Update: the university has dropped its demands that TAs become hourly employees.
For decades, TAs at the University of California have received a regular salary for completing their work. The university has proposed making all undergraduate TAs in EECS/DS hourly workers. This means that TAs would have to log the number of hours they work each week in CalTime and would receive a biweekly paycheck on the basis of how many hours they logged. Here’s why ASEs strongly oppose this move to make TAs hourly workers.
This is a distraction
The primary purpose of these negotiations is to increase staffing in the EECS/DS departments. ASEs do not believe that these negotiations are the appropriate venue to be proposing an unproven model where TAs are shifted to being hourly workers. For decades—across this department and every other department across the state—the standard has been that people doing TA work are paid on a salaried basis. The issue with our departments is that there are not enough TAs, not that our TAs receive the same paycheck every month.
Stability
TAs value the stability of a monthly salary. Receiving the same paycheck each month simply makes planning our lives easier. Switching to hourly work would mean that a TA who depends on their salary to support themself would find trouble making ends meet around the holidays, when less work is assigned.
We should acknowledge that current readers and tutors lack this stability. ASEs are open to proposals that would increase the amount of stability for these workers—or even move them to salaried work. However, we do not see the lack of stability for readers and tutors as a good reason to decrease the amount of stability for TAs.
The university has proposed a needlessly complex model to bring some degree of stability to hourly roles. The model involves guaranteeing a certain minimum number of hours to be assigned to each ASE during a semester and during each week of instruction. This model bizarrely encompasses the worst of every world—it involves all the inconveniences of hourly work while offering a half-baked stability that would still leave an hourly TA with half the usual paycheck at Christmastime. A salary is the best and simplest way to guarantee stability.
Overwork
The university argues that, by switching to an hourly model, people can be better compensated for overwork by logging the number of hours they work each week. However, there is a widespread (and illegal) practice in the EECS department where hourly employees are explicitly or implicitly instructed to not log more hours than they are appointed for. Why, then, should switching to an hourly model actually remedy overwork given that hourly work has not been able to meaningfully prevent the overwork and undercompensation of tutors and readers in the departments?
The truth is that there are many ways to address overwork both for salaried workers and hourly workers. ASEs are committed to exploring every method to address overwork for every worker, and we will continue to emphasize that the best way to address overwork is simply to hire more workers. ASEs have also proposed an expedited overwork process and better education on workers’ rights to improve workers’ knowledge of how they can remedy overwork. These measures—while imperfect—will do far more to address overwork than changing when and how TAs are paid. And they won’t threaten the stability of TA appointments either.
Cost cutting
The university seems to view hourly appointments as a potential way to cut costs in the departments. While ASEs are willing to work with the university on tuition remission and wages to offer some savings, we do not see a good reason to save money in this particular way. If the university would like to pay TAs less, it should simply propose that at the bargaining table so that we can have an honest discussion on costs and compensation.
During a bargaining session, Professor John DeNero contended that there are several weeks, such as holidays, where TAs are paid for not working, decrying this inefficiency. However, DeNero—who is paid a salary—misrepresents what a salary is. TAs provide a service to the university over the course of a semester and are compensated for that service on a monthly basis. While in some months TAs work less and in others they work more, their pay is smoothed out over the entirety of the semester. Salaried work is not “inefficient”—it simply spreads the same compensation out over a longer period of time.
Inconvenience
Logging every hour you work is cumbersome—especially when you work 20 hours per week. CalTime is a frequently broken system. While this is less important than the other points, TAs do not want to be forced onto CalTime.