9/24 UAW Bargaining Update

According to the UC administration’s own estimates, academic student employees (ASEs)don’t earn enough money to meet our living and educational expenses while enrolled as students in the University of California (UC) system.

Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the UC system, typically make about $15,610.50 per academic year. However, per the UC Office of the President, the average cost of living for a graduate student is $20,496. On some campuses, the cost of living is thousands of dollars higher than that average. At Irvine, for example, the cost of living for graduate students is estimated at $24,105. The administration is not proposing any guaranteed wage increase in the coming years.

The UC says that we make thousands of dollars less per year than what we need to live, and we agree. When we raised this issue at the bargaining table, one administration official told us that ASEs look to sources of “personal and familial wealth” to fund their lives while they are in school, as if ASEs were independently wealthy.

As ASEs, it’s our job to prepare the finest minds in the great state of California for entry into the workforce and life beyond college. In order to do this, we need to be able to afford basic necessities. Opportunities to contribute to higher education, at a public institution that prides itself on its diversity, cannot just be for those who have independent sources of wealth or are willing to take on incredible amounts of debt.

Are ASEs at the institutions with which the UC competes facing the same economic hardships? No. ASEs at our competitor institutions are making an average of $23,390 in California dollars per academic year for twenty hours of work per week. That’s a difference of $7,780--about 50% more than what we make at UC.

The UC itself identifies a competitiveness gap (see Table 9, pg. 13) with respect to net stipends (which include fellowships as well as TA and RA wages). At UCLA for example, the competitiveness gap was $6081 in 2004 ($6,548.16 in 2007 dollars). How is the UC supposed to attract the best and brightest, when the best and brightest are surely smart enough to figure out that if they want to be able to afford to feed, clothe and house themselves, they better go elsewhere for their education?

The picture is even worse for readers and tutors, who make far less than TAs. The UC pays the typical undergraduate tutor less than $200 per paycheck and less than $15/hr. At the same time, the UC estimates undergraduate non-fee expenses at $14,664 per year. Even if a reader works for the entire academic year at 20 hours a week, the cost of living typically exceeds their yearly wages by over $1,000. If the UC aims to fulfill its commitments to diversity in higher education, it needs to increase wages for both readers and tutors.

Imagine a job where most or all of your wages were funneled right back to your employer at the end of the month. How would you afford basic living expenses like food, rent, and utilities?

Unfortunately, that’s the reality for most academic student employees (ASEs) at the University of California (UC), since paying registration fees, education fees, campus fees and, if applicable, nonresident tuition and professional school fees is a condition of employment.

Our union is proposing that all fees be remitted for graduate and undergraduate employees alike. Such an expanded fee remission program would help ensure that the UC is accessible, affordable, and committed to attracting diversity.

Under the current contract, graduate students working as ASEs for at least 10 hours per week already get education, registration and health care fees remitted. We don’t currently receive fee remissions for other fees, such as non-resident tuition, campus fees, professional school fees, or registration and education fees for undergraduate employees. Going forward, the fee remission program must be expanded to include all fees.

The remission of these fees is necessary not only because ASEs typically make thousands of dollars less per year than they need to live (even before these fees are taken into consideration, see the web article on wages) and not only because no one should have to pay to work, but also because the State of California would be well served by eliminating disincentives to accepting admission to UC institutions.

Part of the UC’s job as a public institution is to serve the community by providing the quality education students need in order to make positive contributions to the economy. As the state population grows, this part of the UC’s mission can only be accomplished by absorbing more students into the system. But excessive fees constitute incentives for students to look beyond California for their higher education, draining valuable talent from the state.

Nonresident Tuition
Nonresident tuition hits out-of-state and international ASEs hard in the pocketbook. International student enrollment has been dropping, largely due to the uncompetitive nature of UC financial packages. Nonresident ASEs pay approximately 50% of their salary back to the university in the form of fees, leaving them with almost nothing to live on.

UC itself recognizes the vital need to attract international and out-of-state ASEs:
“The quality of the University’s educational and research programs depends upon our attracting outstanding students to our graduate programs. In particular, it is important that, like other major research universities, the University of California seek out and recruit applicants, regardless of residence, who are truly exceptional and whose presence at UC improves the overall quality of our teaching and research. International students, in particular, have an important educational impact on both graduate and undergraduate U.S. students by raising their knowledge of global issues and other societies and nations.”
Report Title: Final Committee Report and Recommendations to the Provost (see page 14)
Committee: Competitive Graduate Student Financial Support Advisory Committee

The UC’s Competitive Graduate Student Financial Support Advisory Committee recommends eliminating nonresident tuition for most doctoral students in 2007-2008 (see page v). We agree with this recommendation; that’s why our bargaining demands include nonresident tuition remissions for academic student employees.

Campus Fees
Campus fees can add up to several hundred dollars per year in costs to ASEs, depending on the campus. All academic student employees who are registered students have to pay these fees, which cover expenses like campus facilities, transportation programs, and student initiatives.

The administration claims that academic student employees should have to pay these fees since students vote them on themselves. This argument is seriously flawed.

First, campus fees can be and have been unilaterally increased once they have been established. Berkeley’s Student Center Fee has increased significantly without a referendum. And to take another example, UCLA’s Ackerman Student Union Fee went from $7.50 to $51.00 without a referendum in 1997.

Second, on some campuses, like Davis and Berkeley, the Chancellor can unilaterally establish a fee or increase of an existing fee if the fee is necessary for the health and safety of students without even consulting the student body. As such, it’s a gross and misleading over-simplification to say that we vote these fees upon ourselves.

The role of the student fee referendum is typically advisory. Students do not have the final authority to permanently rescind or reduce fees. The administration could always unilaterally re-impose these fees. All this is to say that campus fee remissions are a necessary benefit for ASEs. Securing 100% remission of these fees is the only way to defend ourselves against University administrators’ ability to increase these fees at-will.

Undergraduate registration and education fees
Undergraduate ASEs do the same job as graduate ASEs and work just as hard, but a graduate student working 10 hours a week for a full academic year gets over $6,500 in registration fees paid whereas an undergraduate gets no fee remissions. This disparity needs to be eliminated.

Meanwhile, undergraduate fees are again on the rise. Most undergraduate tutors make less than $200 per paycheck. This year, unless compensation significantly increases, many such tutors will have to devote all of their wages to registration and other fees.

Professional School Fees
Potential ASEs hoping to use their wages to pay their professional school fees should think again. In 2006-07, the average Law, Medical, Business, and Dental School professional fees topped $15,000. That’s almost the entirety of a TA’s wages for an academic year, and well above what the typical tutor or reader is paid. And don’t forget that professional school students pay these fees on top of regular registration, education and campus fees.

That means that the net wages of a professional school student working for an entire year is less than –$5,389.50 before they even pay their living expenses. The University of California prides itself on its commitment to diversity. But attracting a diverse population of professional school students is not accomplished by charging potential employees and future key contributors to the wealth of California more than you are paying them.

When academic student employees with spouses, partners or children start work at the University of California, they usually aren’t thinking about how similar their family’s health care options are to that of America’s most anti-worker company:

Wal Mart.

When new employees start work at Wal Mart, questions about health care benefits are answered with a brochure on how to apply for public assistance. This is the exact same thing that happens at many UC campuses when academic student employees ask a simple question: how can I get health care for my child, spouse or partner?

And that’s the good news. If you’re a non-resident, you’re not even eligible for public assistance health care. Your only option is to buy expensive health insurance plans wherein you, the international ASE, are on the hook for the full premium for your dependents’ benefits.

For example: Let’s say you’re an international GSI at UC Berkeley. You have a wife and a child. The cheapest health care option available through the University to insure just your child is $160/month – approximately 10% of a typical GSI’s monthly wage. To enroll your entire family, the least expensive plan costs $554 – greater than one-third of a GSI’s wages.

At UCLA the picture is even bleaker. Dependent health care costs almost $300/month. In exchange for $300/month, our dependents receive an “illness and injury” plan that expressly excludes wellness and preventative health care. Furthermore, the plan language is so confusing that it’s not immediately clear which basic diagnostic services are covered and under what circumstances they would be covered.

And those are just the problems with dependent health care. The Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP, USHIP, GSHIP, etc.) is fraught with shortcomings. For example, the formulary used by most campuses to determine what prescription drugs are covered is highly restricted. Many name brand drugs are either not available at all or available only at extraordinary expense. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that at many campuses, prescriptions can only be affordably filled at one pharmacy.

Furthermore, this last year brought many negative changes to SHIP. At UCLA, diagnostic tests now cost more than ever. In fact, it’s now possible to reach the annual out-of-pocket expense cap ($1,000) after a single round of pre-natal health care visits. This is all on top of the fact that on almost every campus, the student health center is a mandatory “first stop,” which often means long waits to see physicians and little to no ability to choose your primary care physician.

Even worse, undergraduate ASEs do not receive any health care benefits as a part of their jobs, even though they perform the same work as their graduate ASE counterparts.

This health care crisis is decreasing the attractiveness of the University of California for the world’s best students and directly contributes to the University’s growing competitiveness problems. That’s why we’re proposing major improvements in health care for ASEs in current contract talks. In addition to covering our dependents, we’re also proposing improvements to primary care, dental and vision, as well as gender confirmation procedures. Such improvements are key to making UC an attractive place to study for students with diverse health care needs.

The University of California is big. But that’s no reason for it to behave like a big box retailer towards its employees on health care issues. As the largest public research university in the world, it’s time for UC to live up to its commitment to recruit a diverse graduate student population by doing better than the worst employer in America when it comes health care.

As you may recall, in our Sept. 5-7 bargaining session, the administration claimed that child care resources on UC campuses were both sufficient for academic student employees and cost effective. Parents from every UC campus disagree. A delegation of parents provided a strong response to the administration’s preposterous claims at the table on Thursday, Sept. 20th. Since bargaining was held at UCLA, some parents who wished to communicate their experiences were unable to attend, but they submitted testimonials describing the harsh realities of life as an ASE parent working in the UC system. We read testimonials from every single UC campus into the record, to let the university know that problems in this area are pervasive and extremely serious. From the shared experiences of the parents, it became abundantly clear that the family unfriendly nature of the UC speaks to the importance of not only our child care proposal but our healthcare and leaves proposals as well.

The harsh reality is that parents are typically waiting years to get their children into UC facilities which do not even operate during the hours academic student employees are often required to work. If and when they do get into UC childcare, the cost can be extreme. At Berkeley, for example, a parent with an infant will be paying $1,000 per month unless they qualify for subsidized care. If they don’t get in, which is the more typical case, childcare costs can easily exceed the monthly salary of a teaching assistant. An ASE who is a parent at UCLA reports spending $1800 a month on childcare services that do not extend into the evening hours which is when she will soon be holding section for the fall quarter. Working parents are being forced, by circumstances created by the UC, to have fellow graduate students watch their children in department buildings, to bring children to section, to call in favors from family and friends and to put their children into cheap, substandard, unregulated childcare facilities in order to contribute to the research mission of the university and complete their degrees.

And the family un-friendliness of the UC is not limited to the inadequacy of its childcare facilities. Breast milk pumping areas are scarce on almost all campuses, forcing new mothers to seek out secluded nooks, basements and abandoned offices to take care of providing the nutritional needs of their infants. Further, academic student employees are expected to maintain the same progress to degree even when a newborn enters their lives requiring many hours of intense care per day. That includes meeting TAing requirements, even though it is more cost effective, given current TA pay and the lack of adequate childcare facilities, to care for a child at home.

The link between our healthcare, leaves, and childcare proposals for families working at the UC should be clear. Currently, when a parent chooses to go on leave from the university, because working doesn’t cover the cost of childcare and childcare isn’t provided by the UC, they lose the right to purchase dependent health insurance (on those campuses where it can be purchased as an add-on to the health plan). Even if a parent is working, the cost of dependant health care is extreme, up to almost $300 per month at UCLA, and far in excess of anything affordable to academic student employees who, according to the UC, don’t make enough to live on even if they don’t have children. [See the web article on wages] The added cost of health care for children makes it all the more important for parents to have the necessary resources in terms of child-care funding.