (the legal, technocratic arena), and where we are the weakest.

6. DEFEAT, THEN VICTORY

We had 50% appointments, representing at max a ~$15,000 yearly raise for current workers, but newly hired GSRs would be appointed several salary steps lower than current GSRs. By the time all the current GSRs finished or left their PhD programs, the raises would be gone, wiped out in a few years by this new tier system. 

It seemed we were outplayed and outlasted by the UC admin. Workers had experienced retaliation and barely gotten out with their academic careers intact. Over that year, many workers quit the program. Despite all our best efforts, our campaign ended with an unfavorable settlement ruling, the exact scenario we hoped to avoid by campaigning. Workers were burnt out, and after the Palestine Solidarity movement went into high gear, little energy was spared for this issue. 

And then, on May 6, 2024, the same day of mass arrests at the UCSD Palestine Solidarity Encampment, the SIO department quietly announced to its first years a new bespoke experienced-based raise, a large concession around 70% of the original demand (sans back pay), worth around $1 million yearly, that bridged the tier system. In this concession, unique to SIO, new GSRs would have their salary step increased by 1 step per year, until they reached the level of current GSRs after 3 years. 

A sympathetic faculty member leaked to students that the administration had polled the faculty (whose grants would pay the new wages) on 3 possible wage plans, and they had picked this one, which was the intermediate option. The department did not have to do this, and the other 6 departments affected by 50% did not do this. The best explanation for the concession is an attitude shift in faculty and administration in the department from our campaign – a shift which took a year to develop and bear fruit. 

It is clear the specter of labor struggle continued to haunt them: in September of 2024, the SIO department would change venues for its annual research retreat to avoid crossing a picket line at a Unite Here! Local 30 unionized hotel that had just gone on strike, forfeiting its deposit to the hotel. A Unite Here! staffer there remarked “everyone there is so burnt out on fighting UAW that they had no more appetite for any more labor disputes”.

CONCLUSIONS

So the story ends, with the victorious workers, though few of us felt like it as we witnessed our friends being violently arrested a year down the line. A few weeks later we would join UAW 4811’s next strike,²⁰ walking out to picket after the comrades in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles. But before moving on from the 2022 strike and its aftermath entirely, there are some important lessons I learned, and want to highlight, from these experiences.

What is a win?

Some wins are “granted” as part of a settlement, like the 2022 UC-UAW collective bargaining agreement. “End the strike and take a raise.” Others are handed over quietly, months or years down the line, like SIO’s special 50% concession, or the UC’s quiet divestment from several genocide-profiteers after the 2024 strike.²¹ In the mind of the administration, these latter “wins” are measures to prevent further action and reduce risk – not a compromise with activists. They do it quietly to avoid a perceived victory for workers. These wins are not clean, nor are they total: SIO is now at 70% of our initial demand. But they are remarkable, even so. 

I assert that it is important for unionists (rank and file, staff, and leaders alike) to be sober in our analysis of victory, and to build a collaborative understanding with workers, rather than imposing a narrative from above. One reason SIO organizing was successful was the collective decision making that could reflect workers’ experiences back to them in the union’s analysis of current events. By contrast, SIO workers began to distrust higher union leadership for claiming the 50% win too early, a rift that persists to this day. The dynamism and activity that won our raise was only possible because workers felt an ownership over the union at SIO and its understanding of their situation. 

Criticizing Leadership

Here, one might blame union leadership for accepting a faulty settlement and misrepresenting its merits to workers, and providing an ineffective plan to win the grievance. But had we wannabe union reformers satisfied ourselves with criticising them and taken their failures as hard limits on what the union could do, it might have ended there. Instead, workers at SIO were able to realize this ambiguity in the contract as an opportunity to struggle for a better interpretation, and in doing so make the union their own. This proved far more effective than some other union reform efforts being made at the time. 

I make this point having done my time criticizing leadership. Simultaneously to this campaign, two SIO workers (including myself) joined a reform caucus (“Grad Workers United for Progress” or GWUP) and ran for union office in April of 2023. We ran a positive campaign, focusing on social justice and contract enforcement, but we also emphasized that many on our campus, including workers at SIO affected by 50%, were dissatisfied with the recent contract and alienated by the incumbent leadership touting a “historic win”. We were thoroughly defeated 70/30, being out-organized by the incumbent group, though as consolation at least they felt threatened by us.²² Throughout the election I was working closely with leadership and staff on the 50% grievance, leading to no shortage of tense meetings. 

So I’ve tried internally contesting union leadership,²³ but criticism of staff and leaders cannot replace organizing on the shop floor for its role in transforming the union for the mass of workers. And transform it, organizing did! In the early days of the campaign, other departments were picking up SIO’s tactics and trying them out in their own departments – issuing their own demand letters and asking for department town halls. By the end, the 50% campaign was embraced campus-wide, resulting in the May 5 alumni event, pulling workers from a dozen different departments to take direct action. Had things never spiraled past SIO, we may not have won what we did. In short, the fastest and most effective way to transform the union is to build worker militancy on the shop floor.

Self-Organization

Worker self-organization has been discussed in the context of the UC strike on a large scale.²⁴ Here, I analyze self-organization for a single department and campaign. Though we “self-appointed organizers” at SIO used many of the same organizing techniques as union leadership on our campus– phone banking, lists, walkthroughs, one-on-one conversations, rap sheets, etc – the union was also supported at times by upwellings of worker self-organization. 

Self-organization here is referring to patterns of activity, in this case ones that support the union, such as individual workers bringing themselves to OC meetings for the first time, or our rally, unprompted, bringing their own ideas, telling their friends, etc, and numerous conversations happening between workers and PIs, prospective students, workers putting pro-union messages on their slides during academic presentations, and other individual acts of protest done voluntaristically and unprompted. 

The first 3 moments of the campaign were moments where our organizing as a few individuals was remarkably successful at moving a large number of workers. Specifically:

1. After the contract was ratified, a few of us correctly identified a grievance that would go unresolved, cohered it into a demand held by a majority of workers, and delivered that demand decisively and proactively. 
2. When admin denied workers’ demand, but before workers were frustrated enough to take action, a few of us amplified the admin’s response to inform the workers and increase their energy.
3. After enough frustration and energy had built up, when a few of us suggested, and many workers later took, massive and effective union actions such as the march on the boss. 

I argue that these moments were successful because they were supported by this self-organization. Calling for actions, doing one-on-ones, walkthroughs, etc, were super effective at those points. In terms of dynamical systems, they were bifurcations,²⁵ where the decisive actions of a few people (the self-appointed organizers) could shift the result. Outside of those moments, organizing was much slower. 

It frustrated me to see the outcome of the grievance coming a year out, but not being able to convince my coworkers to take a more effective action than asking politely, until after the admin had denied us three times. Just because those of us going to union meetings were “leaders” (unofficially or not) didn’t mean we could convince people to act however we wanted. We “self-appointed organizers” had to successfully “tap into” a collective that already existed, rather than creating something from scratch. 

However, I’m not suggesting organizers simply accept the logic of disorganized workers, or that we simply wait for conditions to change. I instead propose that altering the logic to favor the union begins on the level of collective understanding and decision making. Outside the dramatic key moments of the 50% campaign, collective knowledge and thinking among workers about the real situation (in this case, the wage dispute) was being built up over time. Here are some examples of that buildup:

1. The pre-strike wage and rent burden survey by the SIO grad student council, and various polls done on the picket line, showing the necessity of a raise
2. Collective discussions, before the ratification vote, about the merits of the new contract and its inclusion of 50% appointments, leading to the sense that workers had struck for those appointments, and now deserved them.
3. Large unscripted union meetings post-strike to discuss the wage dispute, where feedback on department union actions, decisions, possible tactics, etc, was raised and collective decisions were made.
4. Collective letter writing that involved large numbers of workers giving substantial feedback, having a stake in what the union was saying and collectively thinking. 
5. Email updates on the status of the grievance, with detailed notes on what admin are saying and what union activists are saying, so workers know exactly how admin are refusing to budge. 
6. Constant effort to get people to come to organizing committee meetings and work to ensure they feel comfortable to speak up, even if it is to tell the union to “slow down”. Often proactively seeking this feedback from less militant workers. 

These efforts towards collective thinking enhanced the potential for self-organization favoring union activity, by empowering workers with the knowledge to intervene in the situation. It also did this by improving the coupling between what the union (i.e. the group of organized workers) was doing and what workers were actually feeling about developments on the ground, and giving them a stronger sense of stake in the union. 

Self-organization offers an alternative framework to a mentality where failed structure tests are attributed to “not enough one-on-ones” or similar. While it is often the case that we need to organize longer and harder, focusing on organizer time without considering the state of worker collective subjectivity can mystify why things aren’t working. Self-organization can start to explain the differences between the low-turnout statewide contract-enforcement rallies I attended in early 2023, and the lively 50% campaign at SIO happening at the same time. 

End

In this essay, I recount the fight for fifty percent appointments, and its rare victory. I then present experiences around how “wins” and self-organization should be considered. I criticize elected union leadership and staff, but assert that the best response to leader problems is to focus on the shop floor. These concluding points are similar to those from “Short of the Long Haul”²⁴ (which emphasizes the need for organizers to “reorient strategy and tactics back to the workers”) and have been explained in detail here for a single department. Flawed contracts are common after strikes, and usually lead to union demobilization – but the experience here shows that is not inevitable, and in fact, can yield the most transformative victories for workers.

₁  Steward’s Corner: What to Do When Your Union Leaders Break Your Heart | Labor Notes

² Long explanation: GSRs work full time, so this supposedly represents a separation between “academic” and “paid” work, though this separation is at best dubious. Graduate students working as teaching assistants at 50% FTE are expected to work 20 hours per week, on grading, running discussion sections, office hours, etc, which is all paid work. They spend the rest of their time working on their PhD thesis work—usually original research. For whatever reason, GSRs historically used a similar system despite work expectations being rather different. GSRs usually work full time (40 hours per week, often more) on PhD thesis work, typically funded by an external grant. This was bureaucratically represented as a 50% FTE appointment for a vast majority of GSRs. One reason the university provides is that it cannot employ students more than 50% FTE for legal reasons—though it often violates this rule, if it exists. There is also a step system. To compute salary, one multiplies the salary at whatever step is relevant (usually determined by the department) by the %FTE. For GSRs, the particulars of this system did not matter until there was a union contract, which stipulated that %FTE must be commensurate with workload. It was likely not known to the university’s bargaining team that thousands of workers were systematically appointed at a lower %FTE than others with similar work expectations – sometimes far lower, in certain departments. This was so those departments could arbitrarily decide pay, back-calculating a %FTE against the university’s internal wage table. Typically the %FTE would be adjusted year over year to maintain this amount while the wage table changed. When confronted with this fact, the university began to say that 50% FTE for GSRs represents a separation between “paid work for the job” and “academic work for the PhD”, and that they can arbitrarily decide the mixture of the two (say, on the clock for 10 hours a week and doing academic work for 30). Ultimately, whether or not one accepts the university’s distinction, an arbitrary appointment with fundamentally similar work expectations (working 40 hours/week on the same exact project) allows the university to set pay at whatever it wants, ignoring the wage article of the new union contract entirely.

³ Survey courtesy of the SIO Grad Student Council. SIO_Stipend_Survey_Summary-1.pdf

⁴ See: Housing – School of Leadership and Education Sciences – University of San Diego  Housing in 2024 received a thumbs-down rating, primarily attributed to the exorbitant costs associated with both renting and purchasing homes. Only 1 in 10 residents in San Diego County can afford a median-priced home, painting a stark reality of the housing crisis.

⁵ It was discussed that the SIO-specific budget could likely afford the raise, though we emphasized that central funding was preferable. With about 200 PhD students at SIO, the raises would total around $2 million, in a department with a yearly research budget closer to $300 million, with surplus reported that year!  For specific budget details see:  https://scripps.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/2022-12/Annual_Report_2022-statement-of-activity.pdf

⁶ SIO 50% Demand Letter

⁷ The contract had 6 salary steps for GSRs (down from the original 10). SIO workers were historically at the highest step, 6 out of 6. The plan was to appoint new workers at 50% FTE but 2-3 steps lower. Each step represents an ~8% difference.

⁸ The report found the average satisfaction with the “pay offer” was 2.2 out of 10, and the average satisfaction with the department handling of the dispute was 2.1 out of 10. The report also included dozens of anonymized comments tearing into the department administration.

⁹ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cql1LltvvH2/ photo credit Joe Orellana

¹⁰ Said in a report-back from a union member who attended the town hall.

¹¹ Grad Student Demonstrators Crash Alumni Awards – The UCSD Guardian

¹² The University of California Is Escalating Its Crackdown on Dissent – In These Times 

¹³ Slavic dept letter in support of UCSD organizers Berkeley Slavic stands with the three organizers who were arrested at UCSD. We are prepared to withhold our labor from the university until all charges are dropped and their demands are met, especially the calls for 12-month appointments, for 50% FTE appointments in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other departments, and for an end to job cuts—the demands for which workers were demonstrating on May 5 and May 30. These economic demands are widely shared, and we are ready to strike to put an end to speed-ups and the theft of our wages at Berkeley and systemwide.

¹⁴ UCSC OC Letter for UCSD Grad Workers 07.23 We at UCSC stand with you. We are prepared to strike until all charges are dropped and you win your demands, especially the demand for 12-month appointments, for 50% FTE appointments in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other departments, and for an end to job cuts—the demands for which workers were demonstrating on May 5 and May 30. These demands, moreover, like all our contract wins, must be funded centrally.

¹⁵ Toolkit: How to Talk to your Coworkers about UC Retaliation

¹⁶ one pager 1 retaliation updated 1024.pdf

¹⁷  https://x.com/uaw_4811/status/1719473503701770402 – see also: University of California and United Auto Workers 2865 Joint Statement

¹⁸ A grievance filed later against the plan by UCSD to appoint new workers in the same departments at lower steps. 

¹⁹ As shown by notes from a rank and file debrief, paraphrasing from mostly SIO workers but also leaders in some from other affected departments, shortly before the ruling, Lessons Learned from the Fight for 50%  

We stuck our necks out to fight for 50%. We told our colleagues we would win. We were overconfident. We were retaliated against. Mistakes were bound to happen – without pointing fingers, we need to understand where things went wrong. We cannot afford to mislead the workers. We won our contract because we had power. Direct actions in one or two departments, rallies, grievances, and arbitrations, are not enough. It takes a strike to win real change. We rely on trust in each other and trust in our Union. This trust needs transparency, accountability, and space for the rank and file to voice concerns.

²⁰ From the Camp to the Picket: Reflections from the UC Strike for Palestine – Long-Haul Mag

²¹ https://x.com/payusmoreucsc/status/1843671925090070668

²² At least threatened enough to lie to workers about us, telling them we were out to nullify their contract. I was canvassing my neighborhood (I lived on campus then) and had a neighbor accuse me of trying to steal their contract and then shut the door in my face. It was jarring to see the incumbents in a grievance meeting later that day. Other slate members conveyed similar experiences—and on other campuses, this was the official messaging about reform efforts

²³ More analysis of this election is beyond scope of this essay, but to keep it very brief: certainly there are structural advantages experienced by the incumbent leadership—statewide coordination for example. It’s also true that pulling together a reform caucus in a handful of weeks to contest an election is a risky strategy at best, and not to be done casually. More importantly, however, losing this election was discouraging for many of us—it led to resentment rather than organizing—and it wasn’t effective at reforming the union. And, simultaneously, the 50% campaign was effective at reforming the union. This experience has left me very skeptical of such internal contests. I think this is why veteran union organizers recommend that “a caucus should behave how you want your union to be… Don’t personalize and go after bad actors in the union, don’t bother fighting, it’s a waste of time.” What to Do When Your Union Leaders Break Your Heart

²⁴ Short of the Long Haul (Part 2) Worker Militancy and Self-Organization- It was precisely in such moments of strategic confusion and uncertainty during the UC strike that we witnessed significant instances of worker militancy that developed organically among workers, entirely outside the purview and beyond the control of the official staff and leadership. Indeed, the development of self-confidence among groups of rank and file workers acting independently during the strike forms part of the patterns and patchworks of worker initiative that has, in fact, played a decisive role in the outcomes of worker-led struggle at UC since at least 2019.

²⁵ “a bifurcation occurs when a small smooth change made to the parameter values (the bifurcation parameters) of a system causes a sudden ‘qualitative’ or topological change in its behavior.”—Paul Blanchard, Differential Equations, 1951. In this case, the bifurcation parameters were the cohering of demands and tactics, and collective knowledge of the situation.

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