By Suhauna Hussain | Los Angeles Times
UC Santa Cruz fired 54 graduate student wo/rkers who were on strike demanding higher pay to afford the area’s high cost of living.
As part of a “wildcat strike,” about 200 teaching assistants decided in December to withhold fall quarter grades after months of back and forth with campus administrators. They demanded an increase in pay of $1,412 a month. The strike is not backed by the union that represents the university’s graduate student employees.
Tension between student workers, the campus and University of California administrators heightened dramatically in recent weeks as talks floundered. Students escalated the grade strike in early February to a full work stoppage, declining to teach, hold office hours, conduct research or post grades. Seventeen students were arrested at a campus protest Feb. 12, and UC Santa Cruz and the UC president published a series of letters online over the last month warning student workers they would be disciplined if they failed to submit grades.
