USC Solidarity with Striking UCSC Graduate Students

Image from @payusmoreucsc instagram

To the University of Southern California community,

The Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) at the University of Southern California stands in solidarity with the striking graduate workers of UC Santa Cruz. We share the striking students’ struggle in the context of the rising cost of living in California, and recognize the important and difficult work they are doing by going on strike. We encourage other USC students to show their support by signing this letter and to read on for more information about how to stand in solidarity with the graduate students of UC Santa Cruz.

This Monday, graduate workers at UC Santa Cruz declared a wildcat strike to demand a Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA). UCSC students live in one of the most brutal housing markets in the US where the average rent is $2242/month for a one-bedroom apartment. However, UCSC graduate students are paid only $2400/month. Many UCSC graduate workers are at constant risk of homelessness or face other financial stresses which make it impossible for them to succeed in their academic programs. These graduate workers provide UC Santa Cruz with valuable teaching, grading, and research labor which allows the university to function, but the university does not respect its graduate workers enough to pay them a living wage. Other UC schools, including UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis, have also begun their own COLA campaigns in solidarity. As California graduate students, we too stand in solidarity with the striking workers at UCSC and support their demands for a living wage.

Instead of meeting the graduate workers’ demands with empathy, the university has instead refused to negotiate and has resorted to force and intimidation. This week, UCSC brought in over one hundred riot police to intimidate, attack, and arrest the peaceful protesters. The UCSC administration has also sent emails implicitly threatening the immigration status of striking international students, and encouraged undergraduate students to expose their TAs who had gone on strike. These actions are the most recent steps in a long history of retaliation against student protesters initiated by the University of California, which for example, includes the pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters by university police during the Occupy UC Davis movement in 2011. We absolutely condemn the cowardly approach UCSC has taken as its graduate student employees express their need for a liveable income.

As students earning less than the Los Angeles “very low income” benchmark, USC graduate students know what it means to make difficult choices around basic needs. The demand for a Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) to graduate student income is a demand for a basic human right. Along with living below the very low income benchmark, many USC students report struggling to afford their own and their family’s health care costs - a financial struggle often made even more inaccessible for students with disabilities. Students also report delays in stipend payments and reimbursements, which can lead to further stress or often debt.

Here, at USC we also know what it means to exist under anti-union tensions. The University of Southern California has a long history of union busting. When adjuncts at the USC Roski School of Art and Design formed a union, instead of negotiating with them, USC used its immense wealth to undermine non-tenure-track employees’ right to unionize. USC graduate students voted to unionize in 2018, but because of the National Labor Relations Board’s recent ruling robbing graduate students of their legal right to a union, these students’ democratic decision was abandoned. We believe that graduate student workers are more than just their labor. We are members of the academic community who deserve to have our humanity recognized and basic needs met. As graduate students we are all in this fight together.

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT

Show the striking UCSC graduate students you stand with them by signing this letter!

For anyone financially able to we highly encourage you to donate to the support fund for striking workers at UCSC. All funds donated through gofundme are being distributed back to the UCSC collective for food, action supplies, potential legal fees, and docked pay.

You can find out more about the striking students at UCSC at their website https://payusmoreucsc.com/ or follow them on Instagram or Twitter at: @payusmoreucsc or @cola4all

You can find out more about GSOC by emailing us at uscforwardgsoc@gmail.com or following us on Facebook or Twitter.

See the list of signatures here (updated daily)