It Could Happen Here - Catching Up with Week Three of the UC Strike

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

James talks to Matt Ehrlich - a Spanish history PhD candidate at UCSD, about picketing, sustaining a strike, and the bargaining happening between striking workers and the UC.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, everyone. It's James here. Welcome to What Could Happen Here. Today, it's just me,

and we're talking again about the UC strike. But the audio is not great. We had some technical issues on my end, not on Matt's end. But we wanted to put it out nonetheless, because we felt there was a very important episode and things are developing very rapidly at the UC, and we thought that our listeners would like it. So apologies for the poor quality of the audio. We hope you can get through it anyway. Bye. All right. So I'm talking today with Matthew Ehrlich, who's a seventh year PhD candidate in the history department. Matthew, would you like to explain a little bit of who you are and what you've been doing with reference to the strike in the last three weeks

and maybe before as well yes uh so i studied spanish history uh the 19th century empire i've been at ucsd for seven years um i was doing research in spain for two years during the covid pandemic so there was a sort of break in my university participation between my qualifying exams. For three years, I was there. And then I left and I came back and I found the campus was quite different, both from COVID and from the increasing economic hardships. Last year, we have all been targeting, trying to buy a new contract. As I'm sure all your listeners are aware by this point, that targeting went on for more than a year, 18 months in some cases, without a successful resolution and with a ton of unfair labor practices on behalf of the UC administration.

So on November 15th, I believe was the date we walked out on strike. I had signed up several months earlier to be a strike captain for the history department. I was assisted by a sort of informal committee of five of the younger people. Nice. Sort of due to the pandemic, a lot of my colleagues in my cohort were not able to go and do their research. So they're generally out of the country right now doing their field research. So we have a really great department of primarily first through third years that are participating years that are participating and leading the effort. I also had signed up to be a picket leader. I've been really occupying myself as being a food captain. So we have been cooking for about 150 people at our picket location on campus. We've been getting lots of great donations, food and cash, and we've been reinvesting that

to feed the hungry picketers and spread it to other picket locations. That's really cool. Yeah, I think that's really nice to bring up, actually, because that we were speaking about before the call, so many people are familiar with and supportive of the concept of unions and unionization and workers' rights, but I think relatively few people have actually been on strike and seen what it takes to organize

and all the little things you have to take care of. So did you just step into that food captain role, like, kind of ad hoc? Yeah, more or less. I showed up on the first day, and I realized we had been marching around and shouting ourselves there was no water so i ran down to the grocery store and i bought a bunch of water and that sort of snowballed into uh cooking now we have about eight or nine people um we rotate shifts and meal planning uh we actually use the history department

and meal planning. We actually used the History Department graduate lounge. But yeah, you know, that's really been our experience of picketing is for all the organization and signing up for different tasks that we did beforehand, hitting the ground

and seeing what is needed to sustain that on an APK level has been a journey. Yeah, I bet. But it seems to have been largely a successful one. Everyone is out, energetic. There have been some

really impressive actions, actually. I don't know if you were part of the La Jolla Village Drive shutdown. I don't know what you want to call that yesterday. Did you take part in that? No, I was there. Okay, yeah, yeah yeah i met the people who were there amazing yeah yeah we actually

found a faculty uh spy the day before who went in and asked what time that was our window there's been a lot of direct action And it's been very successful from both the morale perspective and conversational. I'm sure you're aware we approached Chancellor Bolsheviks yesterday or the day before. And even though obviously we didn't get a promise from him that he would raise our wages or tell President Drake to raise our wages uh it was you know very energizing for uh people who have you know been been not able to show up because of thanksgiving break or between there to go with direct action is is one of our strong suits at this point yeah yeah yeah it is it is wonderful to see, like so many of us spent so much of our lives

like studying workers movements and unionization and strikes and it's cool to see people walking the talk out a little bit. Also very applicable. I mean, one of the really great things about going on strike with a bunch of statues is you have the smartest minds in practically every field. You've got communications that are working on emails and flyers and such. You've got philosophy who are being philosophers. Some who are quoting working class movements of the past to help shape our strategy.

Yeah, it's a cool thing to see. I remember a long time ago in 2010, the last time we were on strike, and yeah, it was very cool. One of the professors I was working with was with a lit professor, and she came and read some stuff, and then I made people listen to me

talking about daruti for a while and uh i enjoyed myself even if maybe they didn't and so yeah i want to talk a little bit as well about like you're in week three now and you said like you've been maintaining the energy and you're feeding people which is great um how has obviously like strikes come with an element of economic hardship and that's somewhat offset by union strike funds but it's given the economic precarity of people who are graduate students anyway uh it could be really tough so how has that been we're not quite at december 1st yet which would that be the first missed paycheck if people are gonna not get paid? Yes. We are, most of us, convinced that the UC

will not have gotten their house in order by this point. We were working until November 15th, so at least we would be in time to half of a month's pay. But because there's no real way for the UC to determine exactly which workers are withholding labour and exactly which workers are withholding labor and exactly which workers are on strike, it seems like the majority

of workers will be receiving their November paycheck tomorrow. We have also been receiving strike assistance from the union, from the UAW. We're all aware that if we do receive our paycheck from the university, we will have to We're all aware that if we do receive our paycheck

from the university, we will have to return that money so that we can fuel future strike assistance. And we're by and large okay with that. You know, I found out that UAW actually did before Thanksgiving, they doubled the strike assistance in sort of form of holiday pay. So for this month, one way or another, we are all very hopeful that we'll be able to make ends meet.

Next month is, you know, if the strike does continue, sort of a bridge that we'll have to cross. I've spoken to a lot of workers in the history department who are very concerned about missed paychecks, particularly also from the program that I teach for the making of the modern world, which recruits heavily from the history department, as well as non-student TAs, and are not covered by the union, and are not eligible for strike pay, or pulling their labor in solidarity.

They're very concerned that they're primarily working as their full-time job. Yeah, that's tough actually. I've taught in that program too, both as a student and a non-student and it's a good program but it doesn't pay a ton and you don't save a lot of money living in Southern California

so it could be tough. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

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Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there a way to contribute if people want to contribute to those people who are sort of withholding labor and solidarity? Yes. So we are. There is a UAW strike hardship fund. We don't have the information right now. Yeah, yeah.

I'll include it in the notes for people. There's also a Venmo that we're accepting donations for food. We're distributing that to the nine pickets on the UCSB campus. At the moment, we've been just overwhelmed with goodwill and blessings. But depending on how long the strike goes, this would definitely be something that we do with large public support. The only thing I think that the public at large can be doing is is concerning political pressure on the regions to uh yeah and yeah i hope they continue to do so and let's talk a little bit about everyone we've talked to so far has been a science or engineering person. And obviously the experience is a little different when you're a historian or arts or humanities person,

because you don't go to a lab, right? Your research is a bit different and your work is a bit different. So can you explain a little bit about the work that one does as a history grad student, the labor that one does for the university and the what the difference is and what it's like withholding that labor the difference is is that uh when we are the vast majority of us that are in the history department uh are ases we are tas and of that the majority of us teach for either the writing programs or for the history department um so when we look at what we can contribute to the strike we are looking at the withholding not only of grades but the type of grading that cannot be replaced uh the course i'm teaching for now there's five or six eas there's 650 students

i'm responsible for 60 of those each of those students has a weekly discussion I'm responsible for 60 of those students. Each of those students has a weekly discussion panel of 500 or 600 words. They have content analysis papers, which there's now two of them that are missing. Those are things that cannot be reverted to multiple choice. It's a writing program. It's not a formula. It's not something that can be easily placed. it's not something that could be easily placed.

We are aware that there has been some tension in terms of strategic planning between the ASEs and SRUs in the STEM fields that on the one hand in their teaching duties, they are very afraid that their professors will be able to co-opt the teaching process by making exams multiple choice or something else. I'm not sure how that would work. I know that that's just not really possible in the humanities. And the other issue which you can't really speak to, but I'm sure your other contributors have explained this is we don't

work in labs our research is much more long term we primarily conduct that research either in uh in absentia during the school year with external fellowships or during the summer whereas srus tend to be working in their labs more or less constantly. I've heard it said that one of the reasons that SRUs are rumored to be less committed to a long-term strike is because missing two weeks in a lab sets them back by six months in their career. For the vast majority of the humanities for the vast majority of the many ASEs that I talk to, two weeks is very, something to be picked up. You're reading a book in your spare time,

it's not something that we need to be in with Bunsen burners and S2 and animals. So there seems to be a kind of a material conditions divide between the SIUs and ASCs on the one hand and the STEM and humanities on the other. Right, yeah, yeah. There are definitely like two-week periods I spent on my research and stuff that I never used in any of my final projects.

Trying to get an archive to open in Spain can often take that long. So I think one thing I'd like to talk about is like the as it stands now what you're hearing from the bargaining team and how that's being received like i know there are a lot of different demands a lot of different things that brought people to the strike right the access needs cola the unfair labor practices etc etc so yeah what are you hearing on the picket line and and how is it being received the access needs, COLA, the unfair labor practices, etc., etc. So what are you hearing on the picket line and how is it being received? So the news for the first week was on day four, the SRU bargaining team agreed to accept a 7% yearly increase

versus a cost adjustment that would be paid, increase versus a cost adjustment that would be paid, I believe, to the median rent increase in, I think, the most expensive cities in California, which would be San Diego and San Francisco. And to be honest, the strike was sold to the vast majority of the un-radicalized, uneducated the un-radicalized, uneducated rank and file as being about the 54,000 base pay, as well as the access needs, as well as, you know, summer employment for some units and various different things. But there was a lot of consternation on day four. There was a lot of consternation on day four, and I think a lot of us became very radicalized when we realized that not only had the SRU bargaining team apparently made a concession on day four of what was supposed to be a very powerful strike, but that that concession didn't really resolve the issue of skyrocketing inflation and rent costs. And, you know, different campuses are weighing in to say, you know, in Santa Cruz, rent went up something like 65% in the last year. Jesus Christ.

A 7% flat increase doesn't help us at all. of all. If the University of California, the largest employer and the largest landlord in the state of California, is raising their wages by a flat rate, then all the landlords in that area will continue to raise wages even higher, or rent even higher. So a lot of us who were really, I wasn't around for the 2020 COLA wildcat strike, but in the process of this consternation of the SRU-BT giving up this COLA that's fixed to the median rent,

a lot of us became very, I won't say disillusioned, but very radicalized and started looking into it more. In the humanities, I can say, our picket line, where we have philosophy, literature, history, and a number of other related departments, includes very militant. That was the first kind of moment of consciousness of awareness, I think, for a lot of us. And over the last week, it's the last two weeks, it's become a kind of internal struggle over tactics and strategy. Whether it's reasonable to expect that we can hold out for our aims, the bargaining teams have, on our campus at least, and there are exceptions, have generally advanced a sort of moderate line that, yeah, 54,000 is high in the sky,

is a great dream. But, you know, the way the bargaining works is you offer something high and you get something low. I think we're all, you know, willing to accept that that is how bargaining works. But we have, at least in my think of mine, at least in the humanities, been very concerned by the tactical decisions to make certain concessions at certain stages without letting the full power of our strike take hold, especially the withholding of grades, which is coming up this week and next week. Another thing which, you know, most of us have not been on the bargaining team, and a lot of us are just kind of checking in to this very long-term process pretty late in the game.

But when you watch these bargaining sessions and see what you see is operating, it definitely does not seem like the bargaining strategy of offering a concession in order to get something else bigger. It is working at all. We, I believe, made some compromises on accessibility needs in the hopes that would provoke the EUC to offer a comprehensive economic package. Last year we did. It included a 1.5% increase for the SRUs on the proposal and nothing for the ASEs.

Oh, wow. Wow, yeah, You're still a long way apart then. So in both the removal of Polar on day four and the last month's bargaining, I think there's real concern that the bargaining team is getting the short end of the stick. Yeah, that's tough. If people don't remember from last time, by the way, Kola is the cost of living adjustment

that was the initial cause of the 2020 Wildcats, right? Yes, COLA is cost of living adjustment. And there was a lot of really interesting discourse about kind of what that meant. People who are chanting no COLA, no contract, they define COLA as meaning specifically a yearly percentage increase that is tied to its median rent.

Yeah. I believe that it's the median rent. Whereas the bargaining team had argued that a 7% yearly increase qualified as COLA was a yearly increase. Right. But maybe less than inflation, given, and certainly less than rent given what rent has done in the last couple of years in and these universities are in very desirable places to live with very high rents they don't offer subsidized they don't offer significantly

subsidized housing especially to grad students often especially not to all grad students and so yeah it becomes very difficult to live even on what would seem like a decent wage. Unless you want to commute a long way. Something like 90% of the work, and again, I'm a historian, not a political scientist, I believe that the vast majority of graduate students who were polled said that they were rent-burdened, that 50% or more of their money went to rent.

Most people I've talked to, it's more like 70%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can find yourself in that situation working for the university and with the university also as your landlord, and you're paying the census, which, you know, it has control over both ends. And it's not doing much to help anyone. It's not doing much to help anyone. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme, laughs, and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while

uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about withholding grades because that's coming up, right? And that's kind of the next level of escalation, I suppose, or like the next hurdle that's coming up. So what does withholding grades look like?

And can you explain why there's sort of a pedagogical reason that people would be obviously like worried about doing that? Or is this a sort of barrier and what it would do to the university and what it would do to your students as well? Yes. So fundamentally, the withholding of grades is the withholding of the ultimate finishing product of our labor. of the ultimate finishing product of our labor. We can talk about pedagogy and ideology and, you know, highly ivory towering fields as much as we want. But at the end of the day,

when an undergraduate at the University of California pays their tuition, they expect to get grades and transcripts in return. And the reputation of the UC that makes it one of the premier public institutions in the world is that, you know, what a student would demonstrate if they were applying to graduate school, if they were applying for an internship, really anything that reflects their college experience would be tied to that grade. We are also saying that, you know, in addition to that very brutal kind of explicit result, the pedagogy itself is also a suffering that, you know, students are here to learn

and they might complain in an individual class, but by and large, they do get a lot from their education. And if they are not being actively taught by their teaching assistants, they're suffering. In the MMW program that you and I both taught for, the lectures are, they're very, you know, it's a very large lecture hall. It's kind of a general history the vast majority of instruction both in the historical cultural uh content of the course as well as in the uh the writing uh aspect which is the point of the program to develop a skilled analytical academic writers um and they are not

getting that at all that's some that's a burden that is carried 100% by the TAs and by withholding that, it prevents the students from receiving quality education, essentially. So we're hoping that, particularly in the humanities where our labor is completely irreplaceable, that will pressure the university.

Now, we have been hearing that some universities have been unilaterally extending the deadline for final grades. I believe that either Riverside or Irvine, I just saw a message about this, had extended January. There's a lot of sort of confusion about what that would entail. If the strike is over and we all go back, we then have to go back and raise all of that stuff. So, as a facto, it seems like some faculty have either in solidarity or in desperation decided to either move final exam, change the format of those exams. We are, I think, at root the most afraid that the university will grant some sort of fantasy. You know, everybody gets passed. It would, in theory, weaken the union's power, but it would it would in theory weaken the union's power but it would also weaken the universities yeah those students who require those grades to uh uh progress their college education in their

life it would be a huge blow for them to receive uh not a letter grade um yeah just a p yeah yeah that would be a massive step for the university to take in undermining their own status and yeah the well-being of their students right like if you have a required class a required grade in a certain class to progress to graduate school or to press to a vocational degree then um yeah that that would make it that could have long-term implications for those students right yeah but yeah that would be a big step for them so we'll i suppose yeah that's interesting if they extend it what are you required to go back and redo that's a huge amount of labor that you would then be doing in a very compact amount of time to grade three mow assignments is uh an endurance challenge grades are normally due in like mid-December, right? Is that still the case at UCSD right now? This is week 10.

Yeah, the clock is ticking. So how does the strike look if you go past week 10, right? If you go, not just in terms of withholding grades, but obviously campus is very different when the undergrads aren't there. Right. I don't think that we've had really, we have had discussions about whether or not we're in it for the long haul. We are, I think, at the moment, hedging our bets on the next two weeks being in some ways decisive. There is a faction, a significant faction that feel that once finals are over, our power dramatically weakens. Certainly if the UC did decide to sort of bypass the rating for this, it seemed like that would be a half analysis.

I'm not convinced that they would do that. In my view, the longer that we withhold those grades, the look, we continue to have the leverage. I't think the uc will just throw up their hands you know uh the weekend final and say oh well it's a write-off see you next quarter yeah yeah i think we have been back trying to hold you out i'd love to know like to close out what you've learned through the the three and a bit weeks you've been on strike and what you think like people should take from this like it's an unprecedented era for workers organization in the last 20 30 years we've seen more strikes in the last few years than we have in decades so what can people learn from the uc

experience yes absolutely um one of the things that i uh have learned which is very salient in my mind, as somebody who started organizing about three or four months before the strike, I was approached to be a strike captain and then pick a leader. I went to various trainings. I sat in on campus organizing committee meetings. And the issue that we were given

kind of before the strike began was that we had an incredible amount of power. The strike ratification vote where we, more than three quarters of the graduate students voted overwhelmingly in the 98th percentile to vote on strike. We all went in with a very powerful sense of the historic nature of this strike and our bargaining power and our solidarity. That seemed to be treated by many of the UB leadership as a finite resource, as something that we wanted to pull the trigger on, sent the workers out, hoped for a resolution, and if we didn't get it, then worked to wrap it up as quickly as we can. I'm sure that I'm giving them short shrift, and this is probably ultimately an unfair analysis, but very much the perception, even here in the school,

that this isn't sustainable, that we are reaching our peak power now is the time to start uh kind of pivoting to making these concessions and we're all kind of saying that no this the organizing doesn't stop when you walk out the organizing begins when you walk out, the organizing begins when you walk out. And for people like me who, you know, had some knowledge, I've experienced in organizing, I've been talking to my movements, I consider myself very well educated, radical, but just the fact of getting on the picket line, experiencing it day to day, talking to my fellow workers across campuses, across picket lines, has been energizing and radicalizing all on its own. I don't

think that the union leadership really knew what to do with that and how to leverage it. If the bushes were fishes or horses or whatever, I think that a lot of our campus union leadership ought to have done a better job with the day-to-day energizing. One issue that I can't blame specifically on a specific bargaining unit or even the UAW 265, the UAW 365, but it is a usual rule that comes from above, is that if you do not picket, you do not actively sign up for picket shifts, if you do campus around, you do not get strike day. And for a lot of us who have accessibility needs or are not close to campus or are withholding their labor and active in the strike in other ways, they feel like there's not really a place for them. And they're doing equally crucial work. Yes, it's good to have people picketing and have that visibility. Ultimately, if there were two people picketing and everybody else was

withholding their labor, we would still win the strike. So there seems to be an overwhelming emphasis on the visible symbol of our power and our solidarity. And the concession that was made in day four was explained by the dwindling amount of people who were showing up for pickets, you know, from day one to two to three to four. And a lot of us tried to push back on that and say, yes, you know, it's hard to sustain that physical presence. But we should be also working to bolster and encourage and harness the power of those workers who can't make a ticket every day but nevertheless doing crucial labor stops yeah is there still a remote

picketing option does that count yes yes there is you know in any in any organization that's run by, you know, a mass of workers, there's going to be some growing pains. I mean, there are issues in the first week of kind of dueling remote coordinators with separate lists that result. And they seem to have been resolved by now. Same thing with some delays in processing things, strike pay, account disbursements. Again, there's no shadiness happening. It's just the thousands of workers doing this for the first time. But for people who were sort of on the fence or saying, I can't really afford to miss a paycheck,

that was a real big stressor for them in effect with their willingness to kind of be out there every day yeah that totally makes sense and yeah it's already a stressful time but like you say these things will have people will learn in the process right like it's new for so many people it's unprecedented to have like 10 of the graduate students in the country withholding their labor and so like there will of the graduate students in the country withholding their labor. And so like, there will of course be growing pains. And I think often when we look at strikes, like both you and me as historians and as consumers of the news, we like, we see one photo of a bunch of people

like in high-vis standing around a brazier. And then three weeks later, we read another story about a resolution contract, right? And in in fact what makes a strike powerful is feeding people and and being showing up and looking out for one another so like that's what we're trying to document and thanks so much matt and i wonder where people can find if you'd like to give your own social media or where people can find strike updates from the uc and from uc san die. Anything like that you want to plug? Yes, I'm partisan in this, but I would highly recommend not getting strike updates from UC San Diego.

Sorry, yeah, from the campus, not from the university, yeah. So fairucnow.com or.org. Yeah, I think it's an org. It's kind of on the ground. Yeah. I've been's an org. Yeah. Can you tell us a Venmo where people can, in the true Spanish historian fashion, feed everyone? Have you got a giant pie out there? Are you like with the spade?

So I will clarify, this is an unofficial, this is not the UAW worldwide Venmo, but the picketers on the UCSD campus who have been organizing meetings across the big lines, our demo is at ucse-strike-food. Nice. Yeah. Easy to remember. Hopefully you get some donations. Thanks so much for your time, Matt. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Lord of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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