UC Irvine lecturers strike

Deepa Bharath

The slogan “Support your education, support your lecturers” echoed

across the campus Monday morning as 100 to 150 lecturers, teaching

assistants and their supporters picketed.

The strike was part of a two-day University of California system

walkout by lecturers demanding more wages and better job security.

“The lecturers need a contract,” said Andrew Tonkovich, president

of Local 2226 of the University Council-American Federation of

Teachers and a lecturer in UCI’s English and Comparative Literature

Department. “We’ve been without one for 2 1/2 years now.”

Lecturers are being treated like “day laborers you pick up from

the parking lot of a Home Depot,” he said.

“It’s not even like a real job,” he said. “We have to reapply for

our own jobs. There’s no security. This walkout is a measure of

people’s frustration and annoyance.”

Lecturers are fighting for job protections and parity in salary

with full-time professors, contending that they teach the same kind

of classes that tenured faculty do. They have already filed eight

unfair labor practice complaints against the UC system, the latest

one Friday, Tonkovich said.

University of California system spokesman Paul Schwartz said the

system’s administration has “tried to be sensitive” to the lecturers’

needs.

“We’re trying to adjust to their needs,” he said. “But they need

to compromise as well.”

The next formal mediation session is scheduled for Monday in

Sacramento, Schwartz said.

Several classes were canceled Monday as a result of the strike,

UCI spokeswoman Lori Brandt said. By 4 p.m., she said 74 of 1,761

classes were canceled, almost all of them in humanities.

Michael Nailat, a fifth-year student holding a picket sign, said

he did not attend classes all morning.

“I’m here to show my support,” he said. “I know a lot of people

support it. They’re just not out here holding a sign.”

But sophomore Patrick Coleman said he believed the picketers were

“loud and abrasive.”

“They were chanting loudly and playing Beatles songs,” he said. “I

understand their need to strike. I just wish they had done it

differently.”

Coleman said he was in the library Monday trying to study, but

could not because of “all the noise.”

“By not lecturing today, they prevented us from doing our jobs as

students,” he said. “By having a loud rally, they just disrupted our

lives even more.”

Tonkovich said he was very pleased with the response to the

walkout.

“We want to show everybody the physical impact of our political

power,” he said.

Most of the picketers were lecturers, Tonkovich said, but

“professional and technical workers” were also on the picket line.

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at [email protected].