When graduate teaching assistants strike, my work becomes impossible. I’m a professor at the University of California as we see the largest higher education strike in U.S. history. My 250 students — mostly new to UC San Diego this fall — have lost their teaching assistants to the picket line. They rely on TAs for feedback on their work, answers to their questions, and in-depth discussions of the course material in small group sections. While TAs strike, 250 students’ assignments languish unassessed. Final papers will come in next week. Student grades for the term are due in two weeks.
More than three weeks into the strike by 48,000 academic workers, a disaster is coming, but the University of California’s labor negotiations team seems in no hurry to get our TAs back into the classroom.
I have long seen the TAs struggle to stay in stable housing in a hot housing market. I see them take on second jobs just to make ends meet, dragging out the time they must stay in school to complete their Ph.D. research. Graduate workers facing high housing and child care costs can end up living in their cars, moving far from work and outrunning evictions. Nine out of 10 pay more than a third of their salary to rent; 1 in 20 have experienced homelessness, according to a UC study.
