Get ready for an absolutely massive strike.
Tens of thousands of academic workers that work for
the University of California University system have walked out.
People are saying it is not only one of the largest strikes in recent years, but
in this field, potentially the largest that we've ever experienced.
Obviously, massively consequential for California.
They are demanding, obviously higher pay.
You know, it's incredibly difficult just to get along in California,
the cost of housing and rent is out of control as it is in so many places, but
also more reimbursement for public transit, additional child care subsidies,
expanded health care for dependents and other benefits.
They additionally say,
the union officials representing this movement say that the university system
has violated labor law Nearly two dozen times in the course of their recent
negotiations dealing directly with certain groups of workers and changing
certain working conditions without going through collective bargaining.
These unfair labor practices, they say triggered the strike.
So 48,000 unionized campus employees walking out that is about as big
as one of these movements as I can remember, Jessica, what do you make of it?
Yeah, it's really interesting because the communication is a little bit easier with
the university where you have all of the people's emails in one centralized place.
It's a lot easier to communicate when you have that available to you.
Like, you don't have that in amazon warehouses, in Walmarts, you just don't.
And so it makes it a little bit easier for
them to organize, but it's a good demonstration of people power and
the kinds of things that you should be striking for.
I mean workers rights are not protected.
We need more funding for the N L R B.
For sure because pretty much why they're striking is not like hey we
just need to raise given current inflation and rent increases.
It's also they have a history of not collective bargaining not participating
in the process as they should.
And so it's about correcting that as well, but
it's a little bit easier to do when you can just send everybody an email blast.
Yeah.
Yeah, that that is definitely true. So yeah, we have to remember that while,
you know, me as a person who covers this just in a broadcast capacity, I might
just mentally put this in the context of other movements that are going on.
There are specific characteristics to each of these that we should bear in mind.
So that's a great addition.
Thank you for that.
I want to give you just a little bit of what some involved in the strikers saying
one doctoral candidate says,
we're the ones who performed the majority of teaching and we're the ones
who performed the majority of the research were the backbone of the university.
And I have a hard time.
Senior operations are gonna be maintained with us on the picket line.
1/4 year doctoral candidate in english says he makes $2500 a month
before taxes and pays more than half of that in rent for his graduate housing,
Says others make far less adding it came to this because it was untenable.
You know, I tried just for comparison's sake, try to remember what,
because I was a ta at the University of Texas at Austin,
it was comparable to that and that was not recently, that was like 15 years ago.
And the cost of living in Austin while high back then was nowhere near what it is
in California right now.
That is just not livable at that point.
And so I totally understand why they would you know, get involved in this and
with that, with that many people striking, I don't know how they break it.
I know that they're probably working behind the scenes as hard as they can
right now to figure out a way, but it seems like that's gonna be a tough road to
hoe Jessica Yeah, I don't think they're gonna be able to break this.
They're not, I mean, there are a lot of people with phds who are out of a job,
but it's gonna be difficult to find someone who's willing to scab on this many
teachers, that's a lot of scabs for them to find teachers,
professors, teaching assistants and all university staff, not only that, but
once people get back from the winter break.
I mean, now they're probably approaching final season now that it's thanksgiving,
but they're gonna want to collect tuition for the spring semester.
They're gonna want to figure this out before the holidays.
Yeah, 100%.
They can't afford to just like close up shop like Kanye's University or something.
This is slightly more significant.
And they don't have.
Nds I assume anyway with that said you know, as a person who worked in, you know,
I worked at multiple universities, I was a doctoral candidate and a T A.
Like, you know like all the support in the world to to them as they continue to
strike.
They say by the way they, the university, I guess to be fair, they say they value
the important and highly valued contributions of all these people and they
have been working to get an agreement, they're going to continue to work.
And I hope that something like that is true.