Teaching Assistants Find Mixed Support on UCLA Campus

The small band of UCLA undergraduates wanted to show their solidarity with striking teaching assistants by marching through campus, trolling for student supporters.

They carried signs and they chanted slogans as they walked Friday through the bustling campus at noon to meet up with the strikers, who had chalked words of protest on the sidewalk: “No TA, No BA.”

Yet the sympathetic students managed to draw only eight others to their cause. “All movements start small,” said Asha Pickard, a 21-year-old theater major. “Next time we just have to do a better job getting the word out.”

That moment of futility symbolized the mixed effects of the statewide strike by University of California teaching assistants demanding recognition as a union.

You could see the disruption Friday at a UCLA literature discussion class whose TA had joined the strike. Only three of the 20 students showed up.

Because of the walkout, the students’ final assignment--a five-page paper comparing “A Thousand and One Nights” with one of Sophocles’ plays--had been reduced to an essay to be written in class.

“That makes life a lot easier for me,” said Bita Khatibi, an 18-year-old freshman.

But there was also evidence that numerous classes were continuing to operate, as the strikers and the university argued about what proportion of TAs were participating in the strike. UCLA officials estimated that only about 10% of the 1,300 TAs walked out. Strike organizers said the percentage was far higher.

At a time when most students are busy writing papers and studying for finals, the walkout was the last thing many wanted to hear about.

“I think they are selfish, extremely selfish,” said Anna Santos, 19, whose sociology TA is participating in the walkout. “I am annoyed. I understand what they want to do, but why are they hurting students? That’s not fair.”

Santos’ comments sparked a lively discussion among the six students seated at an outdoor table on the north side of campus.

“It’s the university’s fault for not recognizing the teaching assistants,” said Jennifer Stafford, 19. “I don’t blame the TAs, I blame the university.”

The strike by the Student Assn. of Graduate Employees, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, began Tuesday in an effort to pressure the eight University of California campuses to grant union recognition.

The walkout was designed to hit the university just before finals--which begin this week--when it is most vulnerable to pressure.

UCLA Vice Chancellor Rory Hume said he had found “very few instances where grades will be delayed--only a few days to a week at the most.”

Connie Razza, a strike organizer and a teaching assistant, said organizers are confident that most TAs are honoring the strike because 87% statewide voted to authorize one.

On Thursday, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills) wrote a letter to UC President Richard Atkinson criticizing the university administration’s position not to recognize the union.

Berman, who while a member of the state Legislature wrote the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, said the law allows the university to recognize unions.

“It was the intent of the law to give California’s higher education employees the right to choose collective bargaining,” he said.

But in a written statement, Hume said that the “UCLA administration believes that imposing an employer-employee relationship between faculty and graduate students interferes with the mentoring which is the foundation of educational excellence and achievement at UCLA.”

That argument has only infuriated teaching assistants.

“We are responsible for 60% of the one-to-one time with students,” Razza said.

Teaching assistants do the bulk of the hands-on, small group teaching to freshman and sophomores, often leading discussions and laboratory sections that supplement large lecture courses.

They generally work about 20 hours a week during the nine-month academic year and receive an average stipend of $13,600 as well as health insurance and a discount on graduate student fees, a package that UC administrators say is one of the most generous offered by any university.

Professor Charles Lynn Batten, who has lost two of his four TAs to the strike, said he is trying to minimize the effects of the walkout on his 160-student sophomore English class.

“I’m not sure how we are going to handle the grading. I’m going to have to do a lot of grading myself,” he said. The quarter’s final paper--required to be six to eight pages--was due at the end of class that day.

“It is an issue that right thinking, moral people can easily disagree” about, Batten said. “I don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.”

Sociology lecturer Mark Jepson, standing on the grass outside his classroom, also had divided feelings about the strike.

“It creates a hardship for everyone,” he said. “I’m sympathetic to the labor issues, but this is also going to cause some hardships for students. Grades have to be done.”

One of Jepson’s students, 27-year-old Karl Nordeen from Alaska, found a way to turn the crisis into credit.

“I’m going to write a paper about the strike,” he said.