Undergraduate workers are winning collective bargaining rights, making student unions increasingly common. They’re driven by the pandemic, pro-union sentiment and each other.
A recent survey on workers and learners in Los Angeles County by the UCLA Labor Center found that “52% have been laid off, terminated, or furloughed from their jobs due to the pandemic.” It is very hard to study with many insecurities in your life.
UAW Local 2865 has called a strike. For many grad students, the very idea of a contract governing the limits and conditions of our labor is a source of skepticism and even derision. This system is not an alternative to the working world - it is the model every employer would eagerly adopt. Far from prefiguring an emancipated society, the university offers a foretaste of the total domination of workers by management.
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