EECS is doing contract shenanigans to underpay us

In response to these wage increases, the department (i.e. a majority of EECS faculty) have voted on several policies to reduce graduate student pay going forwards.

These steps amount to an effort to erase the pay gains graduate students won during the most recent strike.

Reduced summer appointments

As we noted above, the department previously advised its faculty members to fund students full-time appointment during the summer. Since the beginning of the new contract, the department has withdrawn this advisory, with faculty members free to choose whatever summer appointment they wish for their students.

Note that we also noted above that by contract, grad students must be appointed at a percent commensurate with their expected work. Since students are employed full time over the summer, this means that even though students should be appointed at 100%, they might be appointed less for no clear reason.

Some faculty members have already decided to take advantage of this ambiguity to pay their students less. See the Survey Wages sheet of the EECS Wages spreadsheet to see how much your faculty advisor pays their students during the summer, and use the slider below to see how much in wages this difference causes:

The dotted line denotes ideal wage earnings, while the red area represents true earnings.

Erased raises for students 2023 and after

But wait, there's more!

Recall that we said earlier that the department cannot reduce the step level of current students. Unfortunately, the department is attempting to find a workaround to this: only underpaying new students.

During the summer, UC Berkeley's Labor Relations department informed the EECS department, along with other departments on campus, that they could start new students at a lower step level. Because of this, a majority of EECS faculty voted to start new (≥ 2023 cohort) graduate students at Step 4, with a promotion to Step 5 after qualifying exams. This means that all new students are paid two step levels lower than existing students. Additionally, even after quals, we will still be paid less than existing students.

Here's a breakdown of how much you'll lose per month this school year:

Extra: TA appointment shenanigans

As a result of changes in pay to TAs, folks who are TA-ing will be paid less than they made previously. This is on account of two changes.

First, as we mentioned above, the department used to cover the difference between GSI and GSR step levels during semesters when a student teaches, since GSI step level pay amounts are lower than GSR amounts. Now, the department has removed this advice, meaning that during semesters that you are teaching, the department will no longer cover the difference between TA and GSR pay.

Second, UC Berkeley as a whole has decided to change the job title that TAs are appointed as. While the earnings under the new job title do constitute a wage over previous TA wages, the raises are less than if TAs had retained their previous job title. This Google Doc has more info about this.

We haven't included calculators for this section yet; for now, refer to the previous version of this doc to get a sense for this.

The upshot: you are missing your effective wage gains

Taking these pay reductions into account, this essentially erases our wage gains from the 2022-23 strikes. Here's a chart showing expected yearly salaries for a grad student entering in a particular academic year, given the selections you've made above:

For new students, the big bump in wage gains around 2023 has been erased entirely. Through contract lawyering, the EECS department has erased all of the wage gains given to current students.