Word: razza
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...main problem facing graduate students is their exclusion from the employment process, according to Connie M. Razza, a fifth-year graduate student in the English department at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a spokesperson for the Student Association of Graduate Employees-United Auto Workers (SAGE-UAW) at UCLA...
...really simply that we do so much of the teaching [in colleges] without having a say in the terms and conditions of the working environment," Razza says...
This forced administrators to officially recognize the union and immediately begin negotiations. Razza says similar elections would be held on the seven other UC campuses by the end of this schoolyear...
When she entered graduate school at UCLA five years ago to pursue a Ph.D. in English, Connie Razza, 26, hardly expected to be a campus activist. But she also didn't expect a workload like this: for one undergraduate literature course this semester, Razza gives lectures, runs a discussion section, grades papers and exams, and holds office hours in a basement room where 40 other teaching assistants share 29 desks and one computer. For 30 hours a week of such labor, she earns about $1,400 a month--which doesn't even cover her rent, tuition, books and car payments...
...Razza joined a drive to unionize UCLA's 1,700 nonprofessional instructors, most of them graduate students who double as teaching assistants. Last month they voted, 718 to 269, to get their union cards from the United Auto Workers. Similar unionization votes are scheduled at seven other U.C. campuses later this year. University administrators had threatened not to negotiate with the union but backed down after the vote. The UCLA vote was the latest in a string of labor victories on campus. Nationwide, graduate students have organized at close to 20 universities and colleges...