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Monday, November 30, 1998

Starting Tuesday TAs will strike, hoping to gain bargaining rights

SAGE: Protest may last, as UAW financial support will keep workers going

By Mason Stockstill

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

It's official.

Confirming weeks of rumors and speculations, the graduate student union at UCLA announced Sunday that a strike would indeed begin on Tuesday of this week.

The Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE), in conjunction with similar unions at seven other UC campuses, is hoping that this year's strike, the first since 1996, will be more disruptive than past strikes.

And it just may be. Through their affiliation with the United Auto Workers (UAW), SAGE has secured strike benefits - payments to striking workers to help them financially - meaning that this strike could last a very long time.

"The duration of the strike will certainly be longer than the strikes that we've tried before," said Connie Razza, an organizer for SAGE.

Meanwhile, UC administrators have continued to reiterate their position that teaching assistants (TAs) should not be considered employees because serving as a teaching assistant is integral to their educational experience.

"We believe that TAs are principally students rather than employees, and thus are not eligible for collective bargaining," said UC president Richard Atkinson in a letter circulated last Monday.

Furthermore, Atkinson stressed that it was the university's position that allowing TAs to bargain collectively could "disrupt the collegial relationships between students and faculty that are so critical in graduate work."

SAGE organizers had kept the start date of the strike somewhat secret until now, largely because they feared that university administrators would hire replacement workers to take the place of striking TAs.

Administrators would not say whether replacement workers were an option being considered.

"I would prefer not to start listing things that we will not do," said Chancellor Albert Carnesale.

University officials have said that switching to multiple-choice final exams is being considered as an option to alleviate extra work on professors as a result of the strike.

SAGE organizers are not encouraging students to skip class during the strike; rather, they are encouraging students to attend, and to see what their classes would be like without TAs there.

With reports from Timothy Kudo, Daily Bruin contributor

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