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For the past two weeks, 48,000 University of California graduate student employees, post-docs and researchers have been on strike. Their efforts have effectively shut down research and teaching across the 10 UC campuses. It’s the largest higher education strike in U.S. history, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

The academic workers are negotiating what they say are necessary improvements to their contracts, including childcare benefits, expanded paid family leave, protections for international workers, and most pressingly, wage increases to lift these workers — who form the backbone of the UC's world-class research output and undergraduate education — out of poverty.

We speak with Nanette Asimov, higher education reporter at the San Fransisco Chronicle, about the strike and negotiations, and we hear from a rank-and-file union member about the solidarity on display across the 10 UC campuses.