Response Mixed on UCLA Teaching Assistants Strike

UCLA graduate students who help teach many of the classes at the university picketed entrances to the Westwood campus Monday, urging students to stay home as they launched a weeklong strike to win collective bargaining rights.

Many professors canceled classes or held lectures in apartments and coffeehouses in support of the strike, which organizers said was joined by more than half of the school’s 2,000 teaching assistants, readers and tutors who are seeking recognition as a union.

UCLA administrators said the strike’s impact was minimal, however, with a majority of graduate teaching assistants boycotting classes in only about 10 of the 72 programs in the College of Letters and Science.

The UCLA job action is the first step in a “rolling strike,” expected to be joined today by graduate students at UC San Diego, then spill over to UC Berkeley on Wednesday. Organizers said rallies also will be held at UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara.

At UCLA, the morning rush of pedestrian traffic on Bruin Walk was lighter than usual as about 75 striking TAs and undergraduate supporters rallied at the foot of the dorms. Students heading to campus met a sea of picket signs and protesters shouting, “Support your teachers, support the strike!”

Sympathetic undergraduates said the graduate students--who are each paid about $14,000 over nine months--deserve recognition because they are crucial to many courses.

“Most of my teachers have been TAs,” said Roxanne Bridges, a senior English major participating in the 9 a.m. rally. “It has become clear to me that TAs do all the work.”

“I believe the university will change its position based on . . . this strike,” said John Meaderis, who is on the executive board of the Student Assn. of Graduate Employees, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers. “They look intransigent, undemocratic and unreasonable. I think this is going to have an impact--if not immediately, very soon.”

But a two-day strike last year failed to persuade UCLA to grant the teaching assistants, tutors and readers collective bargaining rights. And school administrators said Monday’s action would not change their position.

“We believe the system that treats graduate students as [beginning teachers] is functioning and is the best one to deal with students over the long term,” said Executive Vice Chancellor Charles Kennel. “The relationship between faculty and students has an extra confrontational element to it when a union is involved.”

That stance did not dim the optimism of pickets along Westwood Boulevard.

“Everyone who comes by is aware of the strike, and we’ve had a few people turn around and go home,” said Christopher Thinnes, a 27-year-old TA in the English department. Thinnes said he puts in a 40- to 50-hour week grading papers and preparing lesson plans for a freshman English class but gets paid for only 20 hours. “We’re out here for a reason,” he said.

Some professors went to great lengths to avoid crossing the picket lines, often collaborating with students on alternative class sites.

An Asian American studies professor read from a textbook instead of lecturing, and a philosophy professor canceled his lecture. About 20 students in Sondra Hale’s Women Studies 110A seminar met in back of the Sunset Village dorm dining commons, which the strikers considered off campus.

“I think any group of people who are employed have a right to form a union,” Hale said . “I moved [the] class because I’m strongly in support of the strike, and I don’t understand why the university continues to be so intransigent.”

But on and off the campus, students and staff voiced mixed feelings about the disruption.

In a Westwood coffeehouse two blocks from the picket lines, Latin TA Tara Silvestri guided four students through a translation of Cicero. But Silvestri doubted that the protest would work. “I don’t think the effect will be as clear as [the association] would like,” she said.

On the sidewalk, psychology professor Curtis Hardin and the three TAs for his Social Psychology 145 class met over coffee and copies of Sigmund Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” Hardin supports the strike and wanted to stay off campus for his planning meeting with the TAs, two of whom did not support the protest. They said they will cross the picket lines later in the week to hold their discussion sections.

“I feel that graduate students are fairly compensated,” said Gregg Gold, a 42-year-old TA for Hardin’s class. “The university, within the constraints of declining budgets, has been making a maximum effort to pay graduate wages equal or superior to other universities.”

As the day went on, pickets cornered students rushing to class, stuffing fliers in their hands. But most students hurried by without changing their route.

“It’s kind of bad timing to have a strike,” said Melissa Lyons, 19, a music major. “It’s kind of hard when there are tests coming up, and this is our last chance to get final advice from our professors. I don’t have anything against unions, but I don’t feel strongly enough about it not to go to class.”