[Corebotanyfaculty] Upcoming strike

[Bpschair]

Hi Everyone,
You have received a number of emails from the Provost, the Dean, and the Academic Senate about the situation with the likely UAW strike that will include GSRs, TAs, postdocs, and other academic workers.  If an agreement is not reached by Monday morning, there will be a strike.  We don’t know how long the strike will be, but it sounds as though it could be one to two weeks, perhaps longer.

Those of you teaching classes — it is up to you to decide how to handle the discussion or lab sections that are taught by TAs, if your TAs don’t come to class because they are on strike.  For classes with multiple sections and more than one TA, it is possible that some TAs will strike and others won’t, so there may be issues with equity for the undergraduates.  Planning is challenging since TAs may or may not inform you of their intentions to teach their sections or not.

Some options:
Cancel all lab or discussion sections for the week.  This is not very satisfactory, and not a good option if the strike goes on longer than one week.
Cover the sections yourself.  This is probably not possible if you course has multiple sections.
Hold one discussion section yourself over zoom and record it for students in other sections.
Use remote materials from prior years.
Honor requests from TAs to hold remote discussions during the strike if they don’t want to cross the picket line. 

Whatever you decide, please communicate with the students in your class so they know what you are planning. You won’t necessarily know if TAs will show up for their sections, so please also instruct the students on what to do if they come to the discussion or lab and the TA is not there.  

Of course the strike has the potential to cause major research disruptions as well, and this will be different for everyone.  

Let me know if I can help.

Patty
 
Patricia Springer
Professor and Chair, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences
University of California
Riverside, CA  92521

pspringer at ucr.edu
bpschair at ucr.edu
951-827-4413 (Chair's office)
951-827-5785 (Faculty office)
http://plantbiology.ucr.edu