Berkeley Grad Students End Strike, Will Return to Work

University of California graduate student instructors who struck for union rights but were unable to get administrators to budge will return to work next week, a spokesman said.

“As of next Tuesday, we will be returning to work and we will continue to pursue various strategies to put pressure on the university administration to recognize our union,” said Russ Paulsen, spokesman for the 1,100-member Assn. of Graduate Student Employees.

Paulsen said the decision to return to work was not a defeat, but was a response to bylaws that require a new strike vote each semester.

The university said that if students were not back at work by Tuesday, the first day of the new semester, they would be replaced.

“The university is now insisting that the campus return to normal and that we have classes taught at their assigned place and time,” said Debra Harrington, UC Berkeley’s manager of labor and employee relations.

The group began its strike in November, throwing a picket line around the campus and emptying classrooms in its first few days.

Talks were held and compromises discussed, but university officials refused the strikers’ main quest--recognition as a union.

During the strike, the group claimed the strike closed 70% of classes much of the time. University officials said the effect was far less. In some cases, it was difficult to determine what effect the strike was having because several professors moved classes off campus, teaching in their homes and in Berkeley’s ubiquitous coffee shops.

UC Berkeley has about 9,000 graduate students, about 4,000 of whom work as teaching and research assistants.