June 17, 2021 The process of winning recognition of our union - after which we will be able to bargain with UC - took another step forward last night. Late last night, UC furnished a partial list of GSRs and GSARs in the central payroll system to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). Missing from this list are Trainees, Fellows, and all Student Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, because, according to UC, they are not in the central payroll system. UC asked for an additional 28 days to complete the list with the missing information. PERB will use this list to verify a majority of SRs have shown support for SRU-UAW...

Wow, Student Researchers really made the headlines with the May 24th card delivery in Oakland! Some of the news stories about the action are linked below. Be on the lookout for continued press coverage of SRU-UAW and the fight for an SR union! Daily Cal - Graduate student researchers organize to form new unionDetroit Free Press - UAW gets more than 10,000 signatures to organize 10 University of California campusesInside Higher Ed - U of California Graduate Researchers Form UnionSanta Barbara News-Press - Student researchers organize across UC campusesSacramento Bee - Student researchers are the backbone of the UC system. They deserve equal...

BY HANNAH HOLZER Sacramento Bee, June 03, 2021 12:00 PM 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...

By Colleen Flaherty May 25, 2021 Graduate student researchers across the University of California system filed more than 10,000 signed union cards with the state Public Employee Relations Board Monday. According to information from organizers, 60 percent of eligible graduate student researchers signed on in support of the new union. These researchers “want to continue doing the cutting-edge research that brings in millions of dollars of revenue to UC, but we need a contract that addresses the issues we face,” Katie Augspurger, a graduate research assistant in biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement....

Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press    A quiet campaign by UAW organizers at the University of California ended Monday with more than 10,000 signed cards officially submitted to authorities that would create the Student Researchers United-UAW, representing more than 17,000 higher education workers. These union activists are not required to hold a formal election and can, instead, submit the signed 10,441 cards to California's Public Employee Relations Board in Oakland. Researchers marched down to the office at 1330 Broadway carrying a banner just after 2 p.m. Signatures will have to be certified as union organizers await...

On May 24, 2021, at 11 AM, Student Researchers are gathering in Oakland to deliver authorization cards signed by a supermajority of UC Student Researchers to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), the California state labor board. This is a major accomplishment - everybody who has contributed to building majority support for SRU-UAW should be proud. Once cards are submitted, PERB will ask for a list of Student Researchers from UC administration to verify that a majority of SRs have signed cards. At that point, we expect that UC will recognize SRU-UAW and begin negotiating collectively with Student Researchers. Read more about the...

Affordable housing is an issue of universal importance to Student Researchers, and is a driving factor for SRs in forming our union. Last week, UC announced a 3% increase to the GSR salary scale for the coming academic year. But even with this increase, GSRs across the state will continue to be rent burdened, struggling to make ends meet.  This Wednesday, join the second Housing Justice Forum on May 19th at 5pm PST to work with other academic workers from UC, CSU, and the University of Washington to harness the power of over 40,000 UAW academic workers to build and win a coastwide campaign for housing justice. RSVP here. The struggle to...

May 4, 2021 "Clearly you don’t know how to do math.” That’s what Pierre Ouillet, Chief Financial Officer of UCSD, said today to me in a meeting between residents of UCSD housing and Chancellor Khosla where we presented our case to the Chancellor and his staff that rent hikes of up to 85% for new residents are completely unreasonable. But as Graduate Student Researchers in the natural sciences, it turns out that we do math quite well, certainly well enough to know that graduate students cannot afford to pay $1,365 (up from $873) on a $2,500 monthly income, as the next resident of my room will be asked to do. UCSD’s main justification for...

April  29, 2021 Thousands of international Student Researchers support forming a union to negotiate for protections, build a community of support, and strengthen our public voice. Unionized international Postdocs and Teaching Assistants are already winning improvements in their contracts to ensure equal treatment regardless of immigration status.    On Tuesday, May 4, at 5:30 PM, please join for a discussion about how international Student Researchers can work together to improve our experience at UC by forming a union.    RSVP for the Zoom here. Through a union, international SRs can also gain a greater voice in the political process, too....