Faculty of the Geography Department at Berkeley stand with Graduate Student Instructors who join 48,000 academic workers in a historic strike across the University of California, including Postdoctoral Scholars, Academic Researchers, Academic Student Employees and Student Researchers. We call on the University to negotiate in good faith for new contracts. We recognize the union’s call for 54k base pay and COLA as prerequisites for dignified life for academic workers in California. We recognize the vital role that graduate students play in teaching, research, and service. We recognize that our own work is enabled by their well-being. We know the reality across California that severe rent burdens lead to serious food and housing insecurity among academic workers. This is unacceptable. Berkeley Geography faculty stand with graduate students by pledging not to retaliate against them for their right to strike. We pledge that no future decisions about their funding or support will be related to their participation. We respect their action in defense of the actual public mission of the University of California.
We ask the administration to desist from pressuring faculty, particularly non-Senate and pre-tenured faculty, from having to provide any kind of uncompensated labor that undermines the strike. We refuse to be a part of any policy that pressures lecturer and non-tenured faculty colleagues who refuse to comply with the UC’s policing of the strike, and who refuse to take on labor that has been withheld as part of strike action.
In solidarity,
Faculty of the Department of Geography