WESTSIDE COVER STORY : Working-Class Uprising : Feeling Exploited, UCLA Grad Students Plan 2-Day Walkout as Part of Unionizing Bid

Joe Nevins, a graduate student and teaching assistant at UCLA, knows what it means to carry a heavy load.

During the last academic quarter, the 31-year-old Venice resident was on a bus to school by 7 a.m., reviewing material for an undergraduate course he instructs. By 8 a.m. he was in his office, grading the papers of 60 students and preparing notes for two morning classes. Then followed 90 minutes of office time for students. In the afternoon, his chores included photocopying, meeting with professors and preparing for future classes. Evenings also were spent working--sometimes two or three hours, grading papers and tutoring.

And these were just Nevins’ teaching duties.

His own course work in geography included reading one book a week and writing numerous papers, scrutinizing articles and researching his dissertation. Now, for his doctoral exams in June, Nevins still must read more than 20 books, while coping with his duties as a teaching assistant in a new course this quarter--grading hundreds of papers and tests for more than 100 undergraduate students.

“The end of the spring quarter is going to be hell,” said Nevins, who was so tired one evening last quarter that he fell asleep on his bus heading home and missed his stop. “There’s not much I can do to prepare for it--you just have to do it and forget about sleeping.”

It is a common lament among many UCLA graduate student employees, who claim they are the backbone of the university’s teaching and research--instructing students, monitoring experiments, designing courses and tests. Despite the contributions, they say, their work goes unrecognized and inadequately compensated by an education system that is slashing budgets and encourages professors to pursue activities--such as publishing and cutting-edge research--that bring in grants and government funds.

Since 1993, the 3,300 members of UCLA’s Student Assn. of Graduate Employees (SAGE)--who fund their studies by working as teaching and research assistants, readers and tutors--have sought to unionize at UCLA. Only through collective bargaining, they say, will they have rights over a host of wage, workload and health-care issues. They are so passionate about organizing, in fact, that on Wednesday they plan to stage an unprecedented two-day walkout, hoping to achieve through a large-scale strike what they have been unable to win from scattershot demonstrations.

But as determined as some student employees are about unionizing, UCLA’s Administration is equally adamant about preventing it.

The students, administrators say, have no need for a union, do not qualify as a union and have grand illusions about what one will bring them. School officials also say the teaching and research that students perform under faculty direction is primarily for their own educational benefit and does not qualify as work. And most important, perhaps, they contend that by unionizing, graduate student workers would compromise the delicate “mentoring” relationship with their professors--turning it instead into something rigid and contentious.

“Unions are effective when there is abuse or for protecting jobs that involve an entire lifetime,” said Kathleen Komar, associate dean of UCLA’s graduate division. “Our students are in apprentice training for an academic career with a turnover rate of five to six years. They are here because they are students, that is their primary goal at the university.”

Far from exploiting them, UCLA administrators said they have done everything possible to protect the rights and privileges of their graduate student employees. They cite a 3% pay increase in January for graduate student workers, exclusion from a 5% faculty pay cut in 1994, a $2,155 annual fee credit initiated in the fall of 1991 and a yearly $560 medical insurance exemption that began in 1990. Teaching assistants make $13 to $14 per hour.

But the graduate students, who feel they best know their working conditions, clearly disagree.

“We get taxed, and spend at least half of our time . . . working as employees,” said Mike Miller, a graduate student in history and member of SAGE. “Still the university classifies us as students and refuses to recognize the important labor we provide. We have no input into the terms of our employment; our job description is totally dictated to us by them.”

Many graduate student workers say that budget cuts have brought burgeoning pressures--rising class sizes, less departmental supervision and increasing financial hardship--over which they have no control. So, they say, they want a contract that outlines firm job descriptions, fair grievance guidelines for employees, better protection against discrimination and harassment, and safeguards against unfair labor practices.

The student workers have escalated their campaign in the past year by sending dozens of letters and e-mail messages to administrators, holding demonstrations and a sit-in inside the chancellor’s office, and once protesting by teaching their classes for a week outside school buildings.

On a recent morning, John Medearis, a graduate student in political science, stood in front of the University Research Library gathering petition signatures from undergraduates. A soft-spoken man, Medearis wears a button that summarizes his position. “The university works because we do,” it says.

“It’s hard to get undergraduates involved,” said Medearis, who points out that many are commuters who do not have a stake in the everyday life of the campus. “But we have to make it clear that we have shared interests with them.”

Those shared interests, such as class size, are at the heart of the organizing effort, he said. And they are expected to be central to the debate that will come during this week’s walkout--one that promises to shut down most of UCLA’s undergraduate classes.

The walkout, which organizers claim will involve most of SAGE’s 3,300 members, comes amid a nationwide movement by student workers at other universities seeking unionization and collective-bargaining rights.

In recent days, student employees at Yale staged a one-week walkout, and teaching assistants at the University of Kansas voted to form a union. In recent years, student researchers and teachers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the State University of New York have completed contracts through collective bargaining. Others institutions--such as the University of Florida, the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon and the University of Wisconsin--have operated for years under union agreements with their graduate student employees.

UCLA’s graduate student workers have closely followed the activities at UC Berkeley, where an organizing effort began in 1983. The Berkeley graduate student employees filed a petition for collective-bargaining rights in 1984 with California’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), which interprets the state’s education and labor laws. The board ruled against the student workers in 1989, citing the importance of academics over the economic demands of a specific work force. The state Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 1992 and refused to recognize teaching and research assistants as unionized employees. However, lower courts have recognized other graduate students--acting instructors, readers and tutors--at UC Berkeley in their efforts to unionize, and those groups have since negotiated contracts with the school.

Since then, other UC campuses, such as Santa Barbara, Davis, Santa Cruz and San Diego--all with help from the United Auto Workers union--have organized and are pushing for collective-bargaining rights for all student workers. (The union was approached by students for help in organizing and primarily serves as an adviser.)

In May, 1994, more than half of UCLA’s student employees presented PERB with signatures asking for union representation. But the university refused to recognize the union. That threw the issue back to PERB, which will now consider the union’s eligibility under state law. The hearing will take place in the fall, launching what promises to be years of litigation.

UCLA officials have a variety of explanations for their stance.

One is a belief that universities--cash-strapped and with a primary mandate of educating students--are quite different from profit-driven corporations whose workers have historically needed union protection.

Some professors say unionization also would upend the normally nurturing relationship between students and their professor-mentors by making union guidelines too imposing a part of education.

“Graduate studies are a very individual experience, and I don’t know that a union should set what a general standard should be,” said Paul Micevych, an anatomy professor at UCLA. “All students are not the same, and we must have the flexibility to tailor-make a graduate program for each student.”

But those who argue for unionization say that collective-bargaining rights will increase dialogue, making conflicts easier to resolve, and ultimately improving the relationships between students and teachers.

“To argue that collective bargaining will harm the student-mentor relationship implies there are no disputes,” said Margo Feinberg, a UAW-hired attorney representing students in their unionizing efforts. “But there is tension--sexual harassment, increased workloads, not getting wages on time--and collective bargaining is the best method for resolving these problems.”

Added Feinberg: “The students’ bargaining will take place with the university’s administrators, not their mentors.”

UCLA officials say the university has already set up a network of academic grievance procedures that graduate students have not fully explored. Students with complaints are currently able to voice their concerns to the university’s academic senate, their own departments or the graduate division office.

“Despite our open-door policy, there doesn’t seem to be (widespread) unhappiness and unrest,” said the UCLA graduate division’s Komar. In any given year, she said, her office comes across about a dozen easy-to-resolve complaints and only two serious incidents requiring extensive intervention.

But graduate student employees say their planned walkout and efforts at unionization are more than enough evidence of their discontent.

Many say they are fearful of filing grievances through normal university channels for fear of being branded as troublemakers. Indeed, in a world of shrinking post-graduate opportunities, many students fear a negative word from a former mentor can sink job prospects that already are furiously competitive.

“Most people don’t file complaints with the university,” said Jennifer MacFarlane, a 31-year-old graduate student in history. “We really need a place to talk about our problems without fear, and we feel vulnerable talking to those in higher positions. They have power over you at all times. These are the people writing your recommendations.”

Alex Levine, a sixth-year graduate student in physics, said that during his second year he found himself working as a teaching assistant in a course for nearly 30 hours a week--10 hours more than university-mandated limits. He graded all the homework, the midterm and the final exam. The professor, Levine said, gave the lectures.

At the end of the quarter, Levine said, he complained to the vice chairman of the physics department. The professor was asked to contribute more toward teaching the next quarter, but Levine noticed only a minimal change.

“It’s a relatively formal undertaking to complain (at a higher level), and I didn’t know whose enemy I would become,” he said. “Unless it’s an extreme case, it’s just not worth it. We’re only here for a short time anyway, so you learn to put up with more.”

Another student, who wished to remain unidentified, said she worked for a professor who habitually assigned tasks unrelated to the job to teaching assistants. Students were asked to stand in line for movie tickets; the husband of one student employee was continually asked to help out with office computer problems.

“It’s impossible to deny some of the requests,” said the student. “There are six, seven people waiting for your job, and you feel you’ll be replaced if you don’t do something. So you end up doing a lot of stuff you don’t want to do.”

Some university officials question the UAW’s involvement in the unionization drive. “It’s hard to believe that the UAW is going to understand the situation better than the faculty who are involved,” Komar said.

But student organizers say they first approached the UAW for advice on organizing tactics, negotiating strategies and legal help. The union, they said, provides students with an office and technical assistance but does not require dues.

“University administrators are so paternalistic--they are insulted that the students are organizing so they say it must be happening from an outside force,” said Mary Ann Massenburg, the UAW’s chief contact with SAGE. “Believe me, the students know what they want, they don’t need anyone to tell them what their workplace problems are.

“These students are in there jobs for six to 10 years--the average time period of an American worker’s job. There are very few workplaces anymore where people are staying 30 years in one job, much less 10 years.”

Although a number of leaders in SAGE will soon be graduating, many believe they have planted the seeds for future recognition of a union.

“The university believes they can wait us out--that the ones running the show will soon be leaving,” said teaching assistant Nevins, who plans to graduate in the fall. “But we have institutionalized the culture of the union (among graduate student employees).

“We’re not going to disappear,” he added.