{"id":10900,"date":"2023-08-14T02:12:18","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T06:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=10900"},"modified":"2023-08-21T01:31:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T05:31:27","slug":"get-ready-for-a-fiery-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/08\/get-ready-for-a-fiery-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Get ready for a fiery fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

H<\/span>igher education is undergoing a “post-pandemic\u201d organizing and strike wave<\/a>. The wave of strikes and organizing campaigns<\/a> have been sparked by outrage at enormous funding cuts, administrative bloat and the enrichment of university presidents and other high-level administrators, the elimination of liberal arts programs and DEI initiatives, massive rates of student debt, workload creep (and, during the pandemic, worse), adjunct precarity, and depressed wages for faculty across the board.<\/p>\n

The fall of 2022 witnessed 17 strikes among higher education faculty and graduate students, and no fewer than 15 during the spring of 2023. Most of these actions resulted in significant gains, showing that academics can fight and win higher pay for faculty, security for contingent employees, and fellowships and other support for graduate workers.<\/p>\n

The context of these efforts includes slashes to public university funding and the increasingly corporate priorities of even ostensibly public universities and their administrators.<\/p>\n

Key to faculty and graduate student organizing has been the capacity of organized university workers to reach across traditional divides among full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty, part-time contingent faculty\u2014who teach well more than half of all students at most universities\u2014and graduate employees. Undergraduate involvement has been a source of strength as well.<\/p>\n

In the past, administrators were able to convince these categories of workers that they had divergent interests, with full-time faculty benefiting from the labor of adjuncts and graduate students and contingent faculty feeling exploited by their more secure peers. While each group does have some specific needs and priorities, administrators, who effectively use such differences to divide and conquer our campuses, are the ultimate beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

The recent wave of labor activity on campuses<\/a> has challenged those divisions and shown the power of solidarity. In this article, I review the events of 2022-2023 to show that there is significant cause for confidence moving into the new academic year for academic workers of all ranks. The article covers faculty and graduate student strikes and graduate student organizing drives to draw lessons for effective struggle.<\/p>\n

Consider the following timeline:<\/p>\n

2022 strikes and actions<\/h4>\n

New School Adjunct Strike, November 16-December 9, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n

Part-time faculty, organized in the United Auto Workers, at the New School in New York struck on November 16. Ninety percent of faculty there are adjuncts (part-time, contingent faculty), so the strike effectively shut down the campus. This was their first strike in the University\u2019s history and to date the longest adjunct strike in the United States.<\/p>\n

As Teen Vogue<\/em> (that bastion of progressive journalism) reported<\/a>, Undergraduate support was crucial to their effort. During one march, students sang \u201cSolidarity Forever\u201d as they marched into and occupied the University Center on December 8. Undergraduates pay as much as $79 thousand per year in tuition and fees; very little of that amount went to supporting part-time faculty. Students vowed to continue their occupation until the administration offered higher pay, health care, and retirement benefits to all striking employees. Up to this point, in one of the most expensive regions in the country, these faculty were paid only $4300 per course, poverty wages that are substandard even for adjunct pay in general.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the New School was founded in 1919 as a progressive institution influenced by the ideas of pragmatist John Dewey.<\/p>\n

At the New School, the student-led student-faculty solidarity group aimed to transform the university structurally, urging pay raises, issuing no-confidence votes in the university administration, and coming out against austerity and layoffs.<\/p>\n

After striking until December 9, the faculty overall won<\/a> a pay raise of 13 percent over three years; some of the most underpaid saw a raise of 31 percent. These raises came after the University\u2019s initial offer of a paltry 1.5 percent. In addition, a post-strike coalition was formed to establish a cooperative university. They founded a community center that provided art supplies, books, food, office supplies, essentials like tampons and condoms, and community lunches. New courses about the struggle, such as one called \u201cSpaces of Struggle,\u201d were created in the wake of the strike.<\/p>\n

University of California Graduate Student Strike, November 7-December 23, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n

In a historic act and the largest U.S. labor action in 2022, 48 thousand UAW-organized graduate workers\u2014teaching assistants, researchers, and tutors\u2014struck for six weeks across ten campuses. One key issue was the high cost of housing.<\/p>\n

The strike disrupted classes and exams and basically ground all university life to a halt<\/a> as \u201cthousands formed picket lines and staged noisy protests to demand better pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a landmark deal<\/a>, the graduate workers won<\/a> raises from $22 thousand to $35 thousand per year. Their low pay had resulted in thousands of graduate workers ending up in grinding debt. The wage increases amounted to up to 66 percent over the two-and-a-half-year contract.<\/p>\n

While the contract fell short of what some organizers<\/a> hoped for, it was a significant victory. Rutgers professor and organizer Todd Wolfson commented<\/a> about the California strike, \u201cThe strike is absolutely an object lesson and it mobilizes people. It\u2019s part of the larger wave of worker militancy that\u2019s impacting higher education.\u201d<\/p>\n

University of California doctoral student Rafael Jaime, president of UAW 2865, observed,<\/p>\n

These agreements redefine what is possible in terms of how universities support their workers, who are the backbone of their research and education enterprise \u2026 They ultimately paved the way for the now-ratified contract\u00a0 \u2026 organizing students in solidarity with unionized workers on campus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other 2022 strikes included a four-week strike<\/a> in April at Indiana University, leading to an agreement with a number of reforms benefiting graduate workers. At Columbia University, a deal<\/a> reached on January 2 after a ten-week strike by student workers in fall 2021 won a six percent raise.<\/p>\n