Last week, the University of California, Santa Cruz rehired 41 graduate student workers fired in spring of this year for engaging in a cost of living adjustment wildcat strike. Resulting from their persistent protest against their dismissal, the reinstatement of these workers spotlights the power of collective, radical labor action within academia. So what does this mean for graduate students at UNC?
As we continue to ride out an ever-expanding pandemic made worse by UNC’s rejection of official health recommendations, a cresting economic recession and threats to cut university funding on top of stipends that fall well below Orange County’s living wage, the need for radical organizing could not be more urgent.
University administrations across the United States have pinned their hopes for the semester on designated “essential workers”: campus workers, contingent faculty, lower-level administrative staff and graduate student workers. Despite being deemed fundamental to the core operations of the University — and therefore the first to be forced to work in person — these jobs are also the least paid and least safe on campus. UNC international graduate workers have been furloughed, housekeepers forced to work in unsafe conditions and graduate teaching and research assistants across several departments are bearing the bulk of the in-person research and instructional load. As a result of racial capitalism, these contingent workers also tend to be disproportionately Black, Indigenous or people of color.
Tenured faculty, too, have reason to be scared beyond the threat of COVID-19. UNC and academia more broadly have been gutted in recent years, while academic freedom is being threatened by the creeping but immense influence of conservative think tanks that promote university programs for “public discourse” and the promotion of “American ideals and institutions.”
Even beyond these present threats at UNC, however, the success of labor organizing activities at UC Santa Cruz and across the country may invite questions as to why neither vulnerable workers nor tenured faculty have moved to strike at UNC. In detailing the capacity for direct action at UNC in comparison to successful direct action at UC Santa Cruz, we must consider that the UC System has two advantages that UNC does not. Unlike at UNC, public sector employees in the state of California have the legal right to strike. Additionally, California has no “right to work” legislation — "right to work” allows non-union members to enjoy all the benefits of unions without paying a cent to support the union or its efforts, effectively weakening unions and their capacity for direct action by disincentivizing union membership.
North Carolina, however, is a “right to work” state, and public sector employees cannot legally strike. In contrast, UC Santa Cruz only reinstated its graduate student workers because of a settlement reached in response to unfair labor practice charges filed by the union earlier this year. However, in North Carolina, anti-union laws have fatally damaged the ability of workers to unionize across the state. Campus workers, graduate student workers and staff — whose low wages leave them little financial security — are not legally allowed to strike to protect themselves, or they may lose their jobs.
Despite being eminently more secure, tenured faculty have thus far ignored calls to strike against UNC’s reckless campus reopening, from the Anti-Racist Graduate Worker Collective and others. In doing so, they side with the corporate University. By prioritizing their (imagined) job security over the lives and pay of lower paid workers, it is obvious that they and the University see students and workers as essentially transactional commodities — meeting the bottom line or ensuring the institution's survival is a priority far above saving health and lives.
Yet, workers and students on our own campus remind us that there are other wrongful acts that the UNC administration is already committing, such as creating unsafe working conditions and putting students’ lives at risk. While UC Santa Cruz graduate students demonstrated the value of unions and their legal rights, they also proved that risky, unsanctioned collective action can lead to significant wins — like $2,500 housing stipends, time-to-degree extensions and priceless cross-campus working-class solidarity.
The results of the UC Santa Cruz lawsuit demonstrate the essential claim of graduate student workers across the academy: universities literally cannot work without our labor, and threatening or firing graduate students is untenable. Without graduate student labor, most public universities would not be able to sustain the student body sizes they have now, because class sizes and the grading load would be too large to sustain. These are essential components to the University, as student tuition and housing rents remain their primary sources of funding. Second, this case sets a precedent for the rest of graduate student workers, regardless of the status of anti-labor laws in our respective states — even when the worst happens and the University fires such workers, graduate student workers have the capability to build disruptive direct actions and essential solidarities.
