UC and UAW Local 2865 decide on grad student contract
By Samantha Masunaga
June 23, 2009 3:36 p.m.
The University of California recently reached a tentative agreement with the academic student union UAW Local 2865, resulting in a new contract without wage increases for graduate student employees.
UAW Local 2865 represents more than 12,000 student employees who work as teaching assistants, tutors and readers at nine UC campuses, according to a statement released by the union.
Details of the new contract will be released statewide at the end of the month, after each UC campus ratifies the agreement, said Christine Petit, president of UAW Local 2865.
The ratification vote will take place at UCLA on June 24 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in front of the Young Research Library and on June 25 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in front of Boelter Hall in the Court of Sciences.
In addition to the lack of a wage increase, this year’s agreement is also unique because it was reached months earlier than in past negotiations, which usually conclude in October or November, said Scott Armstrong, former financial secretary of the union and a graduate student at UC Berkeley.
Furthermore, negotiators from both parties bypassed the initial proposal process to reach this early agreement.
“My guess is that, given the budget crisis and the fact that many union resources are being taken up with the postdoc negotiations, UAW 2865 didn’t feel that it was in a strong enough position to bargain with the university on the TAs, readers and tutors contract,” said Michelle Gallagher, former unit chair for the union at UCLA. “It turns out resources are still largely being diverted to the postdocs, and thus the grad students are sacrificed for yet another round of bargaining.”
Gallagher added that the zero wage increase might have been an attempt by the union to stave off a possible pay cut for the graduate student employees by the university.
“The university might have considered trying to negotiate for a pay cut, but I’m not sure it would be possible to pay TAs any less money given that we need to attract decent graduate students into the system,” she said. “The union is not in a strong enough position right now to make up the ground they have lost to inflation year after year.”
