UAW 2865: Introduction to the Contract The current UAW 2865 agreement was written in 2014 as a binding arrangement between the graduate student body and the University. It applies to persons who are currently or eligible to be TAs, GSIs, readers or academic tutors, and is restricted to grievances with regards to teaching-related employment. Specifically, GSRs gain no direct benefit from the existence of this document; workload management and expectations of research productivity lie solely within the discretion of the department, the thesis committee, and the thesis advisor. While it is not necessarily beneficial for those parties to enact unfair labor practices, it is often an unfortunate byproduct of the competitive academic environment that students end up in compromised situations. Previous negotiations between the UAW and the University have brought guarantees on resources to help facilitate students’ endeavors towards research and teaching. Some examples include support facilities present to ensure student well being and comfort while on campus. Student Health Services and the CAPS team are available to assist students with issues concerning their overall health. Also, many avenues of recreational and physical engagement have also become available to help reduce the negative impacts and atrophied states of persistent research. However, subtle and deeper elements of stress often manifest in a research environment which may not be easily detectable. While enhancing the University’s ability to produce high-quality research, systematic long-term exposure to the pressures of research in competitive environments can generally be harmful to student welfare. Our relationships with faculty advisors and academic employees often contributes to this stress and, to the extent that the University carries concern for its students, must be acknowledged as detracting from the intellectual and communal well-being of our student body. Alleviating students from the responsibility of acknowledging the direction of their faculty advisors would counteract the University’s mission. However, the reciprocal acknowledgement of GSRs as persons with needs outside of this competitive context is necessary to prevent egregious violations of both the respect for their rights and the maintenance of their health. Accountability towards the maintenance of a healthy intellectual culture in a research setting is essential for this cause. While teaching, the personal relationship between advisor and student is alleviated in terms of direct financial responsibilities. The union contract exists to designate an alternate institutional relationship between the student and the University. However, as GSRs, the relationship with the University is somewhat subverted and distributed amongst the academic bodies described earlier. It is essential that we students employed by the University under this latter arrangement also benefit from protection, by our union, from potential unfair labor practices by faculty. This applies especially to those practices which may pose a detriment to their health or personal security, whether social and human in nature, or concerning the integrity and security of their intellectual product. The language of the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) opens with two explicit statements: -”... have a fundamental interest in the development of harmonious and cooperative labor relations between the public institutions of higher education and their employees” -”It is the policy of the State of California to encourage the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, and learning through the free exchange of ideas among the faculty, students, and staff” To these ends, the University structure protects those within it from outside political influence so that the intellectual product of its community can remain independent of social, governmental, or institutional restrictions. As students, our experience and intellectual development is overseen primarily by faculty; we do not directly benefit from this luxury. However, faculty themselves do find freedoms in transacting for their own incentives - scientifically, intellectually, socially, and financially - within the purview of protection in the University structure. We are all aware of the many benefits of tenure. Under HEERA, it is formally stated that the University declares all persons working towards achieving their academic goals ‘professional employees’; also, all those who are responsible for the oversight of other employees (regardless of title) are declared ‘supervisory employees’. Those with any component of supervisory responsibilities, including the ability to reward or punish others with independent discretion, are given a distinguished status from those who do not. This ambiguity is central to the distinction among GSRs who handle responsibilities concerning mentorship of other students or lab management. As TAs, our interactions with other employees are primarily procedural and do not require the continued exercise of discretion. Research in a collaborative environment dramatically departs from this setting, and it is up to each of us to determine how the expectations of our lab environment and own contributions to its upkeep should be distributed between the responsibilities of professional or supervisory employees. That said, all academic employees are guaranteed the right to participate in union activity towards delivering a communal voice for better conditions. It is also the University’s responsibility, as stated in HEERA, to provide means by which violations detrimental to student wellbeing, as declared by the student body and others, can be brought forth to the University, to PERB, and to outside bodies of arbitration, addressed, and prohibited if necessary. As of now, our union is only able to act towards this end with regards to issues of teaching. It is essential to extend the luxuries of political insulation to cover GSRs under the scope of union representation so that faculty themselves cannot disproportionately benefit from students’ labor at their expense. It is important to recognize that the integrity of the relationship between students and their faculty mentors is not in question. However, faculty will only ensure the comfort of their students to the extent required by the University administration. This interaction is only enforced when specific issues are brought forward and addressed on a per-instance basis. The deferment of responsibility by faculty to the University structure imposes a severe imbalance between GSRs’ rights of privilege to the virtues in HEERA and the rights of faculty to extort the efforts of their students. Without union protection, GSRs with grievances are effectively isolated and bureaucratically handled by the University under terms which are only superficially in our favor. The overarching understanding that completing a degree is under the sole jurisdiction of their faculty mentor renders the student powerless in directing their own progress. In negotiating a contract for GSRs, we gain two main advantages: 1. protection from faculty interests that are not also directly beneficial to the student 2. guarantees that developing intellectual property is protected without retribution or theft While concerns between each student and their faculty mentor are more personal, the University structure itself (under HEERA) is responsible for addressing any disputes arising from the imbalance of power. In light of the competitive pressures faced by faculty, the need for an accelerated pace of progress in research is easily justified in a global academic context. As trainees, we are ill equipped to understand the depth of this pressure and are therefore susceptible to exploitation. The absence of mechanisms, at the University level, which protect us from faculty serves only to perpetuate those behaviors and practices which harm us. Responsibilities of student well-being are within the domain of the Regents - by their enactment of University-wide policies of health, safety, employment, and general practice - and the battle for student rights is one which exists solely between these two parties. The union is currently considering which strategies are best for negotiating this new agreement. Identifying practical and effective mechanisms will certainly benefit from any input the graduate student body can provide. GSR concerns are common knowledge among students; however, the lack of a centralized register for specific and common complaints serves to maintain the gap in perspective between how it looks like from the convenient perch of the University administration and how oppressive it can actually be in a research environment.