It Could Happen Here - UC Bargaining and Building a Better Union

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Qe talk about the UC contract and how rank and file union members feel about bargaining, then discuss how to build an inclusive union that benefits everyoneSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's James. It's only James. We're giving you some updates on the UC strike, but we recorded these before some changes happened. Progress, you could call it, maybe it's not progress, depends on where you're at position-wise with that. But there

are two interviews today. One's going to explain a little bit about the bargaining and the differences between rank and file on the bargaining team. The other one's going to explain the very important and radical and progressive access needs, demands that were made. And it seems like ultimately not at least they're not on the table in this tentative agreement so there's a tentative agreement out for voting right now um if you have been on the internet today saturday um and if you've been on today you'll have seen it presented as if the strike was over that's not necessarily the case right the contract is up for ratification and it's ratified by union members who have to vote on it a number of people are organising for a no vote especially people who

are in departments or parts of the university which would qualify for lower tiers of pay the contract has tiered pay has tiered pay both geographically and based on what kind of work you're doing and so a lot of people who are left at the bottom of those tiers are obviously feeling like they've they've been out on strike for five weeks and haven't got what they wanted a lot of people who are left at the bottom of those tiers are obviously feeling like they've been out on strike for five weeks and haven't got what they wanted. A lot of people who are on those higher tiers are also feeling like they should be expressing solidarity with their fellow workers at the bottom. But you will have seen like a lot of reporting. Some of it came out very, very quickly after the tentative agreement was made, which is odd. agreement was made which is odd and perhaps is because the union appears to be the union staff i should say the people who are who are making these but some some of the people who are who

are in favor of this contract are using a pr company which appears to have maybe seeded some stories and some publications but we can't be sure certainly they were very quick to press so i would urge you to listen to this as sort of a coda to some of what you might be reading there are two things you can listen to them separately you can listen one after the other we won't have any podcasts for a while over the over the break so I will speak to you again in the new year and I hope you enjoy both these interviews Mohammed can you just explain first of all tell folks like which campus you're at and maybe what you're studying and where you are in the uh in the giant structure that is like the uaw ucsd yeah absolutely uh so i'm at uc san diego um i'm a fifth year in the phd program in the department of ethnic studies and yeah i

specifically study uh like muslim racialization and sectarianism in the u.s um and how that yeah how that links up to like imperialism settler colonialism um like gender formations things like that um and i suppose my place within this as you say like the labyrinth of ucsd and uaw politics um right now i'm just a rank and file member um however a couple years ago i was um the unit chair for san diego so i was actually on the bargaining team yeah previously um and that was at the beginning of the pandemic um and so a lot of like covid bargaining for example um i sort of oversaw that uh and prior to that i, was a organizer with the Cola movement. And so I helped organize the wildcat strike, um, here at San Diego.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's a long history of union organizing. It's good. And so can you explain to folks a little bit about, because you mentioned the bargaining

team there, right. And, um, maybe people won't be familiar with the distinctions in union organization. Obviously, this isn't Italy in the 1960s, so you don't bargain with the entire union en masse, sadly. But the university meets with a certain group of union representatives. So can you explain who they are and how they're selected to start with, maybe? Yeah, absolutely. So can you explain who they are and how they're selected to start with, maybe?

Yeah, absolutely. So there are essentially two levels of, well, three levels of leadership within the union. So at the top, in terms of statewide leadership, you have the executive board. And that's, you know, like president, vice presidents for North and South campuses, trustees, treasurers, things like that. And then you have campus based leadership. And that's split between head stewards that are apportioned to campuses based on their population and size. And then you have two kind of sort of like head leadership positions, one being the unit chair and the other being the recording secretary. And so the bargaining team for the whole union is composed of the unit chair

and the exec from each campus. And this time around, we've added someone from UC San Francisco. They're usually not represented like in past bargaining cycles they haven't been. So there are now 19 people on the UAW 2865 bargaining team um whereas previously there had been 18 um yeah and i guess the sort of like final level of of leadership that

combines both campus level and statewide leadership is what's called the joint council um but that's kind of the the hierarchy of the structure of the union okay Okay. Yeah, it's fascinating that it just went to an odd number because I want to get on to something next, which is this division. I think people are calling them BT-10 and BT-9, right? Yeah. Which could have been BT-9 and BT-9 if you didn't have the UCSF person, which would have been a whole larger sort of mess. Oh, it's so much fun yeah yeah

that would have been great uh so what is this division like there are two distinct i guess positions as as regards bargaining so perhaps you could explain a little bit of that yeah absolutely um i mean i think just you know this might be obvious but just to preface with the fact that um even within these so-called camps of like bt, BT9, there's a lot of heterogeneity. And so we saw this voting bloc emerge in the first week of the strike, mainly around the wages demand. And how one of the central pieces of that original demand, the way that it was crafted, was that it was aimed at bringing members out of rent burden. And so rent burden, I'm sure folks have talked about this before, but it's defined as paying more than 30% of your monthly income in rent. And so that translated in terms of our demand to a minimum base wage of $54,000 a year, along with wage increases that are tacked on to the increase in like the median rental price

for housing. And so in that vote, we saw, you know, the split emerge 10-9. And then we saw, again, this kind of split paralleled in the vote to have open or closed bargaining sessions, and the fact that 10 people voted to have closed sessions. And again, you know, since then, another big concession, I'm going to use the term concession, even though there's a lot of consternation coming from like UAW leadership, because a concession is technically when you lose something you've already had, you already have. And so when it comes to like the disability and access article, you know, something that we proposed and which, you know, demand that was crafted through and by, you know, disability justice activists and disabled workers was mandatory supervisor training. And that was dropped. And again, we saw that along same lines of 10 and 9. Um, and so, you know, I, I think ideologically speaking, if I were to kind of, you know,

analyze this and give my, my take, it's that the, the nine people I think are more committed to, um, I suppose being like representative of, uh, their campus concerns. Um, and so for example, some of those BT-9 members I was on the bargaining team with a few years ago, and, you know, they and I didn't necessarily agree on a lot of issues. But now, because their campuses have been vocally in support of demands like a cost of living adjustment, a COLA, or in support of, you know, not dropping the amount of childcare that we can get folks reimbursed for. Actually listening to their membership has caused them to kind of quote unquote side with other bargaining team members,

which may have other ideological commitments beyond just the contract, right? And so commitment to progressively defunding UCPD, right? The police department and sort of putting those funds elsewhere within the university system. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we see that kind of split emerge, you know, now with this bargaining cycle, but this is also a split that's existed within the union for a while. And so you look historically at the 2018 contract cycle, 2014, right, 2010, 2011, and there's always been this kind of division. And it's represented in American labor more broadly

between kind of like socio-political unionism on one end and more like liberal or business unionism on the other. And so it's not really, or at least it shouldn't be surprising to us that a lot of those BT10 members or a majority of folks on the statewide executive board are aligned with what's called like the administrative caucus at the UAW international level, or they're vocally supportive of current UAW president Ray Curry. And in the latest general elections, uaw president ray curry and in the latest uh general elections um even though officially the local didn't take a stance um on social media like there's photos of our union president posing with ray curry um for the curry solidarity team um and so there are those kind of like larger structural alignments as well yeah and of course if people aren't aware and even yeah like you say within the union as a

whole like yeah and within the whole like american unionization right we have the afl cio which includes uh unions which are of police officers and then we we have i know that the ucsd uh locals of you have only so you see locals i should say of uaw have made statements about that being an issue but it's it's still a thing that's happening um and yeah it doesn't necessarily um follow especially in this country that labor organization is always progressive in in its in its other politics right yeah absolutely yeah i thought it was really cool that a lot of the demands that were made were progressive when when the strike began right like um there was a cops off campus demand there was access needs demand and things like that like uh you know access to child care for people like some

of them some of them were economic some of them were not economic some of them which has always been a thing with student organizing right we can go back um i'm not very good at maths we can go back to 1968 and we can we can look at like students making political demands and that changing the demands that unions made in the 1960s and i think it's cool that that you all had those going in uh where are we at with the bargaining now like it it doesn't look like cops are leaving campus from what i can see right now yeah i think um so it's kind of complicated right now because we've uh just recently entered a voluntary pre-impasse mediation um and so a lot of the big outstanding articles, wages, child care, the remission of

non-resident supplemental tuition, which disproportionately affects international students, right, makes them, quote-unquote, more costly to the university. So a lot of those open things now are being discussed through this mediator. And I think even within that process, this mediator. And I think even within that process, we see a lot of the same issues emerging that have been present for the entirety of the bargaining process, which mainly is that, again, my position on this is that our bargaining team hasn't been pushing enough. And you see that kind of on two levels. One at the actual table, um, there's a lot of passivity. And so when, you know, the bargaining team is kind of explaining their decision to membership,

it's mainly, um, you know, they're saying things like, well, we reduced the wages demand by $11,000, like right away, because that's what would be more amenable to the university. And of course that is not true, right? Because the UC came back to us with like a $28,000 offer or something like that, like pitifully low. And so again, there's a lot of, you know, concessionary, I think moves. And there's the desire to kind of close the gap with the university, essentially. And again, that kind of betrays, I think, a fundamental misunderstanding from our bargaining team, that somehow, if we are respectable enough, if we present enough

rational arguments, the UC will respect that, right? They'll sort of like give in to our demands, that will somehow goad them to come in our direction. Whereas, you know, we should see the UC as like one of the largest bosses, one of the largest landlords in the country. And so of course, they're going to try to screw us out of as much as they can because that's their function. And so on one end, I think we've seen a lot of core demands get dropped.

We've seen intense like weakening our position, as well as a really incredible lack of transparency. And so I mentioned before the fact that most bargaining meetings or most bargaining sessions have been closed doors. The fact that a number of private sidebars have taken place. And oftentimes membership gets like very vague emails or we're, or we're, you know, told like, Oh, progress was made. You know, we want certain things, but then the technicality of those wins is completely left out of the picture. Um, even more recently, uh, bargaining team members voted to, uh, make the votes at the table private. And so after dropping the COLA demand,

you know, folks were upset and obviously reaching out to the bargaining team, showing up to caucuses and being upset. And so from there, the bargaining team framed this as quote-unquote harassment and essentially voted to make all the votes private. And so, you know, we've seen a lot of moves like that that, you know, make it clear that the union leadership is trying to preserve the union rather than preserve its membership, right, and preserve the well-being of those folks. And so I think at the table, again, we see this kind of passive or concessionary strategy. And on the ground, when it comes to the strikes at all these campuses,

we see something similar, where, you know, the majority of the actions that we took in the first two to three weeks of the strike was just picketing, right? And obviously, you know, the picket is a powerful tool, the picket is a very symbolic tool. But in a, you know, industry like the academy, picketing doesn't serve the same purpose as it might at a factory. We're not actually shutting down the workplace. It's a great show of force in a way because you have thousands of people out. But obviously, when we're being required to sign up for 20 hours of picketing to get our strike pay, folks get exhausted. We'll have huge marches through campus, go to a rally, and it'll be two hours of

people talking. And that exhausts people. And even when it comes to, you know, like, UC Davis, they had the undergrads actually had like an amazing direct action where they blockaded the campus every single day. And that, of course, led to a legal response from the university. And the union leadership, you you know rather than challenge that or you know take uh take measures to make sure that those folks could organize autonomously of them um started uh like harassing and disciplining folks basically um for taking uh taking part in solidarity actions that may push up against the law. And so what we see as like a concessionary attitude at the table, I think is translated as a very, or it's translated into

like respectability politics on the ground. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's an excellent way of phrasing it. And that's, that's sort of of what what you were definitely suggesting and what it seems that we've seen so where does that leave people and i think some of the things that have been suggested to be looking in the sort of current proposals both from the union the university would leave people with a contract that they would find i'm guessing unsatisfactory right especially after um four four and a half five weeks of being out of and and possible withholding of pay right which we can get onto but where does that leave people like what what's the feeling amongst your

obviously you can't speak for the rank and file across the whole university but what's what's the sort of feeling amongst the rank and file with regards to what do we do if we get this offer which doesn't give us the things that we went out for in the first place yeah um i i think that there is a lot of just uh polarization around that question um i've heard from a number of folks uh unsurprisingly i think people who um are materially at least treated a little bit better right we get higher pay already um from the university uh being all right with it you know but that's that's the most that i hear i haven't heard anyone even the most staunch supporter of the union establishment say that this contractor at least what is bound to come to the table at this point is going to be satisfactory is going to actually be desirable it's just seen as like oh this is the best we can get and we

might as well settle in like every sense of the word um but that being said there is a large contingent again of folks that are totally fine with that or they're tired of striking or they're seeing a lot of retaliation from their supervisors. And the union, I think, has failed to not only respond to that retaliation and to reassure and empower members, but it's also failed to, you know, the technical term in organizing would be inoculate, right? There is a huge, in my opinion, organizational failure to make clear exactly what could happen to folks when we go on strike or to prepare us

to hear the talking points from the university and how to, you know, collectively organize against it to build up a kind of consciousness to resist internalizing that and to say like, oh, I don't want to strike because my job's at risk or something. And it's like, yeah, of course, right? That's the point, you know, it's like where we're taking that action. And so on one end, right, I mean, there's a number of reasons as to why and that kind of hinted at that. But there is a large contingent of people who would just be okay, and they're going to vote yes. But I also think, right, and as I'm sure, you know, you've seen around social media,

you've talked to other folks who are on the side of voting no. You know, I think a lot of the consternation there comes again from the fact that we've dropped so much and kind of have left our most vulnerable members out to dry. So whether that comes from reducing the amount of childcare or dependent healthcare, or again, dropping those like really core elements of

the disability and access needs articles when it comes to dropping COLA and dropping our wages down to a point where we would still be in not just rent burden, but severe rent burden. It's been leading a lot of folks to, you know, promote the idea that we're going to vote no, regardless, because even if the remaining articles, you know, are better than we expected, and they get tentatively agreed to, there's already too much that's been lost to make this an adequate contract, right? Not even great, not even satisfactory, but just adequate. And so, you know, of course, that kind of division, as you might say, has brought up a lot of tensions, especially in the last few days. But, you know, I think now we're seeing a broader gap between these two sides, where there are folks that are pretty much, again, set on voting yes because it's good enough.

set on voting yes because it's good enough um and there are other folks who um are pretty staunch in voting no and trying to build up that movement um and i think the point we're at now at least speaking from that like vote no side is that um we really need to outline and be transparent with membership uh where we can go from there like how do we demystify the process or the possibility of impasse? You know, that's been a concept that's thrown around a lot by union leadership and is never fully unpacked. And so it's like a fear-mongering tool that's been, in my opinion,

at least like used to subdue member militancy. So that's one issue. Another issue is like, how do we reopen certain articles? How do we build this quote unquote long haul strike to gain more than we've already, you know, given up at this point. And so I think a lot of those technicalities that are up in the air are renewed sort of like areas of organizing focus. Yeah. So you don't have to abandon some of those

demands which were non-economic like yeah those can still be yeah i mean i guess there's no point in really speculating how many people will vote yes or no we'll see once once we see the agreement and yeah but like can you give us an update then on where striking gets obviously progressively harder as it gets longer? People don't want to stand on a picket for five weeks, six weeks. They don't want to go home for the holidays. They have this pressure that's been leveraged, perhaps unfairly and sometimes erroneously, that their students will face immigration or graduation consequences, which is largely untrue.

So like, can you talk about this? There's a chance that people won't be getting paid right in December. Has that happened to anyone? What's the latest with that? So a lot of what's been going around in terms of issues with pay, a lot of the news I've seen concerns postdocs. So folks from the local 5810 who actually just signed and approved that tentative agreement um so the university has put

out some language implying that they'll retroactively dock pay um and so um yeah i can't like speak to the technicalities of that. Yeah. But that's definitely a concern I've seen floating around. And I know that they're actively organizing around it. For ASCs and student researchers, none of us have been docked pay yet. We all got paid for December, in part because I just think the university has a really hard time keeping track of who's on strike on top of the fact that i mean i don't know if anyone's already complained to you about uc path but the payroll system that got rolled out yeah a few years ago um it's terrible it's an absolute fucking nightmare yeah um and so i i think it would be a massive achievement for them to even

be able to withhold folks pay through that system. Yeah, they've struggled to pay people in the past, including myself. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, I think it is a real concern. But at this point, at least to my knowledge, no one in 2865 or SRU has been affected by pay withholding. 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. And then let's sort of talk about the grade withholding, which is now, like today is the day, right,

that the grades should be due in. Obviously, many people are not filing those grades, which, again, is another example, actually, of the UC just being a bureaucratic disaster, but we can skip past that. So the grades are not being filed. Can we talk about some of the suggestions that have been made by the university? I know one of them was that students on F1 visas might face consequences.

That's not true, having been on f1 visa as best i understand it um and that uh students on thing on grants and scholarships might face consequences can you explain sort of what they've said and then perhaps perhaps offer some insight into what into why you think that that might be misleading yeah absolutely um so exactly what you're saying um you know folks in vulnerable categories such as people on academic, or whose financial aid is dependent on being in like, you know, good standing, or yeah, like international students. Yeah, there's been a lot of fear mongering and misleading information out there that these students might be, you know, kicked out of school, they might be deported, they might face, you know, again, like financial consequences.

But it's important also to recognize that having a grade remain blank, it doesn't affect folks GPA, it doesn't affect folks academic standing. And for international students, you know, the best that we understand, and we've actually communicated with universities, international students offices. And what they say is that it's enrollment that matters, not necessarily having the grade. And so even if, you know, let's say like all of someone's grades are withheld, they've still enrolled in the requisite number of credits. Right. And so that that standing in terms of a visa wouldn't be affected. And the same goes for even something as simple

as moving onto the next course in a sequence. Because again, the withholding of a grade doesn't affect that kind of progress or academic standing. And as a sort of technical note, a lot of folks are again, concerned that like, well, wouldn't this blank grade lead to an incomplete or wouldn't it lead to an F? Um, and, uh, in terms of the incomplete, uh, there's a reason why we're not filing everyone with an I, uh, we're leaving the grades blank because an incomplete is costly.

It's more work for everyone. And so we're avoiding that. Costily, it's more work for everyone. And so we're avoiding that. And blank grades don't default to an F until the following semester or following term ends. And so for us at UCSD, since many of us are withholding grades, those blank grades wouldn't turn to an F

until the end of winter, so around March. And I don't think anyone expects the strike to go that long. Yeah, yeah. That would be truly historically and yeah yeah so how has the undergraduate response been then yeah that's um it's difficult because I know at certain campuses like I mentioned UC Davis earlier there's been huge undergrad involvement there yeah um at San Diego I think the response has been a bit mixed. I know many of my students, for example, were supportive of the strike. And within, you know,

my department, ethnic studies, we did try to get students more involved. Like we held teach-ins to get students to come out. And, you know, the class I'm TAing for right now is called Land and Labor. And so we talked about, you know, UCSD, right. And the relationship to like colonialism, capitalism, land and labor. And so we've tried to integrate, you know, not just, you know, student engagement and support, but also to use this as another form of study, right. As a form of study that's not that's outside the kind of like bureaucratic mess that is the university with its nonsense um i think what's difficult at san diego is that um you know political engagement has historically

come in waves obviously at all universities folks come and go. But it's particularly acute, I think, at San Diego, where there's massive moments of like, upheaval and like folks coming out in the thousands, like we saw back in 2020, around the pandemic around the uprisings during the summer around even the cola movement, right, which was a little bit before that we saw huge numbers of undergrads come out, in part, were able back then at least to connect our demands to their concerns right the fact that psychological services on campus are horribly underfunded right people have to wait a whole quarter to get even the intake appointment um the fact that again like they're getting screwed over with housing just as much as we are, paying over $10,000 or $15,000 a year for a dorm.

And so that connection back then, I think, really drew out the undergrads. And that's what's really lacking now. Again, I think because of the way that the union has framed the struggle quite narrowly as not just what affects workers, but what affects the majority of workers. That's left out a lot of the broader concerns. That has foreclosed a lot of broader critiques of the university. And so when it comes to something like the COPS off-campus demand, the fact that we have bargaining team members at UCLA, for example, literally lie and say that it's never been on the table, is really indicative of how the union is trying to frame this. And so the fact that, you know, again, those broader conversations around

the UC being a landlord, around the way that, you know, profit and resources are inequitably distributed through the university infrastructure, right? Those things drop out of the conversation about our strike. And if we do bring it up, we're seen as dissidents or something like that, or radical. And so the fact that those things have dropped out, I think, has led to us seeing a situation like we see at UCSD, where the undergrads are almost ambivalent, if not hostile, because we haven't done a good enough job engaging them we haven't also organized alongside and with them um rather it's been like come support your tas and not like we're fighting together right and so it's it yeah it

betrays it gives the impression that this is like a one-way or unidirectional form of support, where in reality, we should be building up those ties of solidarity and that we should be focusing not just on winning a contract, but then building and sustaining this movement against the university in a much larger or broader sense. Yeah, because speaking from experience experience i know a lot of those undergrads feel very disempowered in their relations with the university and and some of the demands like the access needs demand uh you know the demand for improved student counseling psychological services things like that like that would benefit directly everyone on campus and then

yeah it's a shame not to see that it's a shame to see that sort of left to the side when i think yeah it could build a more effective movement yeah so yeah it does seem to go like you said campus by campus department your department like has historically been a lot more engaged than others i think it's fair to say so and so we've reached the christmas break now uh grades have been withheld which i think a lot of people thought was like sort of a nuclear option or like a step up uh yeah which it doesn't seem to have been like it really hasn't done anything um and the uc has entered into or they the university and the union have entered into a voluntary pre and past mediation when do you like if you were just speculating and when do you think we'll see like a resolution because it's already

slipped out of coverage right like if i look at our local newspaper that they've stopped reporting on it it doesn't help absolutely yeah um i think you know know, it's difficult to speculate in part because, as we've seen with past bargaining updates, they tend to drop bombshells on us. Like with the whole COLA demand being, you know, severely cut down, we found out about that like two hours before the bargaining session, which is at like 10pm. And so it's totally possible by like that by the end of this week we'll have a tentative agreement like you know folks have been speculating on that it wouldn't surprise me i would be disappointed but i wouldn't be surprised um at the same time though i i do think that we've been able to build up sufficient pressure on the the union establishment or the

leadership um that i think they're it might be a bit more hesitant right to take that sudden of a move or to kind of come out of left field or something like that um and so you know there is a distinct possibility especially with the holidays coming up that this might go into the new year um and obviously that would be like my hope to go as long as possible yeah um but yeah i think it's it's incredibly tough and i think that's causing a lot of anxiety um and it's kind of a disorganizing energy right to not know when something like this might happen because there is such an utter lack of communication or, you know, democratic input. And I think in terms of, you know, the coverage or the grade strike, what's really unfortunate, I think, is the way that I've heard, you know, from the horse's mouth, right? Certain bargaining

team members saying that withholding grades isn't an important form or isn't an impactful form of labor withholding because the university doesn't care. And historically, we've seen that they really do care. And within academic strikes, withholding finals is a massive thing, right? And I think that in order to really realize the impact that that'll have on the institution, we have to go for a few more weeks into the winter quarter. And, you know, right now, even to try to build up some more, I guess, like, you know, PR around grade withholding, there are folks doing research and trying to calculate, like quantify what like, you know, each credit would mean in like real dollars. And then the fact that

you know hundreds of students grades are being withheld for a three or four hour like three or four credit um class and what that translates to into money um yeah and so yeah yeah i mean if we look at what the university does right it it turns its capital into into into income essentially through like leveraging its credibility for a credential and charging people masses of rent for living there increasingly. And you can't take away the housing, right? Which is a major source of revenue, but you can take away this product. Yeah. And there have been, you know, there are a number of petitions out there, for example, for undergrads to request like a reimbursement of their tuition for any classes that haven't been held or grades that have been withheld. And I think that's a really fantastic way to engage them and to put pressure on the university.

attempts or at least you know um some strategizing on on our end on how to uh have the grade uh strike impact the university's accreditation um and so we are trying to look for avenues to increase the pressure um from this kind of like strategic move yeah that's smart yeah yeah it must be difficult i'm sure like is you develop relationships with undergraduates and especially when you're ta in your department the class you care about it it's a shame to to lose that opportunity to talk to people about important things like landed labor and so i'm sure it's difficult to not have that chance to even check in at the end of the end of the uh the term and just say like you know this has been fun what have we learned yeah absolutely um and like, you know, this has been fun. What have we learned? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, for a lot of us who are ASEs, you know, we're doing this not just for ourselves, but for our students, right? Because we care about education and we recognize that the university as

an institution is actually corrosive, right, to a quality education. And so absolutely, I think like there is a sense of loss. I think the fact that I can't, like you're saying, close out my class, the fact that I can't, um, you know, really invest in my students the way I want and not trying to blame that on the strike, but trying to blame them on the conditions that have brought us to, to strike in the first place. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I don't want to get like full Marxist on main, but like, yeah, the further alienated you are from your labor, then the less that the experience is for your undergraduates. And that is definitely a thing that happens at the university. You become more and more alienated and yeah, the joy dies. I say with a PhD and doing no work in academia. Mohamed, is there anything else people should know about the strike like I say with a PhD and doing no work in academia. Mohamed, is there anything else people should know about the strike that we haven't talked about? Hmm. Let's see.

I would say, you know, one important thing is that both for folks within the university system and from you know the outside is to kind of place this strike in historic context um i think when the the union leadership has spoken about this at all it's mainly around the size of the strike the fact that it's historic because we have you know 48 000 possible strikers um from throughout thes. And that's kind of misleading, because I think the real kind of like historic potential within the struggle is, for example, establishing a precedent of what a researcher strike looks like. Part of the reason it's so difficult for us to not only, you know, mobilize researchers, but also, you know, push back against retaliation is because there

is no set structure for what that kind of strike looks like, right? There is no effective way that we have to counter the possible impacts on these people's futures. And so I think that, you know, really emphasizing that to folks is, is key. Another thing is the COLA demand, right? The fact that we are trying to, or at least we've tried to tack our wage increases, not just to inflation or the consumer price index, but to the median increase in rental prices. That would be huge. And that's not just big for us as workers within this local, but that does set the precedent for all workers in the US. And I think that, you know, we really, by we, I mean, like the union as a whole apparatus has not stressed the importance of that or the kind of like monumental shift that that could kind of provoke in the landscape of American labor broadly. Just if people aren't aware, like rent in California has gone up way more than double, almost triple the rate of inflation.

Yeah. And working people, people who are members of unions by and large tend to be people who don't own property. They tend to be people who rent property, right? And I can see by your unfinished concrete ceiling that you're renting from the UC, which is the biggest landlord in California. So you're right that this is a very historic thing. Is that rent increase for Kola, is that tied to median rent in the state or is it median rent across UC rented apartments? So I think the actual actual language so this is part of the problem

is that because it was dropped so quickly at the table we weren't even able to get into the vicissitudes of the demand itself um and so from my understanding the uh increase would be based on um the like least affordable or essentially the largest increase that we'll see at any of the campuses. And everyone's wage would be increased to that. When we look at the base wage, the 54K, that was tacked on to, again, a kind of like median income or a median rental price throughout the state as well. and so actually 54k would be exactly enough to get me out of rent burden so anything less than that would actually still keep me in rent burden um and so yeah that's kind of how the events yeah which rent burden is far too normalized

i think especially in california yeah yeah and like collective bargaining as tenants as well as workers is fascinating, right? Like it's something we've seen, but not on a large scale. And like you aren't on rent strike yet. Yeah, and as a side note, yeah, we did have a couple of rent strikes within the UC system in the past few years at Berkeley, at UCLA and here. And so I was actually part of organizing in the aftermath of COLA at the beginning of the pandemic. I helped organize the first rent strike within HDH, UCSD grad housing. And so we have also seen that, but that's another way that the

union has kind of limited the scope of this movement because there's been so much focus on us as only workers and the bread and butter issues we kind of lose sight of the way that withholding rent as you're saying is another way of like really getting at the heart of the uc's profit engine yeah yeah um yes it is a shame that these like um yeah if you want to think into historical perspective i of course like i love paris 68 to yeah it's like the monolith of student political organizing i guess and student political organizing changing the established structures of the left uh which which is it's some of what you had demanded was very similar to that in a sense

and that it was societal and political as much as it wasn't economic right and american unions tend to phrase themselves in terms of like respectable liberal politics not that so it's a shame to see that go i guess absolutely and i think you know uh this actually came up in a in a meeting um which kind of astounded me but again didn't on one hand astounded me another hand was completely sort of like to be expected which is someone uh saying we need to make this movement as accessible as possible to workers without an activist bone in their body. And so again, there's always that appeal to the right, always the appeal to the most conservative reactionary force, and always at the

expense, right, of the folks who are the most vulnerable, always at the expense of expanding this movement into, as you're saying, that is more uh socio and socially and politically engaged yeah yeah i think most people become activists when they have to live in their car because they can't afford to live in the uc housing when they work at the uc but that is not everyone of course and all right muhammad where can people find you do you have have social media? Is that something you want to share? Would you prefer to share like your unions or something else? I guess on Twitter, I am at IslamoMarxist. There you go.

Yeah, so folks can find me there. Otherwise, I mean, if there are folks within the UC that are organizing within any of the like vote no channels, I'm sure if there are folks within the UC, um, that are organizing, um, within any of the like vote, no channels, I'm sure folks could find their way to me. Um, but yeah, I think just in general, like following the rank and file and COLA associated accounts on, on social media, trying to attend, uh, as many meetings as possible is, uh, is really how I think folks can get more in tune with the struggle. Yeah, that's great.

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And yeah, best of luck with everything. Thank you so much. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, 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, 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 iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast

so i'm joined today by megan lynch who's the founder of and a volunteer for UC Access Now, which has been one of the important bodies lobbying for increased access needs for people with disabilities at the UC as part of this strike. Hi, Megan, how are you doing? Hi, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. No, great. Thanks for coming on. Megan, can you explain and maybe explain a little bit about UC Access now first, and then we can get into sort of what the issues were and what the demands were. Well, let me start with clarifying what access needs are. Generally, I wouldn't want to have more access needs because it would mean that I need more things that I need to negotiate getting them met. So an access need is I have something that I need somebody to, you know, the inaccessible environment that we have often. It's sort of default inaccessibility. And so having an access needs means that, you know, I need to work out

how to be in that environment. And sometimes you can even be in a really well accessible environment and it would be hard for people to meet your access need without, again, trying to come to some kind of agreement. So there's a difference between accessibility and access needs. And I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Yeah. I think that's very important. So can you explain then what sort of issues people were running into before the strike? Like what sort of things were there that limited people's access to university spaces or education or work? Well, still very much going on. And in fact, it's actually increased during the pandemic. The only time where things got a little better for some of us was, you know, in March 2020, when everybody, you know, and this is what often happens is that something,

when suddenly people who don't identify as disabled need something, and there's enough of that, then there's no problem. Nobody has to submit medical documentation. Nobody has to get special permission. It's really not a big rigmarole. Right. But when you identify as disabled and you say, I have this as an access need, then suddenly, you know, you get you get the Spanish Inquisition in terms of whether you you you deserve this thing that your tax dollars have been paying for at your institution anyway. So it really runs the gamut for, you know, I guess what I could best talk about is my own situation and what led to the formation of UC Access Now. So I arrived here before the start of fall 2019 as a 50-year-old disabled grad student. So I'm already in a kind of unusual position by being 54 years old here and then disabled on top of it. And I was set to TA my first quarter here. And I could spot even before the quarter started that the kinds of cycle racks

they have here at UC Davis, which is, you know, usually lauded for being quote unquote bike friendly, uh, were not accessible to me and that they would eventually, you know, I could do it once or twice without hurting myself, but over time I was going to be hurt. And that would get in the way of me being able to do my duties as a TA, not to mention anything I need to do for myself because, uh, I was riding like a lot of disabled cyclists. I don't ride the standard upright bicycle. I ride a recumbent bicycle with under seat steering and the racks are not usually a big deal places. I've lived in a number of different cities in California. Berkeley, Los Angeles, a lot of places have what are U-racks, which is similar to a Sheffield rack for folks who know those, except not quite as big.

So it's not like you don't go to a special adaptive store for this rack. It is a more accessible rack, and most cities are sensibly using them. is a more accessible rack and most cities are sensibly using them. But for here, because despite their bike friendly reputation, they actually want to prioritize space for cars. They have made these racks that are so close together and not supportive, et cetera, that the only part I could ever lock my bike to would be the ends. And that's what everybody else wants to take first. lock my bike to would be the ends. And that's what everybody else wants to take first. Um, and it wouldn't even be easy to the ends because again, these are really very specifically, they have wheel wells and the relationship between the lock thing and the wheel well is exactly the space apart. You would do if you had sort of a standard adult size upright bike. And

honestly, they're not even good for people who ride those. So for instance, if you go on UC Davis subreddit, you will see sometimes threads where people are bullying people who want to get a cruiser bike because they're like, those things take up too much room. No, it's not that they didn't take up too much room. It's that the racks are very poorly designed. Yeah. There are things that take up a lot of room in cities, but they are SUVs. Yeah. They would rather bully somebody about their choice of bike than to say, hey, these are really, what a waste of taxpayer money to get these bike racks that not only don't work for a lot of disabled people, but don't even work for people who are riding cargo bikes or

using a trailer or other things you would want to do. So, so anyway, I went first to the Disabled Students Center here, which is, you know, the rationing and policing agency for disabled people. And, you know, it's amazing to me, like this, these are the people, and they will literally call themselves experts on disability and accessibility. And they said to me, gosh, it never occurred to us that that would need to be accessible. This is on a campus where they're trying to encourage you to leave your car at home. At least some of us. Right. Yeah. And and it's also how you get to school and to work. Right. So why wouldn't I need that to be accessible? It's also how you get to school and to work, right?

So why wouldn't I need that to be accessible? And so they, I asked for something as simple as, can you sign a letter? They wouldn't do it. You know, can you, they wouldn't, they wouldn't back me up at all. So then I go directly to the transportation and parking services. They were like, it's not covered under ADA, which is not true. And, you know, and then they were like the solution they wanted to pose with it. You eventually when i finally after months got a meeting they were like well give us your schedule of classes and we'll install one of these racks at each building you're at as if my schedule isn't going

to change each quarter right yeah yeah and it's going to take is that a better use of yeah is that a better use of tax money to send a crew around to like to to to jackhammer concrete at a different location for each quarter, according to each disabled cyclist class that changes? Just get the right rack. Yeah. So that that's when I went to the union. And even in the union at that time, you know, it was really clear it wasn't just with that issue. I had other issues. was really clear it wasn't just with that issue I had other issues but this was definitely getting in the way of my work as a TA because it was hurting my hands very badly and in fact I'd

fallen a couple times and my bike had fallen on top of me and like nobody helps you you just sit there watching you like a turtle trying to you know get up again so there's things like that there's things like um even just the housing here in terms of, for instance, if I had had the luck of having a romantic partner, if I'd had the wealth and the ability to choose to have children, I would have been had zero priority whatsoever. And so I very nearly ended up starting that quarter having to live out of my car because, you know, and I would think it would be pretty clear that a 54 year old disabled grad student might actually have, uh, maybe have more, uh, have fewer options in housing than somebody who's in their 20s and isn't disabled. But, you know, and I'm not saying that parents don't need family housing or anything like that. But what I'm saying is very clearly, I think some disabled people do have strong access needs to have accessible housing near campus. And that's very much not something that they bothered

themselves with here at UC Davis. So, you know, there's other things in terms of online accessibility and other things. But those are the things that affected me that I think are worth mentioning simply because they're both unusual things people don't tend to think of. Right. Yeah, yeah. And it is a very difficult system to navigate. Like you said, I think one of the things that's really stood out is this demand for documentation for any sort of accommodation that you might need. They can make it very hard. I remember

I was teaching at UCSD and I shattered my pelvis and that made moving at all extremely difficult for me. They wouldn't give me a parking pass um and like then proceeded to off me once I had diabetes which is a whole like like interesting like it's sort of calculation of which one of those things will definitely stop you walking

so yeah and it was extremely sort of humiliating I can say from a personal perspective and degrading and time consuming and unnecessary and so what were the demands then at the start of this strike right there was an access needs element to the demands being made by the union so perhaps we can go through uh maybe first we can go through how you went from this bike rack, which didn't accommodate a pretty basic need to transport yourself to campus. How do we get from there to the union having access needs demands as part of the strike? So as far as UC Access now, it's involvement with it. We went on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and published the demand manifesto in July of 2020. So the months between, you know, the fall when I made, you know, went through these processes and when I finally decided, OK, nobody's doing anything about this and I don't see any other organizations. jump into this. By July, UC Access Now was contacted by somebody who was an officer within

UAW 5810, and that's the postdoc and academic researcher union. And they had seen our work, you know, via social media and whatnot, and said, you know, we're about to go into contract bargaining, and we'd really like to talk about disability issues. So we had a meeting with them, and we actually had, we did a presentation also to them for their social justice seminar series, but we also had a meeting with a number of people from 5810 in terms of let's, you know, let's think creatively here. Let's, let's be ambitious about what it is, you know, because the thing is, is that a lot of what people tend to do, particularly, particularly when they're not disabled, but even some disabled people can do this because internalized ableism is really hard to throw off.

We're sort of, you know, and this is true of other oppressions, too. You know, we're all sort of used to this system that has this policing austerity, etc. You know, we all get schooled into not hoping for much anymore because we're just so used, you know, in my lifetime, I've lived through decades of this kind of reggae night baloney so so it takes a while to think big about these things but that's what we were trying to do and so we sort of brainstormed with them as several uc access now members and several uh 58 10 members in terms of the sorts of things they could be uh asking for and so if if there's time and you don't mind i can give you a view of that because the other stuff's online, but this isn't. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Please do. So again, this is sort of just a spitballing document, but we were like, you know, all ads for postdoc positions on all platforms, they have to be accessible. Now some, some of this, and some of what we're talking about is stuff that you see is actually legally obligated to do and just has not been

doing. That would be one of them. Training, you know, most emergency access plans are not made with the input of disabled people and they don't even mention us. So, you know, there are considerations for accessibility for different types of disabilities, different people. We have several buildings on UC Davis campus here that have little placards right in the lobby that say they say something like if you depend on uh visual alarm systems in an emergency please let somebody else know you're in this building blah blah blah and it's like even the way that's phrased because you know quote-unquote abled people are you dependent on a sound alarm system to get out in a fire but they don't phrase it you know as dependence when it's

for them right they only phrase it as dependence when it's for somebody who's deaf or hard of hearing yeah so we've got several buildings on campus where they know that it's not up it's not up to you not even just ADA, but just like basic human decency. People will die in that building. Deaf and hard of hearing people will not know that there's a fire or other emergency alarm system going off because we couldn't be bothered to pony up for some lights. So that kind of thing in terms of an emergency action plan, these things have to be done. There has to be training, not only for the supervisors, but really for UC itself, because the whole system is just, you know, crammed full of ableism, you know. Online working is key to accessibility, so it has to be a regular option, not just something for the pandemic.

It should have been the whole time. And it also shouldn't, you know a big uh uh burst up to it there are some and you know they're like kind of things you would think of as smaller that we put in here simply because again we're trying to think creatively which is you know reimbursements for instance i mean that's a general problem with grad students and whatnot is that the university which has far more resources than we do is sort of know, taking its time reimbursing us for things that we've had to get, right? And so the debt is actually being heaped onto the people least able to support it. And when it comes to disabled people, that is going to be even more of a burden because most disabled

people have a higher cost of living and often have a lower income to boot. So we put, you know, that in there, we put in reimbursements for costs incurred working at home or, you know, in other ways remotely for an employer. That's section 2802 of the California Labor Code. You know, sick policy in terms of like uh commuter checks which you know or some other kind of thing for public transit uh the child care spaces and lactation rooms are accessible because you know the union will like lobby for that right but you need to be you need to be expressive about the idea that these things need to be accessible like people don't think of everything needing to be accessible, but really it does.

Yeah, and that sends a very condescending message about what different people with different disabilities might or might not be doing, which obviously isn't great that the UC is doing that. So I thought these demands were fascinating because it's not what we often talk about when we talk about strikes. We talk about strikes often purely in terms of economics.

In the US, that can include things like non-wage benefits, like healthcare. But in most instances, we talk about strikes in bread and butter terms. They have gone out and they want this much money to come back and i think that strikes have the potential to build much greater solidarity by doing things like this by incorporating these uh i guess social justice demands is one way of phrasing it or um these basic human decency demands would be another way of saying it and it really uh yeah really impressed me that this this was part of the the package of demands from the union how have things

gone are you comfortable talking about how things have gone since the strike began well i i certainly don't know everything backwards and forwards because because honestly, it would be hard for any one person to know it all. It's all extremely complex. Yes. In terms of not in terms of like, you know, things on the ground, but in terms of the the language in contracts and the process in bargaining. There's a difference between like things that are tradition traditional to do as opposed to things that are actually the law. And then, of course, the actual enforcement of the law. So anyway, this has been going on for a whole year and as you can

imagine like penetrating it as your average person it can be very difficult yes so i will certainly give you you know my view of it as so far as i've seen it but um we do have uh so so we helped uh 5810 with like sort of spitballing and they took it from there. And what they started out with was not as, you know, ambitious as the spitball document. I think that got replicated a lot throughout the unions, which is, you know, my advice as somebody from the outside, just thinking about negotiations in general. Okay. You know, they're going to cut you down, right? Yeah. So why would you be the one to cut you down? You know, they're going to do it, right? You think big, let them cut you down. Yeah. And, and unfortunately there were the majority voices in the bargaining teams tended

often to be at least where the access needs articles were concerned, tended to be kind of let us cut ourselves down. So the starting doc for 5810, although, you know, it still had things in it that were very, like if we have the original version of 5810 instead of what actually the folks folks you know voted on voted yes on recently uh it would still be a revolutionary document in in u.s labor history i think you know i don't i've never heard in the news if anything any uh uh more ambitious than that but but, but definitely it was down from what we were starting with, which, you know, um, so, but I think what happened was that, you know, 5810 came out and they were trying to coordinate and learn from each other, did different units, right? So then folks on SRU and UAW 2865 also worked on the access needs articles.

And the access needs articles, even in themselves, was a change because the previous versions of these things were phrased as reasonable accommodations, which is language that stems from the Americans with Disabilities Act. with Disabilities Act. And even that phrase is something that is really outdated because it is the idea is who is deciding what's reasonable, right? The person who has no lived experience of disability or this gigantic public institution that is funded, including by disabled people's tuitions and fees and whatnot and taxes. But, you know, where's my money go? It goes into building an inaccessible university, right? So why am I supposed to let you judge what is reasonable? I think it's incredibly unreasonable that you use my money to build a university that is not only hard for me to be at but is actively hostile to my health

um and so you know and just the the word accommodations centers and codifies that inaccessibility as being the norm right and anything you do different from it is like you being accommodating well get that get the hell out of here with that stuff yeah yeah yeah it makes much more sense to phrase it in those ways and and like yeah it seems like it was as you said a very ambitious goal and one that like not all of those the things got transferred which is i mean the that that can happen in strikes but uh it's also like it's it's a non-economic thing that the university could have given to you all that it wouldn't have had to have you know i mean the university has a lot of money and it would be very possible for it to pay graduate students the ways they asked for

at the start and post grad postdocs um could be paid the wages they asked for too and it wouldn't really hurt the university they could they could you know there are a million ways they could fund that and but well i think that gets to the crux of why they don't do this because the thing is is that if if you really think about it this way and it takes a little doing because again we're sort of schooled not to yeah but um it is a form of misappropriation of public funds if all of the public is funding this institution and we do that through our state and our federal taxes we do and and then of course if we get in we're doing it through tuition and fees and then of course the grants the university gets are also federal grants and this sort of thing um then what you're doing is you're taking money that take comes from all of

the public and pre-pandemic figures in terms of like, this is before the mass disabling event that the pandemic is. The 25% of adult Americans had at least one disability. So you're taking money from those folks and you're saying, but we're not going to build this public university in a way that is not only likeable by you, but a place where you could thrive. It doesn't even reach tolerable. It actually drives a lot of us out of here. It worsens health, and I have no doubt that it has killed people. So what happens, the reason I mention this is because that misappropriation of funds, you know, that's the incentive, right? What can, if you're going off this austerity mindset that you shut off, like, people from things they need, right?

What happens to that money? Well, we have an admin that is completely bloated in size. every single chancellor getting a raise during a pandemic that they completely blew in terms of public health protections, in terms of accessibility, even to people when they needed it during the pandemic. Like if they hadn't been fighting accessibility that long, we would have handled the pandemic better because we would have had better online pedagogy already available and developed. So that's a kind of jump that people don't make, but that's exactly what's going on. Yeah. ableist institution. It's hard to even get here. But then when you get here, they want to reduce who can get their access needs met. And then the access needs being met is such a gauntlet. And only the most privileged of disabled people can get that. And so, you know, as far as disabled

people at UC who are in the system, the system so to speak you know are registered or whatever that's going to not at all be representative of the public that's going to be mostly white folks with some access to to privilege you know yeah of course um i think you've given a good sort of elucidation of why this is a struggle that obviously everyone should be part of and everyone should be getting behind because it's all of us who are invested in this and all of us are paying for this university, which isn't accessible right now. So I wonder, like, what's your advice? Because there are unprecedented numbers of people forming unions, right? Like Starbucks being one example that we see a lot of coverage of. But all across the country, there are more people forming unions, there are more people going on strike. How should they organize around similar things? How should they organize around getting these access needs met?

Well, I think you have to start by sweeping your own side of the street, now did was you know as you can imagine in a society where there are quite strong financial uh punishments for even to say you know even identifying as disabled and what i mean by that is like say again here, here on UC Davis, uh, you were talking about how hard it was for you to get parking, right. You know, when you had a shattered pelvis, how it was to go every single day here on campus, there are abled employees driving trucks and vans that they drive straight up to the door of the building on the sidewalk, blocking egress for actual disabled people and actually blocking fire egress out of

the building um because that's what's you know because they can't be bothered to walk 20 feet from the legal space that they have already have the privilege of being on campus compared to everybody else right but they but they had to have it even more convenient to that and then they drive straight up to the door right nobody gives them gives them, nobody says boo about that. Nobody says you need to get a medical documentation. Nobody says you're getting fined and you don't get to drive this campus truck again or whatever. None of that goes on. What would happen, I guarantee you, if that employee identified as disabled all of a sudden, then they would come down on that person for what they're

doing. It's a real, so because of these things, there's a lot of incentive for people to hide their disability because you get, there's a lot of stigma, but there's also a real, a quite real financial hit to it. And so what happens once you sort of create a safer space to talk about it, people will start DMing you, you know, and they will let you know that they're starting to have problems on the job or whatever. They may not be ready to come out for those like some people. It's obvious they're disabled. Right. It's not even like they have a choice about, quote unquote, coming out. Right. they have a choice about quote unquote coming out, right? But for other people, it's not obvious unless they tell you and they have a lot of incentive to not, you know, identify that way. But when you make your union a safe and inclusive and accessible place, you will find that you have already been making assumptions about what your union membership is. So you already have members who are disabled. It's just that they're not telling you about it. But furthermore, if your union starts really

becoming an accessible, inclusive place, you know, not performative, really being there, your communications are accessible. You're clearly educating yourselves around ableism, educating yourselves around accessibility. So like when you have your meeting, it's not in a room that isn't wheelchair accessible, that doesn't have a working elevator on that floor, all these things that people kind of don't think about until they're the one with the broken leg. Then that really goes some way to helping you organize things. And you will find you already have members that you can tap, you know, because they'll start to feel more, more involved once they see you're willing to go to bat for them. And what I would say that folks should learn from the UC UAW experience right now. folks should learn from the UC UAW experience right now.

And this doesn't just refer to disabled workers. It's really other marginalized workers, which is, you know, if you're in a contract bargaining situation and it's clear that like, you're the bargaining chip, like, why would that, why would that group want to hang with you? You're, you're saying support us and what we want, but we're going to desert you when it's your time. You weren't going to depend on the fact that everybody likes more pay. And we're just going to say, okay, you're going to stick with us and work, you know, with the union, no matter what. It's like, no, a lot of people are going to go, well, I'm sticking, you know, you clearly don't support me.

So I don't see why I need to go with you and put myself at risk, because if you win, I'm going to get the raise anyway. And and if you don't win, well, then that's good for you, because now you know how it feels like to be tossed aside. So so you have to really be there for your marginalized workers. You know, it has to be this non-performative thing. But the thing is, is that if you are non-performative about it, you are making the workplace not only better from disabled workers you already have, but you are making it better for yourself. have, but you are making it better for yourself because every single one of us pretty much is going to be disabled either temporarily or permanently at some point in our lives. It is the easiest club to join. And, you know, I, I think as we found during the pandemic, you know, people, a lot of people, they make this, they say, oh, school sucks why does it suck because you never

invested in it it's like several it's several decades old you never invested in it you never put any effort or money into it like that's you know so if you want your workplace to be a good quality workplace for you that is not only just like a place you barely, you know, feel okay going to, but like someplace you really, we spend most of our lives in the workplace, you know? Yeah. Especially as grad students. Right. So it should be someplace that really makes us feel better and fulfilled because nobody works well when they're stressed out. Nobody, you know, you're not productive when you're constantly stressed. So this really should be a win-win all around. And think about it this way also, which is that, you know, and this is particularly applicable when it comes to UC.

And, you know, the pandemic is another great example of this, is this has gotten a little bit of focus in the press, but I don't think as much as it deserves, which is that you have this, is this has gotten a little bit of focus in the press, but I don't think as much as it deserves, which is that you have this, not only an event where millions of people died globally, right? But you have quite a few people, they have long COVID, they have other things. People who arrive at UC and particularly who go, you know, get to the point they've got their degree or whatever, you know, these are people who are trained, highly educated, trained in a certain thing, they're making contributions to their field. Do you really want it to be that we lose all the knowledge that these people have, all the institutional memory and experience that these people have, just at a time when we're facing incredible crises as a planet, you know, in terms of climate change, and in terms of, you know, the attacks on democracies and things, or just even what the

people mean to their community, right? You know, you're talking about the fabric of your community. If you make it, if you have an inaccessible workplace, if you have an inaccessible school, if you have places, you know, in the public square that are not accessible, you're making it so that when somebody becomes disabled and that person could be you, you may never be able to practice the thing that you love and you've trained for your whole life. And the community loses what you could bring to this at a time when we need more than ever, all hands on deck, to be solving climate change and other problems that face us. Yeah, that's very well said, actually.

You certainly made a very good case. So I wonder, I mean, obviously the negotiations are still ongoing, at least for the SRU and for, I think for TAs as well. So what can people do to support the demands that have been made? Like how can people maybe who are not part of the union, who are not part of the UC even, or perhaps undergrad to a part of the UC, are not part of the union who are not part of the uc even or perhaps undergrad to a part of the uc but not part of the union how can they show solidarity and support here well i think part of it is you know not giving up on the idea that we can

press for the original axios needs article uh i i know there's all sorts of like you know technical rules about regressive bargaining. But honestly, I think UC has broken a lot of the rules of bargaining. So I don't see why that doesn't, you know, it's like, what's good for the goose is good for the gander as far as I'm concerned. But there's also even outside of bargaining, you know, as I said, a lot of these things are things that UC routinely breaks ADA. UC routinely breaks, there's other parts of disability law in terms of Section 504, the Rehabilitation Act, and there's some California law as well as my understanding of it. So, you know, UC, just as they have this rationing and policing agency

bureaucracy, and it's two separate silos, one for students and one for workers, and they do that, like even the fact that they do that communicates that it's not about offering accessibility as a default, because why would you have two silos for that? Well, you have two silos for that because the law that affects students and affects workers are slightly different. So what you're coming from is this aspect of we are dedicated to only doing the barest minimum of the minimum required by law. So we don't even want to meet that minimum required by law. It's like you want to offer minimum wage, but if you can get away with it, you're not even going to meet minimum wage.

And you have a lot of lawyers and a bureaucracy to make it possible for you to do that. That's what UC does. for you to do that. That's what UC does. So that kind of stuff is stuff that outside of even a labor contract, you should be able to write the governor, write the lieutenant governor who's actually got a seat on the board of regents, write your California legislators. You know, when there was a, there was a NIMBY who sued Cal, this was in the news this year. There was a NIMBY who sued Cal to make it so Cal couldn't make housing or to make it so that Cal was going to have to limit how many it was admitting because in the opinion of that group, they weren't building enough housing to take care of their students and they were crowding up Berkeley and blah, blah, blah. The outrage about

that from parents who wanted to send their kids to Cal was so great that like within a couple of weeks, the governor and the legislators had passed something to address that. If you put that kind of pressure on the governor, the lieutenant governor and the, you know, your state legislators, they will make sure that the UCc office of the president feels that pressure because these are things these are laws you know at the we had more ambitious things beyond law but some of the things that we were that are trying to do in this contract are really just things that they're already required by law to do but aren't doing we were trying to give it make it so there was more teeth there because clearly the federal and state teeth weren't good enough so we um we have

a resist spot petition out there but you you know to make it a little easier to contact your if if you're a california resident the resist spot petition would work that way but if but if not you know like i said if you if you if you're a parent of a student here you can write if you're an alumni you know you can write just really hammer them about it okay yeah yeah definitely i think i think writing does make a difference i think especially for an institution i don't quite know how financially dependent they are on donations, but they certainly do like to solicit them, especially if you're an alumnus, because they solicit them from me a lot. I do not have that much money. So, yeah, thank you very much for sharing all of that with us. And I thought that was really, really instructive.

How can people find you and how can people find UC Access now if they want to find you online? We are on Twitter as accessuc, at accessuc. We are on Facebook and Instagram as well, actually is also LinkedIn for the more businessy people. That's UC Access Now. And you can also reach us at ucaccessnow at gmail.com if you wanted to email us. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you very much. And just to finish up briefly, we are going to try and make a transcript of this available at the same time as the episode goes out. And so if folks would like to read it that way, if that's easier for them, then we're going to make sure that we have that for this one. So yeah, if you're listening or if you think someone else that you know would like this and listening doesn't work for them, then we're going to make sure that we have that for this one. So yeah, if you're listening or if you think someone else

that you know would like this and listening doesn't work for them, then we're going to do that. Thank you so much, Megan, for giving us some of your afternoon. And yeah, I hope you see some support and I wish you the best of luck with everything. Well, thank you so 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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Rye. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of Rye, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.