As the UAW strike ends its fourth week, the UCSB Faculty Association would like to reiterate our recommendations to faculty and respond to numerous distortions put forth by the UC and UCSB administrations.
1) The strike is not over, even with tentative agreements with postdocs and academic researchers, who continue striking in solidarity with the unit representing TAs, whose members still need to ratify the proposed contract. We recognize that the future contracts will likely have significant implications for research funding. As a result, a group of UCSB STEM faculty has written a letter calling on the university to develop short-term and long-term solutions to better support our researchers. We encourage faculty to read and sign the letter here.
2) The UCSB FA, in solidarity with our teaching assistants, calls upon all faculty, even those without TAs, to avoid crossing the picket line by taking up the strikers’ work. The most significant way to do so is to pledge not to enter grades for undergraduate classes until the strike is settled. This would mean leaving the grade rolls blank, resulting in “NG” appearing in the transcript, a grade that can be changed quickly and easily once the strike is over. We urge all faculty withholding grades to sign the running tally of now over 30,000 missing grades and the earlier UC-wide solidarity pledge.
3) The UCSB FA condemns recent statements by the administration that could serve to intimidate faculty who are exercising their legal right not to cross the picket line by signing the solidarity pledge or engaging in the types of actions it supports, especially the non-filing of grades. CUCFA’s Dec 1 response to Provost Brown’s misleading email clarifies our rights as faculty to respect the picket line, including withholding grades.
4) By offering “helpful” tips for the end of the quarter, the administration is encouraging faculty to take up the work of others, eroding our jobs and infringing on the work of strikers. We ask the administration to stop offering different messages to undergraduates and faculty about the impact on more vulnerable students of its refusal to fairly negotiate a contract with teaching assistants.
If you or your department have questions or concerns about your rights around withholding grades in support of your graduate students, please attend the SBFA Informational town hall on Tuesday, Dec 6, at 4pm. We ask that you pre-register with the link below. Senate faculty who wrote the CUCFA letter to Provost Brown and provided the definitive legal analyses and FAQs throughout the strike will answer questions. Or, you or your department could ask for a smaller meeting. Contact us at info@cucfa.org.
In solidarity,
The SBFA Board
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Dec 6, 2022 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpc-msqDoiH9AaUW1-jVtenfX_FjLeH9uE
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.