UC Berkeley: Action on Wednesday

Noon, Oct. 27 – Sather Gate at UC Berkeley.

from those who use it:

The Academic Student Employees (ASEs) in UAW 2865 – that means all of the GSIs, readers, and tutors on all UC campuses across the state – have been denied a fair contract since negotiations with the administration began over the summer.  The UC is pushing an effective pay cut – a “raise” that is below the projected inflation rate – and refusing to increase childcare subsidies (which are currently $450/semester, hardly enough for even a month of childcare).

Undergraduates who have experienced fee hikes know the feeling.  With yet another fee hike on the table for the next Regents meeting (Nov. 16), this trend toward forcing its own students into poverty has no end in sight, and now graduate students are under attack.  Fee hikes and denial of a fair contract are two sides of the same coin: austerity measures.

Just when you thought the UC administration was the only enemy on campus, we find out that the GSIs’ own union bargaining team is giving them the runaround.  The final day of contract bargaining is this Wednesday, Oct. 27.

Grads: Will we stand back and let a panel of bureaucrats – very few of whom are actually GSIs themselves – collaborate with the UC and cut our pay and childcare subsidies, already well below those at comparable public institutions?

Undergrads: Will we let the UC continue to implement austerity measures against students on our own campus?  Fee hikes and denial of fair contracts are two sides of the same coin!

Workers: Will we really allow the UC to get away with this charade?  CUE/Teamsters have been without a contract for over two years now.  Now it’s UAW on the chopping block.  We saw the onslaught against AFSCME bus drivers earlier this semester, as well as the assault on UPTE last fall.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

This Wednesday, as the UAW bargaining team collaborates with the administration in denying GSIs, tutors, and readers a living wage, we fight back.

Meet at noon at Sather Gate and we will hold a brief march followed by a grade-in, publicly demonstrating the invisible work that GSIs, readers, and tutors do on a daily basis.

But this is not just about GSIs – this is about you!  All grads, undergrads, and workers must come out to fight these austerity measures, for this is only their latest guise.  On Wednesday, we fight back.

Fee hikes and denial of fair contracts are two sides of the same coin!

Those who produce and use the university fight back!

Implement austerity measures where they belong: on the superfluous administrative-managerial class!