I'm one of them. I made this account for opsec reasons, don't worry I'll be careful.
This came after a 5 week strike. The contract came largely as a result of tactics such as large groups going to different regents houses at 5 a.m. and waking them up.
The lowest paid teaching assistant is moving from making about $23,000/yr now to $34,000/yr by October 2024. In Los Angeles, Berkeley, and San Francisco they'll be making $36,500.
We fucking won!
Good shit. If you don't mind answering, I have some questions in regards to professors:
What's the percentage of professors who are supportive of the strike/neutral or apathetic/supportive of management?
Were there any professors that picketed as well?
Is there an associate professor/tenured professor divide when it comes to how they view the strike?
Unfortunately I don't have great numbers. Something like 450 faculty members signed a pledge of solidarity toward the start of the strike. There are over 20,000 faculty members total for context.
There were professors who came out daily to the picket line in support. At my picket line there were maybe 5 there on any given day.
Very hard for me to gauge professor culture.
My personal thoughts: I was very disappointed by the lack of professor support. A lot of professors not only didn't cancel classes, but they actually filled in for the TAs on the picket line. For both student researchers and TAs, there was an enormous amount of intimidation coming from many departments.
Damn, that's rough. I guess professors have collectively decided which side they're on and student workers must take this into account moving forward.
Professors are in many ways management, especially for the labs that they run. A lot of professors are supportive of us getting raises because it means it'll be easier to recruit better students in the future. Other professors are unhappy because they'll have to hire fewer workers in their labs.
In addition to @OpsecAccount230906's answers, I will also add that there are a decent amount of professors (I don't have data, just from the UC professors I work with) that are against the wage increases because that means more grant money that they have to get/less grad students they can pay with a given amount of grants. One thing that is causing a slow moving catastrophe with academia is that grants don't keep up with inflation well. The average grant size is still similar in dollar amounts to what they were a decade ago, even though lab equipment and salaries have increased in the mean time. So, I know several professors I work with were rooting for very small wage increases so they didn't have to worry about grant money.
Additionally, tenured/expecting tenure professors are some of the most secure PMC types, so there are the obvious right wing Liberal political positions that come with that class position generally.