Students who are members of the Association of Graduate Student Employees/United Auto Workers voted Oct. 30 to stage a three-day strike.

Joseph J. Duggan, associate dean for admissions and degrees, said he hopes graduate students will honor their commitments to teaching and counseling undergraduates despite the differences with the administration.

As of Nov. 5, there was no announcement from AGSE as to when a strike might occur. News on late breaking developments will appear on the campus's News and Events web page at https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/index.html

The graduate students are claiming a right to collective bargaining based on a recent decision issued by an administrative law judge pertaining to the UCLA campus. That ruling is considered a "proposed decision" that is subject to review by the Public Employment Relations Board.

When a similar decision was rendered in Berkeley by an administrative law judge in 1987, PERB overturned the ruling and determined that the graduate student researchers and instructors do not have a right to collective bargaining under state law. That particular ruling was upheld by the state courts when the union appealed.