Every summer, many graduate workers hustle to close the difference between 12 months of rent and only 9 months of wages. Summer employment has only grown more precarious; workers increasingly find appointments canceled without recourse.

At the same time, funding guarantees are shrinking or disappearing altogether: previous 5-year funding guarantees are being quietly discontinued, while other campuses have no guarantees. As we bargain for our new contract, graduate workers demand: 12 months guaranteed funding until degree completion.

Our contract is complicated — too complicated. Every worker is placed on a series of tiers that determine how much they get paid; the differences add up. The highest paid graduate workers make over $15,000/year more than the lowest paid.

The UC uses tiers to systematically divide workers, paying many of us poverty wages while convincing others that the system is fair. It’s not. With our UAW siblings nationally, we demand a 2026 contract without tiers.

Our long-term ability to do research is being dismantled. Millions in research funding has already been cut across the UC so far, with ever more endangered by the political whims of the Trump administration. These cuts have been chaotic and unpredictable, with the facts of funding seeming to shift every hour — our jobs and careers hang in the balance.

This political moment brings into relief the necessity of centralized funding for graduate and researcher labor. We call on the UC to take clear, decisive action to protect higher education — up to and including the liquidation of the UC’s $6.9 billion Blue & Gold Fund.

Job appointment security is international worker security. As funding for research and teaching increasingly comes under attack — especially over summer — international workers, already under strict work limits, face an impossible choice: return to their home country and risk detention, surveillance, and their reentry barred, or live without an income for the summer months.

The UC must establish guaranteed funding for international scholars whose legal status is contingent on continued employment.