Nearly 50,000 University of California academic workers strike

Around 48,000 academic workers at the University of California walked off their jobs Monday to demand higher salaries and better benefits.

Participants included teaching assistants, researchers, postdoctoral scholars, tutors and graders across the UC system's 10 campuses. The strike threatened to disrupt classroom and laboratory instruction shortly before final exams. It occurred after months of failed negotiations between the union workers and university administrators.

Academic workers have been bargaining for months to address what they said are high rents, lack of job security and support for working parents and international scholars, according to a "hardship fund" campaign by the strike organizers.

They accuse the UC system of engaging in "a wide variety of unlawful tactics" over the negotiation process, including unilaterally changing working conditions to refusing to provide the information the workers needed for bargaining.

On Monday, workers holding signs that read "on strike" and "unfair labor practices" demonstrated across campuses that include UCLA, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced.

The University of California said in a statement that it continues to "negotiate in good faith" and it is doing everything possible to mitigate the impacts of the strike on student learning.

Workers are seeking a minimum annual salary of $54,000, which is more than double their current average pay of about $24,000. Some workers, many of whom are graduate students, said they spend more than half of their salary on rents.

"We are overworked and underpaid, and we are fed up," Jamie Mondello, a 27-year-old psychology graduate student worker at UCLA and member of UAW Local 2865 and Student Researchers United, told the Los Angeles Times.

In an interview with the local ABC station, graduate student researcher Desmond Fonseca said academic workers want to have wages that cover the cost of living in the city.

"Our primary demand is to get living wages, to have living situations that match the cost of living, that match the vital work that we do to not only sustain the university but make the University of California the prestigious institution that it is," Fonseca said.

According to a report issued by the University of California student group United for a Fair Workplace, 92 percent of graduate-student workers and 61 percent of postdocs felt burdened by their rents.

This means they spend more than the federally established affordability limit, or 30 percent of their gross income, on housing. The average graduate student workers spend more than 52 percent of their salary on rent.

The University of California strike is the largest academic strike in higher education in US history, according to the United Auto Workers union.

UC has offered a salary scale increase of 7 percent in the first year and 3 percent in each subsequent year, but workers have rejected the offer.