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Comment by baryphonic | Hacker News Reader

The problem from the university's perspective is that while $13M is a low-ish amount of money (by university standards), the university has no reason to believe it would "put the problem to bed." If the university backs down, the strikers will be able to dictate any terms they want in the future, and any such strikes (i.e. illegal ones) would certainly have many more participants. The disruption to university operations could be severe.

And this is why unions exist in the first place and make binding contracts - no one wants to make a deal with another party when the other will arbitrarily decide the deal isn't good anymore and act like fools contrary to the terms of the contract.

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Grad students at UCSC didn't arbitrarily think the deal they struck isn't good enough anymore, they never thought it was good enough in the first place. 83% of UCSC grad students felt the minimums outlined in the agreement, which was a UC wide agreement and not between UCSC and the UCSC grad students by the way, were insufficient for the growing rents in Santa Cruz.

This 13m number isn't arbitrary. In fact that $1400 per month bump is designed to put UCSC grad students in line with net compensation received by grad students at UC Riverside.

But at UCSC they do this every year.

Here's news on the strike from 2018: https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/05/strike-updates.html

Here's news on the strike from 2017: https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/01/strike-message.html

There's reason to believe that no matter what deal was reached, they would just strike again next year, to try to get more money. How much is enough?

I noticed your two links mention different unions striking; some further research might be important here. One of your links is not graduate students striking, but the union for skilled workers at UCSC. The other is a union-sanctioned strike during (I think) a contract negotiation year. Neither is representative of the assertion that graduate students strike every year.

Sure, not all strikes are officially in the name of the grad students, but (a) the unions act together, and (b) the grad students specifically have gone on strike 3 times since 2013.

Here's the strike from 2013, with grad students and service workers going on strike together: https://afscme3299.org/media/news/ucsc-service-workers-grad-...

The comments on this UCSC reddit thread discuss how the unions have been coordinating their strikes over the last 3 years: https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/ese6sz/to_everyone_wh...

Weren't they the ones who had to vote in the union in the first place? Seems like they should have figured out what they want from the union before giving it the power to negotiate a contract on their behalf.

83% of these grad students voted against this deal that the UAW negotiated on their behalf.

Right, but they voted to give the union the power to negotiate on their behalf without any checks. It seems too late then to change your mind once they have that power. I guess I don't understand how union politics work, but it might make sense to allow a union, but require majority vote for any major decisions.

Did the students know this beforehand and despite knowing this joined UCSC ?

Haha. As a former grad student, let me tell you: 1. you're almost always eligible for subsidized power/water because your pay is that low (24k when I went) 2. some of these programs admit 10 ppl a year and no more. What you're getting paid isn't the first cut. Getting in is the first cut.

Working with the right professor to shape your research agenda and future as a result, is the second cut.

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