Month: February 2025

Academic Union Network

Organizing from below: Chinese international student workers and the UC Strike: A rank-and-file interview about race, class, and labor organizing in US higher education

The six-week-long strike across the University of California (UC) campuses last year marked the largest industrial action in higher education in US history. This strike also saw the participation of many Chinese international student workers, a population that is stereotypically seen as apolitical and detached from US issues. Like their domestic and other international peers, many engaged in independent political organizing for the first time, and expressed a diversity of attitudes toward the controversial contract and how the strike was organized.


2025-02-10 0
USC的研究生工人投票通过第一份合同。图片来源UAW/news.

Questions remain for USC international graduate workers after contract win

Graduate student workers at the University of Southern California (USC) ratified their first-ever union contract on December 7, 2023. Although the contract achieved a number of important gains for graduate workers and passed with a significant margin (eighty percent) after a hard-fought campaign by the Graduate Student Workers Organizing Committee (GSWOC-UAW), some, especially international graduate workers, had concerns about the bargaining process. Tempest member Promise Li interviews international student worker Rao about the issues they faced during the bargaining period.


2025-02-03 0