December 8, 2022
Dear Comparative Literature Program Faculty,
We are now in the fourth week of the largest strike of academic workers in the history of the United States. We want to begin by thanking the Comparative Literature Program and its affiliated departments for your support during this historic moment. We write this letter in a spirit of collegiality and cooperation.
We are quickly approaching the end of the Fall quarter and the UC continues to slow-walk negotiations. UAW 2865 and SRU have not seen any significant movement on economic proposals from the University on wages, childcare, and NRST remission since the start of the strike. On the contrary, the UC has continued to propose contract language that does not address the issues graduate students are facing. We consider our power to be accumulating rather than declining as we approach various end-of-quarter deadlines. If the UC does not come to the table in good faith, our strike may continue through the end of final exam week and the deadline for grade submissions on December 19th. We are sending this to you to allow for clarity before final exams are graded and grades are due.
The California Higher Education Employee Relations Act (HEERA) protects your right to refuse to pick up, complete, or “make up for” the labor withheld by striking workers. This right is articulated by CUCFA (see also their special guide) and by UC-AFT. Because grade withholding is a part of broader labor withholding that is legally protected under the strike, faculty do not have to pick up struck grading work. If you have been respecting the picket, you may continue to do so through any grade deadlines. If you have not been honoring the picket, you may begin doing so now, and we would ask that you do. Furthermore, any disciplinary measures leveraged against faculty for not providing grades would be a direct violation of your right to not pick up struck labor under HEERA. Faculty pay cannot be docked for not picking up struck labor, such as submitting grades for a course where grading and submitting grades is an ASE’s responsibility. If the UC assigns lecturers to complete the struck work of TAs, without offsetting the additional workload in some way, they are also violating their contract with AFT, and this offense is thus grievable.
There are a number of important technical aspects to withholding grades, but we want to be clear that grades will not disappear forever—only as long as the strike lasts. If there is no grade submitted by the deadline, undergrads will see an “NG” (no grade) on their transcript. This is a placeholder until a grade is submitted – an “NG” is NOT equivalent to an “F” and will only turn into an “F” if a final grade is not submitted before the end of Winter quarter (in March). Once a final grade is submitted, that letter grade will replace the NG on students’ transcripts. See this email, sent to faculty and staff on November 28th by UCSB administration, for the source of this information. Further, according to this email, sent to undergraduates on November 22 by the Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education, an NG will “not impact [undergraduate students’] financial aid, athletic eligibility, prerequisite requirements, and/or the completion of [their] degree.” UC has the power to change their own policies, such as those mentioned above. We have seen them make these changes in the past during circumstances like the 2017 Thomas Fires at UCSB, the 2019-2020 COLA strikes, and the beginning of COVID-19.
We also want to emphasize that, given the huge number of TAs and professors withholding grades across both our campus and the entire UC system, any inconvenience that withholding grades will cause will occur systemwide. Thus, we consider that it is up to the UC Office of the President to meet us fairly and seriously at the bargaining table for the strike to end. Faculty Organizers have provided clear guidelines on how to approach grading in a way that respects the picket (view here), which are in line with the more guidance provided by the UCSB UAW Organizing Committee. In times like this, it can be unclear what is helpful. We hope that these guidelines clear up that ambiguity.
To avoid strikebreaking, we, the Comparative Literature graduate students, request the following commitments from faculty in our program:
- Refuse retaliation against and disclosure of who among our graduate students is striking. This means giving assurances to your TAs of your commitment to non-retaliation, refusing to endorse or enable any retaliation from the administration, and refusing to disclose striking workers to the administration.
- Do not pick up struck work. That is, do not grade assignments yourself, or otherwise do the work that TAs, readers, or other ASEs would usually be doing. You have no obligation to perform this work under HEERA.
- While the strike is ongoing, do not hire extra labor to make up for the labor shortage created by the strike.
- If still possible, do not provide changes to exam formats that would undermine the power of the strike.
- Do not submit grades based only on the assignments that have already been This is also unfair to students.
- Do not insert other grades that are not representative, for example Ps, Is,
We also encourage you to sign this statewide faculty pledge in solidarity with the strike. Please also contribute to this tally of grades expected to be missing from faculty not picking up struck grading work, created by CUCFA to pressure the administration to bargain fairly. We are thankful for the support Comparative Literature Faculty have already expressed. At this time, we ask that you channel your support into action. Taking on the labor of your TAs would constitute crossing the picket line. Please commit to both not posting grades and not disclosing strikers’ information to the University. We rely on your solidarity.
We look forward to your affirmative responses to this letter.
Regards,
Comparative Literature Graduate Students on Strike