Your job as an advisor becomes easier.

• Increased workplace satisfaction, better mental and physical health

Your lab or class will become more productive.

• Your student researchers and teaching assistants won’t be juggling moves, extra jobs, or ad hoc funding fire fighting.

You can attract and train diverse and excellent future scientists.

• This is about public education and research that all can afford to be part of. Many decide they can’t afford to pursue a PhD or a career in academia.

• Faculty members are legally obligated to respect the right of workers to strike, and should not retaliate against or seek disclosure of striking workers under any circumstances.

• All university employees covered under HEERA, including all Senate faculty, even department chairs or heads of similar academic units or programs, are non-managerial. Therefore, individuals in these positions have the right to respect a picket line established by other university employees.

• Keep lines of communication with striking workers open. Speak with them, on the picket line or elsewhere, so they can explain what they are doing and why they are striking, and ways faculty can help.

Distinction between Undergraduate and Graduate units

• For graduate courses numbered 298, 299, 500, and similar courses:

  • We urge faculty members to practice flexibility by reducing workload and issuing grades based on work already performed, so as to not obstruct their aforementioned right to strike over their conditions of employment. Because there are different kinds of grad courses that require their own accommodations, we recommend that you communicate with them to come to a reasonable solution.

  • We encourage giving an “S” grade as long as work conducted prior to the strike merits an “S”. Do not fail, threaten to fail, give “U” grades, or otherwise penalize workers at strike.

  • Do not withhold grades in these courses as the university has used “satisfactory academic progress” as a mechanism to circumvent workers' legal protection as strikers. Missing or unsatisfactory grades (especially in 299s) can be terms of dismissal for graduate students as a form of administrative retaliation, and can create immediate issues with health insurance eligibility and visas.

• For undergraduate courses:

  • Senate faculty are legally protected by HEERA to not volunteer to take up struck work that otherwise would have been completed by a TA/Reader/Tutor, which includes grading and submitting grades. Submitting grades for striking workers is active strikebreaking and undermines our own welfare. We strongly discourage faculty members from doing this.

  • Giving all students A’s, Incompletes, or NG’s might appear to be a more equitable solution, but it would be taking up struck labor and undermining the impact of the strike.

  • Scenarios in which students are immediately negatively impacted by a missing grade:

    • Students on academic probation and on financial aid

    • Students graduating this quarter

  • To our knowledge, the following are not affected by missing grades:

    • Veteran benefits

    • International student visas

    • Athletics scholarships

Information on grading was gathered from our contacts in response to questions that faculty had at town hall #1 about how grade withholding will impact some undergrads. Deans, department chairs, Academic Senate chairs, and others with closer ties to the upper administration and UCOP should have more information than us, and it is their responsibility to provide clear answers to these questions. We are simply sharing what we have been able to learn in the last week from Academic Council emails, and UC Senate guidance from across UC campuses.

Avoid strike breaking includes:

• Not picking up struck work. That is, do not grade assignments yourself, or otherwise do the work that ASEs would be doing. You have no obligation to do this under HEERA.

• Not hiring extra labor to make up for the labor shortage created by the strike.

• Not changing exam formats to undermine the power of the strike.

• Not submitting grades based only on the assignments that have already been graded

• Not inserting other grades that are not representative of students’ work

• Not penalizing workers enrolled in courses numbered as 299 or 500 by giving them a failing grade

• Form for faculty to assess undergrads' grading needs Template for Grading Needs Self-Assessment

• Resources curated by San Dieguito Faculty Association SDFA LinkTree

• Resources curated by workers Strike Info For Faculty LinkTree