The largest strike in the history of higher education is over.
Forty days after 48,000 student employees across all 10 University of California campuses began their statewide strike for better wages and working conditions, the end came with the ratification of new contract agreements for 36,000 graduate student workers, including 17,000 graduate student researchers (GSR) and more than 19,000 academic student employees (ASE) such as teaching assistants and tutors.
The tentative agreements followed soon after the university and bargaining teams representing graduate student workers entered into voluntary mediation on December 9. Despite controversy between union members , the two bargaining teams representing graduate student researchers (SRU-UAW) and academic student employees (UAW 2865) reached tentative agreements with the university on December 16; the vote was then passed on to union membership for ratification of the contracts, which involved a weeklong voting process that concluded on Friday, December 23.