"People can't take it anymore": Inside the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike
by Lia Russell
UC Santa Cruz strikers. Credit: @payusmoreucsc
Despite its reputation as a hippie, liberal utopia smack in the middle of a dense forest, Santa Cruz is one of the most oppressive places to live if you’re a renter under a certain income bracket. Students at the nearby University of California campus commute from as far away as the East Bay to find affordable housing, while others resort to living in tents or their cars. In Aug. 2018, the university sent emails to faculty and staff asking them to consider opening their homes to graduate students because there was a dearth of affordable housing stock in the area.
Insufficient affordable housing and high cost-of-living is at the center of UCSC graduate students’ fight to win a higher cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Since Dec. 9, Santa Cruz members of the United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union that represents UC students statewide, have been on strike, refusing to submit undergraduates’ grades until their demand for an increase of $1,412 to their COLAs has been addressed. Like many other university unions, there’s a “No Strike” clause in the UAW contract prohibiting strikes during the term of the agreement, exposing UCSC graduate student strikers to the risk of discipline or termination. They say it’s well worth it in a time of such deprivation.
“The wider Bay Area is an extremely hard place to live,” says Justin Gilmore, a UCSC doctorate student and COLA campaign organizer who commutes 90 minutes from Oakland each way. “We get paid less than $22,000 a year. It’s really a bread and butter issue for a lot of us.”
Though a lack of affordable housing has plagued the rest of California, it’s felt more acutely in smaller communities like Santa Cruz, where students meet the definition of “rent burdened,” spending 30% or more of their monthly income on rent alone.
In a Dec. 20 interview with Working People Podcast, graduate psychology student and UAW Local 2865’s Santa Cruz unit chair Veronica Hamilton added that even with university-subsidized housing, graduate students at UCSC pay between 60 and 80% of their monthly stipends: “It’s out of control. A lot of people are forced to take advantage of food pantries on campus.” She noted that the university at one point encouraged her to apply for Cal Fresh, the state equivalent of food stamps. The campaign says that the added $1,412 to each student’s COLA would grant UCSC graduate students a standard of living on par with that of their UC Riverside counterparts.
UCSC students are paid nine months a year according to the academic calendar, but must make their meager earnings stretch to cover all twelve months of the year. Student housing stipend amounts vary, but UCSC doctorate student and the COLA campaign’s External Solidarity Chairman Will Parrish estimates that it’s roughly just over $2,000 for most graduate students. While this may sound generous, figures from UCSC’s housing survey “No Place Like Home” show that market-rate two-bedroom units rent for as much as $1,830 per month, leaving little left over to spend on necessities like food, let alone other bills.
“People can’t take it anymore,” Parrish says. “The material conditions of their lives are just so severe. It has nothing to do with being wacky, leftist Santa Cruz residents. It has everything to do with living in really exploitative conditions.” He says the cost of living in Santa Cruz has skyrocketed over the past two years, increasing by 52%. “People don’t make a lot of money relative to San Francisco or the rest of the Bay Area, but they’re paying the exact same rental prices.” Gilmore also contends that the tenuous conditions that graduate students find themselves negatively impact undergraduate students, when the quality of their teaching goes down due to concerns over issues like food and housing instability: “We have a love for teaching, but it’s hard to do it when you’re forced to find other work.”
Adding to strikers’ anger is an ongoing tension with the leadership of UAW Local 2865, which represents UC graduate students across the state. None of the union leadership sanctioned the ongoing strike, rendering the COLA campaign’s direct action a wildcat strike. One source of frustration is the current UAW contract, which went into effect at the end of Aug. 2018.
While almost 59% of UC graduate students statewide voted to ratify it, 83% of UCSC graduate students voted against it, according to Hamilton. “Our campus was particularly upset about the wage increase,” she says. “Other parts were pretty weak and unacceptable. We lost protections for international students. We did get $200 more per quarter for child-care subsidies, but overall there were no real gains.”
The current contract, in effect until 2022, provides for a 3% increase in wages per year. In contrast, numbers from the California Department of Finance indicate that statewide inflation is on track to reach 3.8% in 2020.
UAW Local 2865’s leadership note that part of their trepidation is that the COLA campaign does not appear to include their equally-exploited undergraduate counterparts. In a Dec. 10 post on Medium, UAW Local 2865’s Southern Vice President wrote, “By excluding undergraduates from their demands, COLA organizers present an opportunity for the UC to break their job action by organizing undergraduate workers against them.” UAW’s Southern Vice President did not respond to a request for comment.
For their part, UCSC undergraduate students and faculty appear supportive, say Hamilton and Gilmore. “I have students writing ‘I don’t want my grades until grad students are given a COLA!’ on their exams when I’m proctoring,” says Hamilton. Undergraduate students and faculty members also turned out in support when the COLA strikers held a rally on Dec. 10, holding signs with slogans such as “ACADEMIA KILLS US.”
Hundreds of faculty members also signed onto a letter of support for strikers, and AFSCME Local 3299—which has had its own problems with the University of California system—has pledged support. “There are different ways to measure undergraduate support,” says Parrish. “The Student Union Assembly, the officially-recognized representative body for UCSC, voted 23-0 in support of the strike.”
“The regional specificity of the COLA campaign speaks to a wider problem. I would wager that every UC student and worker population has an affordability crisis,” adds Gilmore. “We reject the idea that our struggle is being pinned against others. Everyone in the state is being affected by crises of housing and affordability. There’s an all-out assault by bosses and landlords on the working class.” Both Parrish and Gilmore are rank-and-file members of UAW Local 2865.
The university cites the union contract as validation for not meeting strikers’ demands. “UC Santa Cruz cannot negotiate a cost of living adjustment while these students are under contract with the UAW,” a UCSC spokesman told NPR, referencing UAW Local 2865’s status as the exclusive representative for graduate students. There is opportunity to amend contracts through side letters, though Gilmore said no such offer has materialized. Critics also claim that the decision to withhold final grades, which were due Dec. 18, could backfire, as undergraduate student scholarships are often tied to academic performance.
Though the strikers gave UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive a letter of their demands on Nov. 7, all three UCSC COLA strikers participants told Strikewave that the university seems to have been wholly unprepared and their response has been confusing. “UCSC was caught off guard by the strike,” says Parrish. “What they have been doing is a political strategy, trying to isolate the strikers by deeming what they’re doing as illegal. They made a reference to [us strikers] being subject to violation of federal law, with no specification. They’re floating the rhetoric of wanting to meet with individual strikers to settle grievances, but at the same time refusing to meet with the group because it’s an illegal action.”
Whatever UCSC administration’s official action will be, Parrish says the COLA strikers are ready to escalate to get what they need: “The strike is snowballing in momentum. It’s clear that the strike has amazing support, and I’m continuously blown away by how much enthusiasm it has among grad students. It would be pretty remarkable if after all this support, the administration didn’t come to us with some sort of an offer.”
Lia Russell is a journalist in the Bay Area.