On Tuesday, Feb. 11, graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), went into a full wildcat strike. The reason: The compensation for their labor (which includes teaching, grading and office hours) is so low that graduate students are struggling to get by. A Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), striking students say, is necessary to reflect rising housing and food costs in one of the most expensive cities in the country. This strike didn’t come out of nowhere. For several months, COLA organizers have been fighting for the university to meet their demands to little success.
UCSC’s response to this strike has been nothing short of hostile. On Wednesday, Feb. 12, a massive police force made 17 arrests during the demonstrations. Two days later, on Friday, Feb. 14, after students showed no signs of stopping the strike, University of California President Janet Napolitano issued an ultimatum: Stop the strike by midnight on Friday, Feb. 21, or everyone participating will be fired.
University administrators at UCSC like to present themselves as friends of student workers, but don’t hesitate to silence students when they start speaking up. UCSC’s actions against the graduate students striking for a necessary COLA are straight out of the union busting playbook. If the administration – the bosses – act like they’re the good guys and portray student activists as “going too far” or acting out of hand, it’s much easier to force students to settle for a “compromise” that only benefits the administration without making them look bad.
To put it simply: Just because administrators at universities like to host fun events where they show students they’re friendly and approachable doesn’t mean they’re acting in students’ best interests. They won’t hesitate to prove this the second things go sour by sending droves of armed police officers to beat peaceful protestors or threatening to fire hundreds of students who need their jobs to survive.
If there’s anything to be learned from watching the strike unfold on UCSC’s campus, it’s that solidarity with fellow students is the only way to make sure our needs are met. Even a one-time concession, like a wage increase, doesn’t mean that next time there’s an issue on campus, the administration will be eager to help.
When student workers stand together, university administrations have no choice but to work with them. If every student worker on Hofstra’s campus got fired for organizing, how long would it take for the University to grind to a halt? Fellow workers are your friends, but the boss never is, no matter how much they try to act like it. Student workers need to stand together on campuses like UCSC and Hofstra. It’s long past time to accept bad working conditions and impossibly low pay just because we’re students.
UCSC students voted to continue the strike through Napolitano’s deadline. They’re refusing to cave to the administration’s scare tactics and threats, remaining steadfast in fighting for a necessary COLA. Every student struggling with too-low wages and an unresponsive administration should be taking notes on the UCSC strike. Their struggle is our struggle, too.
Elliot Colloton is a sophomore sociology major, labor studies minor, and co-organizer of the Hofstra Student Workers Coalition.
