On Friday (December 16), the University of California reached a tentative agreement with the leadership of the academic workers’ unions that have been on strike since November 14, potentially signaling an imminent end to the historic standoff, the Associated Press reports.
All in all, the strike is “providing guidance to indicate that strikes are very forceful means of accomplishing goals,” William Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College in New York, tells the AP.
The strike included roughly 48,000 academic workers, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other union-represented titles, who collectively agreed to withhold their labor and research efforts until the University of California (UC) agreed to increase their stipends to a base of $54,000, and offer benefits such as childcare, tuition, and healthcare. Teaching assistants, the lowest paid of the group, start at ...
