I'm a research scientist at the University of Washington and a member of UAW local 4121. Earlier this month (May 2024), academic student employees (ASEs, mostly teaching or research assistants) went on strike, then ratified a new contract. I wanted to share my experience of this.
A few weeks before the ASE contract was set to expire, a strike authorization vote was held. About 80% of members voted, and about 98% of votes were in favor. In the last few weeks of the ASE contract, there was a big push to enroll members of the union. We enrolled several hundred in those weeks and got above 50% of ASEs in the union. About a week before the strike started, a few hundred of us occupied the chemistry building to protest the department head's direction to faculty members in this department not to sign the faculty support letter. A week or two before that, we had occupied the intersection in front of one of the main entrances to campus with 600 or so union members.
The first day of the strike started with picketing in the morning. This did not extend to as many university buildings and entrances as were included in the RSE picketing a year ago. A rally was held in the afternoon, which culminated in another building occupation, also well attended. Someone at the rally was yelling from the crowd up at the speakers that they should stop making concessions to the administration about wages.
A tentative agreement reached that evening (Tuesday) ended the strike. I remember seeing multiple people on the Slack channel calling for us to reject the offer, because they felt the administration was willing to give more ground on wages based on some earlier communications from them (details are fuzzy). One ASE I knew said she thought the offer was too low and would vote against, but another said that he thought it was a good offer and felt those voting 'no' were mostly not well informed or particularly active in their local before the strike. The local leadership touted "A 36% increase to the base ASE salary over the life of the contract (12%/10%/10%)—the largest raises our bargaining unit has ever won in a contract."
As the voting went on, I found myself dreading a rejection of the TA. We had already won some significant (it my opinion) concessions. There was no guarantee that a longer strike would get us anything more, and it could result in a worse contract if the administration held out for longer than the members were willing to stay on the picket lines. I also wondered if this meant that I was not as radical as I liked to imagine myself, and perhaps the cautious attitudes of people like me could hold back the workers' movement.
I signed a petition to extend the voting on the TA, because some members felt that the vote had not been well publicized enough. The all-members online meeting of our local, in which members were reminded to vote if they hadn't already, was held the afternoon of the last day of voting (Friday). I was well aware that voting was occurring, and it seemed unlikely to me that anyone who was following the strike would be unaware of this, but I thought that it couldn't hurt to give people more time. Ultimately, the TA passed with 80% of votes in favor. I'm not sure what percentage of members voted. To me, this indicates that the rank and file of the union approved of the bargaining committee's decision to make this TA with the university and suspend the strike.
student employee strike at UW
Re: student employee strike at UW
Mike, thanks for this very interesting report. And congratulations to your union comrades for winning what sounds like a very significant wage raise. Did you have any significant political discussions with fellow workers during the contract struggle? -- for example, did workers say they needed big raises in order to keep up with inflation, which is a national political issue?