America’s unions are gentrifying

The weather in Los Angeles on December 1st was unusually dull, with rain drizzling down and a chill in the air. This perhaps helped to explain the relatively low energy of the picketers on strike at UCLA’s campus. Instead of listening to rousing speeches, graduate students milled around, chatting to one another. In the centre of the crowd organisers had set up a projector screen showing a video conference, which almost nobody was watching. And yet the strikers are clear about what they want. “People work 60-80 hours a week, you know, in total,” said Sammy Feldblum, a geography PhD student among the picketers. “And all we’re asking for is that we should be able to live in an apartment…reasonably close to the university. We’re not asking for anything crazy.”