Graduate Students at UC Berkeley Strike

The union of UC Berkeley graduate student instructors and researchers went on strike Thursday to win recognition as official employees, forcing many class sessions to be canceled less than three weeks before final exams.

The striking students said that nearly 70% of classes were shut down. University officials called the figure “a gross exaggeration,” but would not say how many sessions were canceled.

Graduate students picketed at UC San Diego in solidarity with the Berkeley group, and UC Santa Cruz teaching assistants and researchers seeking employee status were set to strike Monday.

At Berkeley, several hundred members of the Assn. of Graduate Student Employees, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers, marched and chanted in a chilling drizzle outside campus entrances.

Bearing signs reading “I’ll Go Back to Work When UC Says It’s Work,” and “No Employment Without Representation,” the students said they plan to picket every day until the university enters into a collective bargaining agreement with their union.

University officials, who pledged to keep the campus running during the strike, said that a decision to recognize the students as employees can be made only at the UC systemwide level. But such recognition would contradict state law and poison the relationship between graduate students--for whom the teaching positions are a type of paid apprenticeship--and their professors, administrators say.

“I think the general climate of the university for graduate students is going to be hurt by this (strike),” said Joseph Duggan, associate dean of the graduate division.

About 3,500 graduate students work as instructors and researchers at Berkeley. As budget cuts force the university to reduce its faculty, these students play an increasingly important role in the education of UC undergraduates.

Without a collective bargaining agreement, union leaders say, the university could alter benefits and working conditions at any time, hurting the quality of education.

“We realize that this is a major disruption for the university community and we regret that the administration has forced us to take these steps,” union spokesman Andy Cowell said in front of usually bustling Sproul Plaza, where only a trickle of students braved the picket lines.

“AGSE is prepared to stay out here until we get a reasonable proposal from the administration that will protect the quality of long-term education in California,” Cowell said.

Undergraduates expressed fears that the strike would hurt their grades this semester. Some professors held informal classes off campus so students would not have to cross picket lines.

The university has said it will dock the pay and prorate health insurance premiums of striking instructors, and has hinted that it might not rehire striking teaching assistants and researchers next semester.