BERKELEY
Courtney Bither (History)
My name is Courtney Bither (they/them), and I am a 2nd year Ph.D. student in History at UC Berkeley running for the Bargaining Committee. With 59% of student researchers experiencing some form of discrimination or harassment while at UC, and 92% of student researchers unsure whether UC handles discrimination fairly, I am running to ensure that our contract protects Student Researchers.
I am familiar with the challenges and opportunities that present to unions working towards achieving their first contract. As a graduate student at Harvard, I organized around a third-party grievance procedure with the newly formed Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU). And while the HGSU Bargaining Committee ultimately accepted a contract without a third-party grievance procedure, the BC did win the first guaranteed raise in Harvard’s history and win a contract after Harvard negotiated in bad faith for nearly 2 years. Coming away from this experience, I am prepared for the challenges that UC may bring to us as a newly formed union, and I remain committed to organizing for protections from sexual harassment and discrimination. I will bring this commitment to the SRU Bargaining Committee. I am also committed to representing the concerns of Student Researchers and being fully transparent about the bargaining process.
I believe organized labor is powerful and can bring us protections—protections like back-pay with restitution for late pay, the right to safe working conditions in a pandemic, and protections from workplace harassment and discrimination. I also believe we, as organized Student Researchers, can influence the UC to calibrate wages to our cost of living and negotiate protections for international students and scholars.
I believe that what is possible is determined by workers, and I will treat our top priorities, such as protections for sexual harassment and discrimination and a living wage, as top priorities, not bargaining chips. Organizing for a contract is collective work, and if elected, I commit to consulting with students affected by the articles in our contract. I promise to bargain on student researchers’ terms and hold the line with administration.
Tarini Hardikar (Chemistry)
I am Tarini Hardikar, a fourth year student researcher in the chemistry department. I was one of Berkeley’s representatives on the strike committee during SRU’s fight for recognition last year, and I am eager to continue representing Berkeley as a member of the bargaining team.
Organizing our strike authorization vote was a transformative experience for me. Over the dozens of conversations I had with fellow researchers, I was heartened at how our time, energy, and sheer planning spread the word and built momentum. Each department had issues unique to their program while the underlying struggle of being a student researcher remained the same. We all come with different expectations from our union, with different experiences with organizing and acting together. What remains the same though, is the undeniable force we present when we bargain collectively. This force is what won SRU’s fight for recognition, and I am excited to see what we can achieve ahead, in an enforceable contract representing demands by thousands of researchers across the state. We can win a consistent pay schedule, raises, and cost of living adjustments for our stipends. We deserve concrete workplace protections against injury, discrimination, and harassment. And we must use our collective power to demand UC take concrete steps towards a more equitable and just community. It is crucial we support student parents with better support for dependents, that we build a safety net for international researchers, and that we continue working to demand cops off campus.
As I shared at Sproul Plaza in the fall term during one of our recognition rallies, I don’t like that our workplace conditions are so thoroughly controlled and determined by our advisors. Our rights should not be dependent on the benevolence of our bosses. As an international student, this potential volatility is especially unsettling to me, because what is at stake is my stay in the country, on top of my job security. Therefore, I am particularly keen to win protections against harassment and discrimination at work. I am also disappointed by UC’s response to efforts to reduce UCPD’s scope on our campus, and am eager to try to utilize our 17000+ strength to gain headway on that front.
I would love to be a representative for the Berkeley campus and organize towards winning these rights and protections. With postdocs, GSIs, readers, and tutors also bargaining in the coming months, we are in a particularly powerful position to get a great contract. I am committed to hearing everyone’s thoughts and hopes about our contract. I have a long track record of organizing in my department and with my experience being on the strike committee, I believe I have the perseverance and skills to be a member of the SRU bargaining team.
Jean-Luc Watson (EECS)
I am a 4th year SR in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) department, with research on embedded systems and applied cryptography. I’m seeking a position on the bargaining team because I believe this contract will be the single most impactful change for SRs that come to UC long after we’ve graduated and left. Some SRs see the union as a far-off group that they have little control over. But through a high-participation bargaining campaign, with strong communication and integration of feedback throughout the bargaining process, I hope to not only win a historic first contract but also build an even stronger union where everyone understands that SRs *are* the union.
Berkeley SRs make UC one of the best research institutions in the world, but at a huge personal opportunity cost. My priority on the bargaining team will be to ensure that the time that SRs dedicate to their research is not rewarded with economic burden and unacceptable working conditions.
The cost of living was extremely high when I first moved to Berkeley, and hasn’t stopped growing since. SRs here are in urgent need of better wages that match the cost of the area. A key area of concern is rent burden — half of my paycheck goes to rent each month, increasing each year while my salary stagnates. Given the broad absence of campus housing, we *must* find solutions for SRs renting in the city.
Seeking recourse against harassment, discrimination, or bad working conditions as an SR is particularly scary; your advisor, department, and the university hold your livelihood and academic career in their hands. I want to make sure that SR grievances will be taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand, that an eventual contract will have strong measures for independent arbitration, and that SR research positions are safe from arbitrary dismissal or retribution.
This is our best opportunity to make sure our worth to the UC is matched by the benefits and protections of a strong contract. Let’s make it so!
– Jean-Luc
DAVIS
Ximena Anleu Gil (Plant Biology)
Ximena Anleu Gil (she/her)
I am a fourth-year PhD student in the plant biology graduate group running for the SRU bargaining team. I am running because I want to continue fighting for SRs to get the contract we deserve. I have been organizing alongside my coworkers with SRU for 2 years, since we were circulating the climate survey. I am incredibly inspired by our fight for recognition and how we were able to coordinate a strategic campaign in order to make the UC take back unreasonable and inane arguments against our work and dignity. We did this and now it’s time to think back about why we came together to form a union in the first place.
Poverty, inequality, and unjust conditions are present in our UCD community and workplaces. Organizing for SRU and being part of the strike committee allowed me to witness firsthand how far the university is willing to go to protect the unilateral control it yields over its workers instead of helping us solve problems in our community. If the university won’t take care of us, we must do what is necessary to take care of ourselves. That’s why I want to be in the bargaining team because I am committed to fighting for a first contract that protects every single SR and SR family. We need a contract that includes meaningful wage increases that respond to the booming inflation rates, ensures no SR is rent-burdened, and includes urgent protections against bullying, harassment, and discrimination. As an international student, I will also fight for a contract that includes our voices and concerns. I commit to ensuring that this contract campaign brings as many of our coworkers into the process as possible and that whatever agreements we come to are overwhelmingly approved by our unit, particularly by those affected by them. I am a graduate student employee at Davis, but I will work on the bargaining team as a representative of everyone, no matter what campus, because we must be united in this fight.
Elijah Kofke (BMCDB)
You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up
Marshall Nakatani (Entomology)
Hello collogues,
My name is Marshall Nakatani. I am a first year PhD candidate in the Entomology program. I study honey bees and am exploring the effects of sleep on memory. As soon as I entered UC Davis I became involved in Union activities because it is necessary to fight for better workplace conditions and protections. I signed up for UAW 2865 at the first chance, and quickly became involved in the SRU recognition campaign. I helped organize the march for recognition, distributing flyers and talking to my colleagues. I walked through multiple departments to get the word out and gather votes for the strike authorization. I will continue this commitment to the student researchers as a member of the bargaining team.
One of the challenges of organizing student workers is that the student body turns over every five to six years. By getting involved early on in my schooling, I hope to remain involved in Union activities for all my time at Davis. As a member of the bargaining committee, my commitment to the Union will last for years to come.
The power of a Union is something that often goes underappreciated. If you, as a student worker, wanted to improve or negotiate some part of your pay, workplace, or condition within the UC system, there is little you could manage on your own. Approach your PI and ask about healthcare coverage? Talk to your department about a pay raise? These are near impossible demands to make on your own. It is only through the power of organizing, coming together collectively as workers, that these demands become feasible.
In the upcoming bargaining process I want to use the collective power that unites us to fight for meaningful changes and protections for student researchers. In contract negotiations, I plan to engage with Union members to ensure a democratic and participatory process. This guarantees we can prioritize the most important needs. One point in the contract that I want to emphasize is housing costs as many of us spend vast portions of our income on rent. Our contract should stipulate meaningful wage increases to match rising inflation. Another issue is the establishment of protections against harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Other important discussions, like protections for international students, will also need to be included and the process should be a collaborative one. The UC will not render these demands to us without a fight, and I am willing to organize another Strike Authorization vote if they choose to bargain in bad faith.
I understand that a union does not resolve the inherent disagreements between boss and worker, but it does give some amount of power back to workers, and that is worth fighting for.
Jacob Roshgadol (Biomedical Engineering)
(No statement provided)
Emirhan Tekin (Chemical Engineering)
(No statement provided)
IRVINE
Harry Bendekgey (Computer Science)
My name is Harry Bendekgey, and I am a third year Computer Science PhD at UCI running to be a member of the collective bargaining committee.
I have been involved with the union for over a year now, from back when we were going door to door picking up signed cards in support of forming this union. A lot has changed since then, and through collective action we have gotten the UC to drop its objections and recognize this union in full. However, a lot still needs to be done: low wages, opaque housing policies, and a lack of protections from harassment from advisors still trouble us all. In addition, the pandemic has made many of these problems worse: not only do we need to be able to advocate for policies that help us feel safe, but isolation due to remote work has left many less informed about the resources that exist to support them.
We have built a powerful grassroots network over the past year, and I want to carry that forward into negotiation. The computer science department contains one of the largest cohorts of student researchers at UCI, the great majority of whom are international workers. This department has, in the past, struggled to reach the same rates of engagement in union work as other departments, but my coworkers and I spent hours organizing there and ultimately a majority of computer scientist researchers voted to form a union. By organizing with SRs across campus, I hope to bring as many voices to the table as possible, and elevate my peers’ interests and priorities.
I believe I am a skilled communicator and fierce advocate, and I hope to represent this campus at the negotiating table over the next few months.
Angel Balam Benítez-Mata (Biomedical Engineering)
My name is Balam Benítez-Mata and I’m a 3rd year PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering department. I’m an international Student Researcher receiving funding through a fellowship from my home country to study at UCI, although my fellowship only covers half of the costs, so the organization UC-MEXUS and my PI have to supplement the rest. I’m also president of the Graduate Association for Biomedical Engineering Students, where one of our main goals is to increase student participation in all types of events that could benefit us. I’ve been involved in forming SRU at UCI for several months and have had the opportunity to interact with fellow grad students and get to know their many adversities as they advance in their studies. But I have also spoken to fellow students who feel indifferent to SRU for different reasons. As we go into bargaining, we need to unite and share a common mindset so ALL grad students, independent of the title we work under, can have access to the same basic rights in such a way that we don’t have to stress about anything beyond our research related responsibilities. I want to join the bargaining team because I consider it to be essential that graduate students with different ethnicities, nationalities, genders, and experiences come together to exchange ideas as we negotiate our first contract. I believe that we can make the UC system a better place for everyone through this process.
Michael Berlin (Comparative Literature)
Greetings, I am Michael Berlin (he/him), and I am a seventh year graduate student in the department of Comparative Literature. I have been involved in union spaces at UCI for much of my time here and I believe in rank-and-file centered negotiations, with rank-and-file members determining our union’s priorities.
As a bargaining team member, I will fight for a contract that includes:
A Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA): A wage increase, indexed to our local rental market, that significantly reduces our rent burden.
Cops Off Campus: Abolition of UCPD, recognition that police on campus, regardless of affiliation, pose significant health risks to campus workers, and reinvestment of those funds into real public safety.
Funding Guarantees: Guaranteed funding, including summer funding, for all PhD students for the entirety of their degree. This should include transitional funding for student researchers switching advisors.
Protections from Harassment and Discrimination: Union protections against different forms of harassment and hate that are readily available and actionable.
To achieve these demands, I believe in participatory rank-and-file led bargaining, where all student researchers, not just the bargaining team, negotiate a contract. I believe all bargaining sessions and union strategy meetings should be open and accessible to all student researchers. To achieve this, I will fight for:
The Abolition of Sidebars: All bargaining must be on-the-record and subject to rank-and-file participation. Union officials should not be allowed to meet with UC management behind closed doors.
Accessible Bargaining: All bargaining sessions must be easily accessible to all student researchers, with no bargaining over university holidays and summer/winter break.
Open Bargaining Strategy Meetings: All bargaining team meetings should be open for rank-and-file student researchers to observe and participate.
By making bargaining and union meetings more accessible and participatory, student researchers will become more invested and help organize with each other to achieve a fair and just contract for student researchers. If the UC fails to provide a contract that works for student researchers, I will vote for a student researcher strike to achieve our demands. Together we will build a student researcher union that works for and includes all of its members.
LOS ANGELES
Julian de Gortari (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
I’m a second year PhD student that has been helping with the union efforts in my department throughout all these months. While engaging directly with my fellow colleagues in this fight for recognition has been an enriching experience, it’s not my first time participating in such political processes: during my years as an undergrad in my home country, I was also active in similar organizing efforts. Back there, our fight was for a democratic university, and on multiple occasions were we able to inspire our peers to fight with us against the authoritarian school administration.
I believe that our role as contract bargainers is to establish direct communication with our peers at all times, to make the process as democratic and transparent as possible, and to ensure the contract reflects exactly what we all want. At all times should we try to make the language of the contract as understandable as possible so that people with no background can participate in all the discussions that may arise from it. At the same time, all student worker meetings regarding the contract should be open to anyone in the union. What makes a union strong is the participation of all, not only of a selected few at the top, thus promoting engagement and accessibility in this contract bargaining process should be our priority.
I believe in open bargaining and collective power. No backroom deals, no secrets, transparency is a must!
Yayun Du (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
I am a graduate student researcher at UCLA for five years. We are fighting for eliminating the nonresidential fees for international students.
Nick Geiser (Physics and Astronomy)
My name is Nick Geiser (he/him/his). I am a Grad Student Researcher and a fifth-year PhD Candidate in the UCLA Physics & Astronomy Department.
Last November, I was elected as one of UCLA’s representatives on our statewide Strike Committee. In that role, I helped organize our historic Strike Authorization Vote in which over 10,000 Student Researchers (SRs) voted to authorize a strike in support of our new union. I am now running for our Bargaining Team because my union experience and my commitment to one-on-one organizing will ensure that UCLA’s SRs are effectively heard as we bargain for our first contract.
For over four years, I have organized with my coworkers through our Teaching Assistants Union UAW 2865 and through our new Student Researchers Union SRU-UAW. In that time, I have had thousands of one-on-one conversations with my peers, personally helped my coworkers win tens of thousands of dollars in settlements and compensation, and worked to strengthen our unions across the state.
Moreover, I am a proud Mexican-American and a first-generation college student and have supported under-represented minority grads at UCLA through a variety of campus organizations. As a member of our Bargaining Team, I will continue to support Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion by fighting for legally-binding contractual protections for minority SRs. I believe that we can win a historically strong contract through mass participation and experienced leadership, and I will continue to organize with my coworkers as a member of our Bargaining Team.
Dylan Kupsh (Computer Science)
Hi, I’m Dylan (He/Him), and I’m a first-year PhD student in the Computer Science Department. I believe in rank-and-file centered negotiations, with rank-and-file members determining our union’s direction.
As a bargaining team member, I will fight for a contract that includes:
- A Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA): A wage increase, indexed to our local rental market, that significantly reduces our rent burden, while capping university housing costs.
- Cops Off Campus: Abolition of UCPD, recognition that police on campus, regardless of affiliation, pose significant health risks to all campus workers, and reinvestment of police funding into real public safety.
- Funding Guarantees: Guaranteed funding, including summer funding, for all PhD students for the entirety of their degree. This should include transitional funding for student researchers switching advisors.
- Protections from Harassment and Discrimination: Union protections against different forms of harassment and hate, including doxxing and online discrimination, for all student researchers.
To achieve these demands, I believe in participatory rank-and-file led bargaining, where all student researchers, not just the bargaining team, negotiate a contract. I believe all bargaining sessions and union strategy meetings should be open and accessible to all student researchers. To achieve this, I will fight for:
- Abolition of Sidebars: All bargaining must be on-the-record and subject to rank-and-file participation. Union officials should not be allowed to meet with UC management behind closed doors.
- Accessible Bargaining: All bargaining sessions must be easily accessible to all student researchers, with no bargaining over university holidays and summer/winter break.
- Open Bargaining Strategy Meetings: All bargaining team meetings should be open for rank-and-file student researchers to observe and participate.
By making bargaining and union meetings more accessible and participatory, student researchers will become more invested and will be able to help organize to achieve a fair and just contract for student researchers. If the UC fails to provide a contract that works for student researchers, I will vote for a student researcher strike to achieve our demands. To build toward strike-readiness, I believe that we need to:
- Define what a student researcher strike entails. We need a student researcher strike that empowers our fellow student researchers. A student researcher strike should target and hurt UC management more than it hurts our own degree progress.
- Building coalitions with marginalized and activist campus organizations (like DSU, SJP, SLAP, etc.). Striking is a community effort, and we should be building power alongside our campus community.
By building a rank-and-file led movement, I believe that we can win a contract rivaling the recent Columbia Student Worker Contract and avoid a concessionary contract.
Natalie Moncada (Molecular Cellular and Integrative Physiology)
Hi my name is Natalie Moncada I am a 3rd year graduate student at UCLA in the Molecular Cellular and Integrative Physiology program. I am working on understanding the roles of glia cells in the drosophila brain in response to neuronal injury. There are many injustices that we face as people in this world and my hope is that as a bargaining team member I can help bring forth change that would improve the rights and benefits of student researchers. I have experienced a lot of injustices as a first generation transgender person, and understand the feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness that come along with it. I have been misgendered and felt so helpless, lonely and unseen. The trauma that comes with this is mentally debilitating. It’s part of the reason why I am fighting everyday to organize our union so we can have the power to win a transformative contract that improves and protects the rights of student researchers.
Frederick Vu (Mathematics)
I have read sections 151 – 169 in Title 29 of the U.S. Code pertaining to the National Labor Relations Act. I promise to fully and faithfully represent the interests of student researchers in the UC system.
Alexis Weber (Human Genetics)
I will bargain for student researcher rights to improve our standard of living: increased wages, lower rent, health insurance with increased coverage and student workplace protections (i.e, safety, support and representation). As a disabled student researcher with high medical costs at UCLA, I am extremely motivated to negotiate better income, lower rent, and increase health insurance coverage to mitigate the debilitating cost of living in LA. Furthermore, after being discriminated against for being disabled in the workplace, SR protection is another top priority for which I plan to negotiate during bargaining.
MERCED
Violet Barton (Interdisciplinary Humanities)
My name is Violet Barton, I am a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Humanities at UC Merced. I am a proud union member who is inspired by other members’ dedication to supporting public education and worker rights for teaching assistants, fellows, tutors, readers, and graduate student researchers. Since then, I have advocated for transparency, accessibility, and accountability in organizing around anti-oppression issues widely. I have broad experience with local and system-wide advocacy, including as a previous Organizing Director for my campus through the UC Student Association, and serving on the University Committee on Affirmative Action, Diversity, & Equity, and University Committee on Academic Freedom as a graduate student representative. In addition to continuing this work, I will be firmly dedicated to ensuring our bargaining needs are met in supporting our union goals of social justice, such as for womxn, undocumented, LGBTQ+, disabled, BIPOC, historically underrepresented student workers, working families, international students, and immigrants’ rights. I have a commitment to union advocacy, previous work experience protecting survivors’ legal rights, and experience meeting with and negotiating with UC, and I would be honored to represent workers’ voices during our contract negotiations as a bargaining member, or an alternate. Thank you.
Gloria Denise Ligunas (MCB / QSB)
(No statement provided)
Ashwin Thomas (Environmental Systems)
(No statement provided)
Alauna Wheeler (Physics)
I aim to represent graduate students who are also parents, because being a student shouldn’t keep anyone from living their life.
RIVERSIDE
Ariana Firebaugh Ornelas (EEOB)
I have been organizing with the SRU campaign for just under a year. During this time I have had the opportunity to meet with SR’s across departments at UC Riverside and collaborate with SR’s throughout the UC system. These experiences have given me the opportunity to learn about issues that impact the lives of students across the UC as well as those specific to UC Riverside. Additionally, as a parent and woman of color in STEM, I am deeply motivated and rooted in being part of changing the current culture and climate at the UC. I hope that negotiating a fair contract will be the first step towards achieving a just and accessible UC.
Frantzeska Giginis (CMDB)
(No statement provided)
Sally Ireri (Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology)
(No statement provided)
Ogadinma Okakpu (Biomed)
As an African/Black GSR in Biomed I believe I have the proper insight needed to ensure necessary policy is included in the bargaining agreement. African/Black GSRs are often an afterthought in this process and I will be fighting to make sure our issues are heard among the collective.
SAN DIEGO
Ahmed Akhtar (Physics)
My name is Ahmed Akhtar. I’m a fifth year graduate student in the physics department at UCSD and I am currently working as a graduate student researcher. I’ve been a proud union member and organizer since Fall 2017, when I joined UAW-2865. I have been a part of the effort to form Student Researchers United from its earliest days. I helped with gathering data for our initial student researcher lists, organizing the physical sciences to sign authorization cards, training and developing new leaders, planning multiple rallies over the summer and fall, and mobilizing for the supermajority strike authorization vote that won us recognition.
Now, I hope to bring my experience to the bargaining table and help us win our first ever union contract. An issue I’ve always been passionate about improving is housing. As an active member of UAW-2865 and a tenant in graduate housing, I helped organize the movement against the rent increases on our campus and was elected to the steering committee of the UCSD rent strike. Another issue I care strongly about is winning enforceable protections against harassment and discrimination. My experiences as a steward in UAW-2865 have taught me how to use legal protections in the contract together with organizing to push for improvements. They have also taught me how ambiguities in the contract can be exploited by UC administrators and Labor Relations. Winning stronger contract language around these issues requires experience in contract enforcement.
If I am elected, I promise to do all that I can at the bargaining table. I have full confidence in our ability to win big this year. It’s been a pleasure to organize alongside all of you, and I hope you’ll elect me as your representative for the bargaining team.
Amy Kanne (Computer Science and Engineering)
Hey y’all! I’m Amy, a first year in the CSE department. I’m running for bargaining team because I want to help all student researchers fight for a more equitable and dignified work environment. Again and again I’ve been so inspired by all the effort everyone has put into the campaign for recognition, and now that our union is recognized, I want to bring the fight to the UC at the bargaining table to help win us a great contract! It’s been more than a year of work to get to this point, and this is THE opportunity to make a difference in our living and working conditions!
This is a battle on so many fronts: wages, housing, discrimination protections, parental/sick leave, international student rights, and many more. It’s going to take a lot of work to win ground on these critical issues that affect our lives. Although I’ve only been here a couple months, I helped organize the October rally along with many other passionate SRs and put in a ton of hours doing walkthroughs, talking with my coworkers, and running organizing meetings to help make the strike authorization vote a success. I’m super motivated to represent student researchers and WIN a good contract at the bargaining table, so please consider voting for me for bargaining team!
Anoop Praturu (Physics/Biophysics)
Hi folks, my name is Anoop! I’m a 2nd year GSR in the biophysics program, and I work at the Salk Institute. Over the past 2 years I have been incredibly inspired by the dedication and compassion I have seen in my peers as they have fought tirelessly for the rights of our fellow students. Whether this was talking to folks about signing union cards, or inspiring workers to vote to strike, the power of this collective action has been electrifying to be a part of, and I’m really excited by the prospect of continuing this work on the bargaining team. Being from an interdisciplinary program, I’m connected to workers from a variety of departments and institutes on campus. This gives me a unique perspective on the needs and frustrations of workers from many different backgrounds, which is something I hope to bring to the table during the bargaining process. Although I am relatively new to organizing, I see this as an opportunity to learn from my community, and approach bargaining with an open mind. I have few preconceived notions about what I think workers need. I instead want to engage with my community and learn firsthand what we need out of our union contract. I appreciate your consideration, and I am excited to continue fighting alongside all of you!
Joseph Rainaldi (Biomedical Science)
I am currently part of the finance committee for the graduate student association here at UCSD with plans to run for GSA president. I was active in ensuring that my graduate program was aware of the strike vote and encouraged my cohort and program peers to vote and voice their opinion almost annoyingly. I believe in this cause and would like to continue to help it advance for student researcher rights.
SAN FRANCISCO
Hasan Alkhairo (BMI)
I’m a 3rd year in the biomedical informatics department. I was deeply involved with union organizing at UCSF in 2019-20, and was part of the group of workers who initially built up our campus organizing-committee. Shortly after the prominent murders by police in the spring and summer of 2020, a lot of my organizing capacity was directed towards both local and statewide efforts to abolish UCPD. Through this work, I have had the opportunity to connect with workers across multiple workplaces and quickly learned that, although our current work was directly addressing policing on our campuses, it was also part of a larger political project to abolish a public education system that is embedded within structures of state violence. This work was very difficult for me. There was so much I didn’t know and it felt like I was making mistakes at every turn. However, along the way I learned how to communicate and organize with workers at all levels of the UC, and more importantly, how to listen and learn from folks while not replicating the dominant cultural and capitalist norms of individualism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that we all bring into organizing spaces.
Here at UCSF, our Cops Off Campus network has cultivated a healthy and non-hierarchical democratic space that includes both graduate and medical campuses. Despite the seemingly disparate workplace environments represented in our organizing space, I learned that as UCSF workers we have shared demands and grievances towards the UC and because of this, I believe our bargaining process is not only about student researchers, but about the marriage of demands across labor spaces. Our bargaining begins with our specific demands as student researchers, but it ends with demands that impact all workers, including those in our local communities. Strong bargaining demands necessitates input from multiple spaces at UCSF, and I believe that as someone who is connected with a network of workers fighting on multiple fronts here at UCSF and in the UC at large, I am well positioned to bargain for our collective demands.
Jenn DiSanto (Neuroscience)
My name is Jenn DiSanto and I’m a first-year student in the neuroscience program. While I’ve only been a grad student for a few months, I previously worked as a junior specialist here at UCSF and was a member of UAW 5810, which won academic researchers a strong contract that significantly improved our salaries. After seeing the impact of my coworkers’ organizing efforts, I was excited to get involved in our unionization campaign when I started here as a grad student. I worked alongside other organizers on campus to achieve high participation in our strike authorization vote, talking to fellow student researchers across campus and answering their questions, text-banking, and working with friends in the neuroscience program to ensure our department was informed and engaged in the vote.
Having these conversations with fellow grad students about what we hoped to achieve with a new union inspired me to run for the bargaining team. I believe we can win a historic first contract. We need a contract that first and foremost ensures no grad student faces economic precarity. We must significantly increase our salaries to levels commensurate with the cost of living in San Francisco, ensure no student is rent-burdened, and guarantee paid parental leave and highly subsidized child care. We will also demand significant improvements to our working conditions–including enforceable protections from harassment and discrimination in the lab, eliminating police from our campus, and free student parking on campus and public transportation across the Bay Area.
In order to win these kinds of demands, we will continue to build and demonstrate our collective power to the UC, as we did to earn recognition of our union. I’m committed to keeping our campus fully informed on negotiations, facilitating open participation at the bargaining table, continuing to engage in conversations with students to further hone our demands, and organizing campus actions to leverage our bargaining power. Importantly, I also want to ensure we work closely with the postdoc, academic researcher, and TA unions in order to coordinate our demands and action. I’m excited to work with our entire researcher community here at UCSF and across the state to address the issues we all face as workers and to bring our demands to the bargaining table.
Melissa Mendez (Tetrad)
I am committed to ensuring equitable/healthy working conditions for graduate student researchers and would be honoured to represent UCSF in out fight for a fair labour contract.
Matthew Ryan (Biomedical Sciences)
Hey folks, my name is Matt Ryan (he/they), and I’m a 5th MD/PhD candidate here at UCSF. As someone who grew up low-income, first-generation, and with multiple chronic illnesses, I’ve learned firsthand the difficulty of navigating life as a graduate student in San Francisco, particularly given the housing crisis and our woefully inadequate stipend (which at $42,500 for graduate students puts us nearly $16k below a living wage according to this calculator from MIT https://livingwage.mit.edu). Although my particular situation may not be just like yours, I’m committed to fighting for all of us as one of the UCSF representatives for the Student Researchers United Bargaining Team.
Over my years here, I’ve had the privilege to occupy a number of leadership roles, serving as president of my medical school class, co-president of the LGBTQ+ student groups in both the Graduate Division and School of Medicine, a student member on the Vice Chancellor’s LGBTQ+ Committee, and directing the 3rd annual Drag Show at UCSF. All of these leadership roles involved soliciting input from students and other UCSF community members and working successfully with UCSF administrators to garner support and make sure our concerns were heard and addressed quickly and appropriately, making any necessary policy changes along the way.
I’ve also engaged in a number of activism and advocacy campaigns centered around anti-racism and LGBTQ+ equity in our admissions, curricula, and hospitals. Most recently, I led a successful multi-year student campaign in collaboration with the ACLU and student leaders across the UC system to block affiliations between UC Health and hospitals that have restrictions on reproductive and LGBTQ+ care (including abortions, contraception, and gender-affirming care). Last year, I also spearheaded a successful Get Out the Vote campaign, forming a coalition of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ student groups to send over 5,000 letters and make over 650 phone calls to underrepresented voters across the country.
Throughout all of this work, I’ve been motivated by a firm commitment to justice and fervent optimism that we can find creative solutions to the problems we face without compromising our ideals. Even though I’ve at times had to take private and public positions in opposition with UCSF leadership, I’ve been able to navigate these challenging areas of disagreement successfully to come up with durable solutions and even managed to maintain respect from leadership, qualities which I think would serve me well as one of the UCSF representatives for the SRU Bargaining Team.
Ultimately, I’ve developed into a capable, steadfast, and caring student leader. I’d be honored to represent our unique needs at UCSF to the larger SRU Bargaining Team and to fight for our collective UC-wide wellbeing in negotiations with UC administrators.
I promise to work with integrity and humility. I promise to center the needs of the most vulnerable among us to make sure we all benefit in a way that is equitable and just. And ultimately, I promise to do everything I can to get us a great contract.
SANTA BARBARA
Ashish Ninan Chacko (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
I am an international graduate student, who have been in the US for over a year now. I believe that I can fairly address the concerns of both the international and the domestic student community here at UCSB. Recently, I have been working on bringing people forward from my department for the SRU movement. The department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was one of the least active groups in the campus. However, it is also the department where the graduate students are currently facing a lot of issues like insane work hour demand by PI’s. I have been active among the graduate student community, which would also help me address general challenges faced by the grad students. My major demands would be to:
- Address rent burden
- Implement a cap on the work hours
- Assistance with non-resident tuition for international students
I am also open to discuss other issues faced by grad students. I will ensure that all the concerns of UCSB graduate students are addressed fairly.
Sheila Kulkarni (Chemistry & Biochemistry)
(No statement provided)
Brad Price (Physics)
(No statement provided)
Shambhavi Singh (MCDB)
I am running for the bargaining team member to represent SRU from UCSB. I am currently a graduate student in the Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology department. I have been involved in the formation of the Student Research Union for the past two years, and I envision it as a source of strength, justice and community. It is necessary to have a robust structural organization that helps people unite in solidarity and fight for a cause. The recognition of SRU by the UC system was an adequate demonstration of the same. This recognition has presented an opportunity to further my role to represent UCSB in the bargaining team.
In past two years, I have relentlessly worked to bring students from the departments of MCDB and BMSE together to vote for the majority. It was astounding to learn how students did not understand the requirement, importance, and even the meaning behind forming a union. This made me more passionate about the cause and gave me more reason to be involved in educating students and increasing the majority on our campus. I have been part of several initiatives, organized and led delegations to acquire the majority, organized direct actions and strike authorization and recruited new members. Another important aspect of our union winning recognition was involving US senators and congressmen to support us. I took this opportunity to meet the official representatives of these influential people and made several calls, so our voices were heard.
After an arduous effort from a significant number of people, we were able to win recognition. Our next steps are to make our union a true representation of our unity and strength. I am taking this responsibility to represent us for the bargaining committee, which is vital for our fight. I will continue to work tirelessly to achieve our goals of pay raise, a decrease of rent burden, protection against sexual harassment and discrimination. I will continue to build a strong union and community of people, which will be available for any graduate student in crisis. I have complete faith in the strength of our unity, and we should be able to accomplish our goals if we work together.
Throughout history, worldwide, we can find examples of strength in unity. By strategic planning and involvement with SRU, we will be able to set our own example, and I am invested in making it happen. This is a new era, a new time and, I believe in our unity and our ability to bring this change.
SANTA CRUZ
Riley Collins (Education)
I’m a 3rd year graduate student researcher in UCSC’s Education department. Now that we’ve won the historic campaign for UAW-SRU recognition for all grad student researchers and fellows, I want to fight for a contract that guarantees a living wage, protects grad student researchers from harassment and discrimination, and demands divestment from UC police. I support the SRU proposal for open bargaining where bargaining sessions are open for rank and file student researchers to directly participate, and I’m ready to engage in a bargaining process that demonstrates and builds our collective power.
Francisco Mendez Diaz (MCD Biology)
I, Francisco Mendez Diaz, accept the nomination to be part of the bargaining team, even if I am an alternate member. I have been part of the SRU campaign since the summer of 2020 and the time has finally come to bargain with the UC. It is long overdue and there are many critical issues that SRUs need addressed. Particularly, I would love to improve and fight for better benefits for SRUs who are parents. As of now, SRUs who are funded by fellowships and training grants do not qualify for quarterly/semester child care reimbursements. In addition, graduate student parents cannot afford the insane prices of voluntary UC SHIP health insurance for their spouse and children. It is literally impossible to pay for such insurance with our salary. Expanding child care reimbursement to every SRU, regardless of funding, and making UC SHIP more affordable for SRU parents is of my great priority. Of course, I am ready to fight with all my colleagues on all aspects of graduate student benefits and working conditions. I am honored to work and serve my SRU community.
Nicholas Scarsdale (Astronomy & Astrophysics)
I am Nicholas, a 3rd year grad in the astronomy department. I have been organizing with SRU since summer 2020 and would love to further support the movement by bargaining for a contract that, among other gains, includes guaranteed funding, eliminates our rent burden, and protects vulnerable students from exploitation and mistreatment. Solidarity forever!
Becker Sharif (Physics)
(No statement provided)