The student worker strike at University of California campuses across the state has reached its fourth week, and nowhere has it been more keenly felt than in San Francisco, which was just ranked eighth among the world’s most expensive cities to live in.
SF’s sky-high costs of housing and childcare for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and others add urgency to the strikers’ demands. The striking student workers have forced the cancellation of classes and the closure of research labs, and if it’s not resolved soon — a tentative agreement last week was only a first potential step — this month’s final exams could be disrupted as well.
There’s also growing worry about the strike’s effect on laboratory research and patient care at UCSF, which is one of the nation’s top institutions in both areas. According to UCSF researchers and leaders, shipments of medicine, as well as the often delicate materials used in cutting-edge research, are being delayed because United Parcel Service drivers refuse to cross picket lines at UC campuses in solidarity with the strikers. (UPS drivers are in the Teamsters Union, and the striking student workers are part of the United Auto Workers.)
Lisa Kroon, the clinical pharmacy department chair at UCSF’s School of Pharmacy, confirmed that deliveries of medicine to UCSF’s two Walgreens locations have been impacted. “They provide discharge medications to UCSF patients when they leave our hospitals, so [they] have had challenges with timely medication deliveries.”
Biochemist Noelle L’Etoile, who runs a neuroscience lab at UCSF’s Parnassus campus, told The Frisc that the lab next to hers had “thousands of dollars worth of [antibodies] perish that delayed their research experiments.” A researcher in the lab, who did not want to use their name, confirmed the loss.
Even if sensitive biological materials show up, other disruptions could spoil the research. Neuroscience graduate student Jenn DiSanto noted the importance of dry ice, which wasn’t being delivered. “That was very disruptive to labs and they were trying to ration their remaining dry ice,” DiSanto said.
Apollo Wallace, business agent and union organizer for Teamsters Local 2785, said the university has had to find workarounds to get timely packages delivered. “UCSF would have to figure out a way to get a truck, bring it to the UPS building, and either load it in themselves or a supervisor would help them. No Teamster will touch it.”
‘Graduate students, postdocs, academic researchers in California, we are all severely burdened.’ — Sayeh Jafari, head steward of the local union of UCSF academic researchers
When asked about classes canceled, labs disrupted, and other impacts of the strike, UCSF spokeswoman Elizabeth Fernandez said she didn’t have specifics and referred questions to the UC Office of the President, which in turn pointed to the university’s statement on the status of negotiations.
But UCSF acknowledged the turmoil to campus researchers who work with time-sensitive material, sending an email in late November that confirmed Wallace’s description of a workaround. “We realize the inconvenience this may have on your team and thank you for your understanding,” the email read.
‘I’m moving back in with my parents’
The temporary disruptions are worth it for the strikers, who say they make unsustainably low wages and benefits as they work long hours in one of the world’s most expensive cities. “Graduate students, postdocs, academic researchers in California, we are all severely burdened,” says Sayeh Jafari, an academic researcher in UCSF’s anatomy department and head steward of UCSF academic researchers in the local union.
“Across all campuses, you’re dealing with bad inflation and cost of living issues or the really painful and difficult rental market. My lease is up January 1st and I’m not renewing it. I’m moving back in with my parents because it’s too expensive to live in San Francisco.”
Those costs are also a reminder that UCSF’s plan for more student housing at its Parnassus campus has been opposed by neighbors, who delayed but ultimately did not stop the expansion, which also includes a new hospital.
The negotiations are complicated by the strikers’ four separate bargaining units: postdoctoral scholars, academic researchers, academic student employees (such as teaching assistants), and graduate student researchers. On Nov. 29, tentative agreements were put on the table for postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers, but there’s no word yet of those groups ratifying the deals. The strike won’t end until all four bargaining units ratify agreements.
[Update 12/15/22: Two of the four bargaining units — postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers — ratified contract agreements on Friday, Dec. 9 and are no longer on strike. However, academic student employees, such as teaching assistants, and graduate student researchers have not reached agreements with UC and are still picketing and protesting.]
UC’s proposals, which would extend contracts through 2027, include an increase in childcare reimbursement — but the details aren’t necessarily the same for each bargaining group. Tom Faust, a postdoctoral neurology scholar at UCSF and father of two kids, said the university’s offer to postdocs is “better than nothing.” But he said noted that rent and childcare are his two biggest expenses, and he’s lukewarm about the childcare increase, which he described as family unfriendly, “either push[ing] off in time or altogether the possibility of having a family, and it pushes a lot of people, primarily women, out of the academy.”
The end of the strike remains unclear. The UC and UAW bargaining teams have not yet reached temporary agreements for all bargaining units, much less ratifications. Early Monday, a member of the workers’ negotiating team sent an update to followers, saying the UC requirement “that we call off the strike immediately — before members have a chance to fully deliberate on the proposal — is not going to cut it.”
“We are going to continue escalating this week,” wrote Ahmed Akhtar, a physics graduate student at UC San Diego.
Without a resolution, UPS drivers will not deliver medicine for patients or materials for research labs working on the next generation of biomedical discoveries, and UCSF will keep scrambling.
“As long as UAW is on strike, we will be in solidarity with them,” Teamsters organizer Wallace said. “We will honor that picket line.”
Kelsey Oliver is a graduate student in the schools of journalism and public health at UC Berkeley. This is Kelsey’s first report for The Frisc.