The Roots of the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike

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There is currently a historic wildcat strike of graduate student workers at UC Santa Cruz. It erupted because our existing union-negotiated contract did not cover our basic needs, and is a “wildcat” action because that contract contains a no-strike clause. To understand the strike, in other words, it is first necessary to understand the history of the contract, which covers graduate teaching assistants, graders, and undergraduate tutors on all nine teaching UC campuses.  And to understand that history, it is necessary to grasp the tensions running through the body that negotiated it, the UC Student-Workers’ Union, UAW Local 2865.

In 1999, after more than a decade of intense struggle and repeated strikes, grad workers across the UC system finally won union recognition. But the vibrant union that fought for such recognition soon calcified into a bureaucratic union with little use for autonomous activities by workers. Since its earliest days, Local 2865 has struggled against persistent bureaucratic tendencies from above, and in the early 2000s various groups emerged seeking to reform. During contract negotiations in 2007, one such dissident group emerged in Santa Cruz, creating a reform caucus called Members for Quality Education and Democracy (QUAD). QUAD gained a voice in the statewide union as Santa Cruz representatives, but the reach of the rank and file movement was, for the moment, limited.

Mass student movements across California in 2009 transformed the entire political landscape of the UC system. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, UC Regents turned to austerity and tuition hikes, sparking new waves of student militancy. Grad workers were key in these struggles, and began to demand engagement from their union, which seemed unconcerned with connecting with the energy of the student movement.

Things came to a head in 2010, with a campaign to vote no on an inadequate and concessionary contract. While the campaign did not manage to kill the contract, it won 40% of the votes statewide and a majority on campuses where militants had a strong presence (namely Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Irvine). Out of this campaign, a statewide reform caucus emerged called Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU), which quickly went on to win the statewide union election in May 2011 even after the incumbent leadership sought to steal the election by stopping counting of votes.

AWDU introduced fundamental changes to the union, challenging the excessive centralization of power into the statewide Executive Board and demanding greater local autonomy. The AWDU-led union played an integral part in connecting the graduate worker struggle to broader austerity in public education, successfully halting a proposed 81% tuition hike in 2011. In addition to demanding more from statewide contracts, AWDU fought for increased worker participation in the bargaining process itself. We implemented open bargaining to be held on every campus across the state, and member-leaders (rather than the UAW reps) took a leading role in bargaining. As a result, over 600 members attended bargaining sessions throughout the year. After two strikes – in November 2013 and April 2014 – AWDU won significant contract gains, including 17% wage increase over four years, union consultation on class size, and the right to access all-gender bathrooms. UC-AWDU’s success has inspired AWDU caucuses in other UAW-affiliated grad unions, including at NYU and Columbia, crucial sites of struggle in the private sector.

But the success of UC-AWDU did not mean there weren’t difficulties sustaining its vision over the long term. The cycle of grassroots mobilization that began in 2009 was exhausted by around 2014, and the AWDU-led union struggled to maintain the same level of active mobilization. While the AWDU’s core principles — campus autonomy, maintaining distance from the UAW International, and a focus on anti-oppression commitments — had become common sense in the union, by 2014 the UC-AWDU caucus itself had virtually disappeared. By 2016, the need to revitalize the local was urgent.

The 2016 Presidential elections provided that opportunity, galvanizing social movements across the country. Our union was no exception. A series of mass actions responding to the election drew in a new tranche of active members. This resurgence coincided with the need to organize around the contract, which was due to expire in June 2018. At the statewide Joint Council meeting in April 2017, we developed an ambitious organizing plan that included new hiring of full-time organizing staff, a more systematic approach to organizer and leadership training, and the creation of active and vibrant Organizing Committees on each campus.

In April 2018, a group of leaders and members formed a caucus called Organizing for Student-Worker Power (OSWP). Fueled by the threat of the Janus Supreme Court decision, OSWP’s focus was on building a supermajority membership, and systematic “structure tests” that would build  support broad enough to allow us to inflict meaningful disruption during contract negotiations. The OSWP won a landslide majority in statewide executive board elections against the opposing caucus CLEW (Collective Liberation for Education Workers). Many OSWP activists believed in the strategic vision of escalation that the contract strategy would culminate in a majority strike that fall, which could deal a decisive blow to the UC management at the statewide level.

Things began to go wrong in the early summer. In June 2018, word began to get around that a contract might be settled in the summer with virtually none of the key demands met. By the time of the key bargaining session at the end of June, news that the certain OSWP leaders planned to end the contract campaign had leaked. Active union officers and rank-and-file members, both OSWP and CLEW, worked together to launch a statewide mass petition to stop the Bargaining Team from settling for a bad contract, which quickly garnered hundreds of signatures. We packed the bargaining room to keep energy high for continued struggle. In the end, clearly lacking the numbers in the Bargaining Team, OSWP leaders refrained from calling a vote to accept the insulting offers proffered by the administration, instead extending the contract until August 24.

But the victory was temporary and short-lived. As expected, another push to settle on the bad contract began in early August. The management’s offer was for a three-percent wage increase, laughable given the rising cost of living in the Bay Area.  The offer included nothing in the way of housing subsidy or a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), despite housing insecurity being a key concerns of student-workers across the state. Other issues that had been key points in the contract campaign went entirely unaddressed, among them protection from police violence on campus, and discrimination against international students in the form of “non-resident fees.”

Things stood on a razor’s edge. Leadership, with more optimism of the will, could have mobilized the latent potential for action. Lacking the votes to pass a tentative agreement, the Bargaining Team instead pushed for an online “straw poll” of all members asking their views about settling on the contract. The poll ended closely divided: 52.6% for settlement, 47.4% opposed. Given that the NO votes were also committed to striking if needed, the prospects for organizing successful militant action were high: the 1,132 workers committed to strike would have provided a promising start for a strike preparation. But the bargaining team was divided in its analysis. Ultimately by a thin majority—8 in favor, 7 opposed, and 1 abstaining—the bargaining team voted to accept the offer and send it to the membership for ratification.

 The binding late August vote on the contract was plagued with problems and biases, many of which are detailed in the Mussman Appeal, a legal strategy to annul the vote based on egregious procedural problems. As the Appeal detailed, the entire process was rushed into a two-week span in the middle of the summer, a period of the year when most students are not on campus. The Executive Board majority, which was pushing for a YES vote on the contract, controlled all access to members and used this to push for ratification. In the straw poll that had returned a razor-thin majority for ratification, the union framed the proposed contract as the administration’s “Last, Best, Final Offer”, as if no better offer (through strikes) would be possible. The ratification vote itself was even more egregious. The email containing the electronic ballot was sent out without the consent of the Elections Committee, which should have approved the text. The email was prefaced with many paragraphs polemicizing the benefits of ratification and risks of non-ratification. The dissent statement was included as a barely-noticeable link at the end of the text. The Executive Board also ordered the Local’s paid staff organizers to campaign for ratification, further skewing the result. What this all added up to was that a pro-settlement campaign based on fear tactics prevailed.

Despite many obstacles and its eventual failure, the campaign to reject the bad contract did succeed in galvanizing militant activity. In the end, we won 42% NO votes at the statewide level, including 83% NO at Santa Cruz. Around 1,800 workers statewide rejected the contract.

Pockets of militancy remained, spread unevenly across campuses and departments. While the Mussman Appeal didn’t succeed in nixing the contract, it gave voice to the truth that there was something deeply rotten about ratification process. We resisted in other forms as well. In October 2018, Veronica Hamilton and Marcelo Mendez at Santa Cruz – also leading organizers of the current wildcat strike – ran for the statewide Executive Board vacancy elections, along with UCLA dissident Cory Mengual. They garnered one-third of the votes statewide.

The chief consequence of the bad contract, however, was a pervasive mood of demoralization. Militant grad workers were shell-shocked by the failed NO campaign; rank-and-file union members slipped into dispirited disengagement. The statewide union rapidly shifted further towards the “business union” model typical of the UAW International: prioritizing membership numbers divorced from further engagement, surveys without actions to follow, meeting with politicians, attending UAW regional conferences, and collecting donations for UAW’s political action. On many campuses, militant organizing simply faded away over time, despite the skyrocketing cost of living in California.

Out of these ashes, militancy has sprung back. Our comrades at Santa Cruz have developed a mass militant movement beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, centering on the central demand for a cost of living adjustment (COLA).The current wildcat strike has utterly revitalized and transformed the terrain of grad worker organizing across the UC campuses. We do not submit — to the UC management, nor to the concessionary union bureaucrats. It is a new dawn for militant academic worker organizing in California.

“By the time of the key bargaining session at the end of June, news that the certain leaders planned to end the contract campaign had leaked. Active union officers and rank-and-file members worked together to launch a statewide mass petition to stop the Bargaining Team from settling for a bad contract, which quickly garnered hundreds of signatures.”

Shannon Ikebe works in the Department of Sociology, University of California Berkeley

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