December 2, 2022
As we near the end of the fall quarter without a resolution between two striking units (UAW 2865 and UAW SRU) and UCOP, SCFA wants to acknowledge that instructional faculty who started the quarter with TAs or readers now find themselves facing ungraded assignments as well as decisions about the submission of final grades. Faculty continue to have questions about their rights and responsibilities, especially following UC Provost Michael Brown’s November 30 memo. The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) has produced useful resources for faculty, such as an FAQ for faculty about their rights during a strike, an FAQ on grading, a message regarding not picking up struck work, and finally, a response to Provost Brown’s memo which fails to distinguish between withholding one’s own labor (honoring the picket) and declining to pick up struck work. SCFA unambiguously rejects this and any other attempt to pressure faculty to take up the struck labor of graduate student workers.
As your union, SCFA believes it best that faculty not take up our striking graduate students’ labor for the following reasons. First, doing so acts against our own interests because it sends the erroneous message that faculty, already overtaxed and overburdened, are able to do our jobs effectively without these workers when in fact we necessarily rely on the labor of graduate students, as well as other campus workers.
Second, faculty have an interest in graduate student workers winning what they are striking over: a liveable wage. Graduate students are more effective teachers and researchers when they are not struggling to find housing, put food on the table, or navigate unaffordable child care options. Picking up their struck labor significantly undermines their efforts to be paid a wage that allows them to live where they work. As faculty, we have long argued that the university must find the institutional will to confront the cost of living crisis in California for all its employees and students, particularly since UCSC faculty and staff are compensated at much lower rates than our peers at other UCs (see: Senate Resolution to mitigate UCSC’s Housing Crisis, UCSC Committee on Faculty Welfare Salary Analysis 2021-22, CPB Compensation Report, Administrative Management Professionals (AMP) Group Priority Projects for 2020-21) .
Third, in order to recruit and retain a diverse student population, where graduate school is a possibility for all and not just for those with generational wealth, the university must live up to its stated commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion and provide these employees a living wage. A diverse graduate student population is crucial to the creation of a more inclusive university experience for undergraduates, a professoriate that reflects the diversity of our state, and world-leading, transformational scholarship.
Therefore, SCFA adds its voice to the Senate resolution introduced on 11/30 and strongly encourages instructional faculty at UCSC NOT to take up the struck labor of graduate student workers, including but not limited to grading. Like all of you, SCFA is concerned for students who may need their grades for financial aid or other reasons. However, it is the university’s responsibility, in consultation with the Academic Senate, to make contingency plans that ensure these students are not harmed by the strike, and some campuses have already communicated to undergraduates and faculty that such plans are in place. If you have decided not to pick up struck work and therefore not submit grades for courses with TAs or readers, please consider adding the number of expected delayed grades to this form where faculty from across the UC system are already reporting over 23,000 likely missing grades. If you have questions or concerns, email scfa.assist@gmail.com and someone from SCFA will be in touch so that you can get your questions answered and gain a fuller picture of your options.
Finally, SCFA urges faculty to read and vote on the Senate resolution that calls for: supporting striking graduate students; not taking up struck labor; no retaliation against striking academic workers; and no retaliation against faculty who invoke their HEERA rights to honor the picket line. We also urge our campus leaders to send an unequivocal message to the UC Office of the President to engage in good faith negotiations, commit to fair and equitable contracts with the unions, and to settle this strike.
In solidarity
The SCFA Board
In solidarity, from the UCLA Faculty Association.