The United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union, which represents the UC workers, said on Monday night that the strike would continue on Tuesday. The strike has seen 48,000 college employees walk out on strike - the largest such strike at any academic institution in US history, according to the union.
Strikers marching the picket lines carried signs that read: “UAW on strike. Unfair labor practice.” Chants of “48,000 strong, we can fight all day long” were also heard.
The workers have demanded better pay; more benefits, especially for parents; and coverage of their public transit costs, accusing UC of bad-faith bargaining and effective wage cuts by refusing to increase wages as fast as inflation is rising.
UC Workers make an average of $24,000 a year - almost half of the cost of living in California, which has the third-highest cost of living of any US state. The striking workers have demanded their pay be increased to $54,000 per year.
“We are overworked and underpaid, and we are fed up,” Jamie Mondello, a 27-year-old psychology graduate student worker at UCLA and member of UAW Local 2865 and Student Researchers United, told the Los Angeles Times. “Our proposals bring everyone into a livable wage. We’re, as a whole, just asking to be treated with dignity. We really keep the UC running.”
Labor actions have increased in frequency and militancy in recent years in the US as a mixture of rising costs of living and other burdens such as student loan debt combined with safety issues like COVID-19 mitigation measures to push workers into bolder collective action. Labor unions representing service workers at coffee houses and grocery stores, as well as in warehousing operations like at Amazon, have grown rapidly.
In June, Bank of America executives gloated in an internal memo about the prospect of a recession, saying that “By the end of next year, we hope the ratio of job openings to unemployed is down to the more normal highs of the last business cycle.” That process has already begun, with the unemployment rate rising to 3.7% last month.