BY HANNAH HOLZER
JUNE 03, 2021 12:00 PM
On May 24, after months of outreach and organizing, student researchers submitted over 10,000 signed union cards — a supermajority of student researchers — to create Student Researchers United-UAW. REED YALISOVE
In May of 2017, Holly Gildea, a 23-year-old graduate student researcher in neuroscience at UC Berkeley, was working in her thesis lab when she sustained a chemical burn on her leg and hand. A freezer in Gildea’s lab that operates at minus 80 degrees Celsius had accidentally thawed. Unbeknownst to Gildea and her labmates, tubes stored in the freezer that contained phenol, which is toxic, had started to leak.
While moving the tubes from the thawed freezer to a nearby rescue freezer, the leaking phenol dripped onto Gildea’s hand and pant leg. A few minutes later, Gildea noticed that the synthetic jacket she was wearing over her clothes had started to disintegrate.
Graduate student researchers, like the now 27-year-old Gildea, do not have the same workplace protections that their unionized peers do even though they perform similar, or even identical, work. That’s why, after Gildea was rushed to the on-campus emergency health center, she was billed for her medical care despite sustaining second-degree chemical burns at work.
“I hadn’t even considered this would be something that the university would deny me, and it made me reevaluate the kind of work I do on a daily basis,” Gildea said. “No employee should ever have to experience a work-related injury and then not be covered for it.”
Fortunately, Gildea’s supervisor intervened and helped Gildea get reimbursed for the cost of her medical bills as well as her shoes, jacket and clothes — all of which were incinerated. She would have been on the hook for just under $330, a lot of money at that point in her life.
“I was lucky that I did not have to pay for it out of pocket, but there was no rule that said my (supervisor) had to do that,” Gildea said. “The phenol burns could have been a lot worse — there are some potentially fatal side effects. If, God forbid, I had died in this chemical accident, my mother would’ve been on the hook for my funeral.”
When recounting Gildea’s story to UC Davis student researchers Jonathan Minnick and Gwen Chodur, the president and external vice president, respectively, of UC Davis’ Graduate Student Association, they were troubled but not shocked.
“We hear these stories more frequently than we would like to hear,” Minnick said.
The 17,000 student researchers within the UC system are vital to the university system’s mission. They are low-wage employees pursuing their graduate degrees, and their research work, which plays a part in generating millions of dollars in grant money to the UC, helps further the system’s research goals.
Student researchers are not unionized even though the UC’s post-doctoral students, graduate student instructors, readers, tutors and academic researchers are all represented by a union.
Currently, student researchers, the vast majority of whom are PhD students, can be subject to at-will firing; they do not have access to a clear grievance procedure and they do not have clear protections from harassment and discrimination that their unionized peers have, including protections for international students and student parents.
“It’s not just about pay and stability, it’s equity,” Minnick said. “It’s making sure that all students are provided the equal benefits that they deserve.”
A recent unionization effort among student researchers was backed with support from UAW 2865, which represents UC teaching assistants, tutors, readers and graduate student instructors, and UAW 5810, which represents UC post-doctoral students and academic researchers. The effort gained momentum in the last year as student researchers at each campus began to discuss their unequal working conditions. Student researchers are some of the last graduate students to unionize — over 180,000 employees across the UC are already represented by unions.
On May 24, after months of outreach and organizing, student researchers submitted over 10,000 signed union cards — a supermajority of student researchers — to create Student Researchers United-UAW. Union cards were collected at all ten UC campuses as well as at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Union protections for student researchers are long overdue. In the 1990s, UC student researchers and teaching assistants attempted to unionize, but the UC contended in a series of legal cases that both groups were students — not workers. In 1998, UC teaching assistants, tutors and readers were recognized as employees under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act of 1979, but a state judge ruled that student researchers were not employees under HEERA and therefore excluded from the bargaining unit.
A number of unsuccessful attempts were made by student researchers to get the California Legislature to amend HEERA — attempts that received opposition from the UC. Finally, in 2017, the legislature amended HEERA to classify student researchers as employees, giving them the ability to form a union.
The sheer determination shown by student researchers across California to organize during a pandemic is proof enough that there is an immediate need to establish the protections, equitable working conditions and pay increases these employees have been denied for decades.
With union cards submitted, student researchers will now wait for the state to certify their union. After that, they will start the involved process of bargaining with the UC. In the past, the UC has shown that they are not a friendly or flexible employer at the bargaining table. The UC librarians’ union’s 2013 contract, for instance, was the result of 18 months of negotiations.
“My hope is that the UC starts to play fairly,” Minnick said. “Does (the UC) realize how expensive it is to live in California and how many hours we put in? At some point they’re going to have to support what we’re trying to get.”
Some student researchers who have been at the forefront of the unionization effort, like Chodur, are at the end of their graduate programs and will likely not reap the benefits of a union. But that’s just a reason to fight even harder.
“This is the legacy we’re leaving the students of the UC with,” Chodur said.
Hannah Holzer, a Placer County native and UC Davis graduate, is opinion assistant at The Sacramento Bee.