The largest academic strike in the United States comes to an end after five weeks of protest

Hundreds of people demonstrate in Sacarmento in favor of the academic staff of the University of California, at the beginning of December.Brontë Wittpenn (AP)

There is an agreement in principle at the University of California.

Some 48,000 academic workers stopped their activities for five weeks to demand an increase in wages and better conditions in one of the most important public educational centers in the United States.

The leaders of the movement have announced on Friday afternoon that there are conditions to end the strike – the largest ever seen on a US school campus – if the union members approve the conditions offered by the institution.

The strike, which began on November 14, had disrupted classes at the university's 10 facilities throughout the state, a system that is home to 280,000 students from around the world.

The work stoppage was called by assistant professors studying for doctorates, postdoctoral scholars, and doctoral researchers.

The researchers and postdoctoral scholars had reached a tentative agreement in early December that improved their contract status, putting the minimum wage at $70,000, one of the highest in the United States.

But both groups had agreed to continue the strike until there was an agreement for assistant professors, the most vulnerable group and on whom the greatest workload in university life weighed.

These are doctoral students, who also work in different faculties helping tenured professors in their classes.

They saw how high rents in California, where a room can cost $2,100 a month, consumed most of their salaries.

The university's offer, which will have to be seconded by the workers (unionized within an auto industry employee organization), offers a 47% raise for the lowest-earning students/workers.

These would go from earning $23,250 to $34,000 for nine months of part-time work.

The amount is less than the $54,000 they initially requested.

If endorsed, the contract would allow for renegotiation in May 2025.

“This has been a historic strike and we won a historic agreement that raises the bar for public education throughout the country,” Rafael Jaime, the president of section 2865 of the Auto Workers Union, said this afternoon.

The vote that must ratify the end of the strike will take place next week.

If the offer is rejected, the strike will continue and will put the University in trouble, which is in the midst of final exams and the end of the semester.

If 2022 closes with a strike, the school start of the next cycle, where tens of thousands of students are already enrolled, will be affected.

The tension of the strike was already perceived by the tenured teachers, who seconded the protest of the colleagues who help with most of the daily tasks in the classrooms.

Alex Saum-Pascual, who has been an academic in Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese for eleven years, affirmed this week that the Administration was playing dirty.

The university dome suggested that the faculty should assume many of the tasks of their assistants in the final stretch of the semester.

"We are forced to do a job that is not ours and that is not paid," said Saum-Pascual by telephone.

The agreement also includes improvements in monetary support and subsidies for academic staff who are mothers or fathers, an extension of maternity or paternity leave and health insurance plans for dependents, as well as mobility subsidies.

The university will also cover up to three years of extra tuition for some foreign students.