Thread by @TrevorGriffey

A thread 🧵 on all the ways that @UofCalifornia is relying on faculty to break the #FairUCNow strike by @uaw2865/ @sruuaw. Faculty: do not fall prey to these tactics! Refuse to do struck work, and consider not submitting course grades for classes with striking TAs and graders.

Individual @UofCalifornia departments, including staff at the @UCLA Physics Department, are reaching out to their undergraduates, offering them money to scab for striking TAs and RAs by proctoring and grading final exams. Undergrads should refuse to do this!

While many faculty supervising scab labor are non-union tenure-track faculty, some are non-tenure track dues-paying members of @UCAFT, including one case I know of at UCLA. If you are a @UCAFT member and are being pressured to hire or supervise scabs, please contact us for help.

In some cases, individual tenure track faculty with no financial incentive or work requirement to do so are doing struck work themselves, including one case I know of at @UCIrvine where a faculty in the Humanities is convening class meetings for a TA on strike.

Especially in the sciences, illegal threats of retaliation against student researchers in @sruuaw are widespread at some @UofCalifornia campuses, forcing RAs to choose between working in certain labs and supporting their union. Those sticking with their union are very courageous!

Faculty are also being threatened. The first threats that @UofCalifornia tenure track faculty received that their pay might be withheld if they refused to submit course grades came from their Academic Senate. Now campus admin are amplifying the threats.

https://twitter.com/TrevorGriffey/status/1597410434164088834

Unit 18 non-senate faculty are aware, without UC making threats, that refusing to submit grades for courses that do not rely on struck labor could get them disciplined or fired (like UCSC wildcat strikers were in 2020) for "sympathy strike" activities.

https://twitter.com/TrevorGriffey/status/1590386148740050944

Partly in response to these threats, many if not most @UofCalifornia faculty are changing course assignments so they can submit course grades without relying on striking teaching assistant labor. Despite being well-meaning, this neutralizes the @uaw2865 @sruuaw strike's impact.

Some UC campuses are extending the Fall term or grading deadlines to undermine the @uaw2865 @sruuaw strike. The @UCIrvine late grade submission deadline is now Jan. 19. This makes faculty solidarity invisible, but also eliminates the cost of faculty sympathy strikes for a month.

Universities rely on faculty members' fear of discipline and commitment to teaching to undermine strikes and produce what one @ucu activist called "scabademia", or "scabademics." Not everyone is in an equal position to resist these tactics. But they can and should be resisted.

At @UofCalifornia, @uc_faculty has published guidelines to help senate faculty and non-represented non-senate faculty resist demands to do struck work or submit course grades. Please join them, and contact them to help better understand your rights. cucfa.org/2022/11/respon…

.@UCAFT has published guidance for Unit 18 non-senate faculty on how to resist demands to do struck work. However, those who are not supervising striking TAs or graders could be disciplined or fired for not submitting course grades. ucaft.org/content/uaw-st…

Undergrads are being heavily impacted by the @uaw2865 and @sruuaw strike. But the root cause of the lack of living wages for academic student employees is also the root cause of high undergrad tuition, fees, and student debt. Picking up struck labor undermines our shared fight.

For more on root causes of high tuition schools with low wage temp teachers, and the need to build countervailing power to resist both simultaneously, see this speech from the UCLA picket lines, and @CharlieEatonPhD's great book Bankers in the Ivory Tower.

https://twitter.com/TrevorGriffey/status/1593133990210580482