The core faculty of the Department of Asian American Studies joins the Department of Feminist Studies in urging the UCSB administration to pressure UCOP to resume good faith negotiations with the UAW, and to take seriously the bargaining position of the UC Graduate Student Associations. As faculty we recognize the work of graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees to be essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California. We support fair wages and working conditions for all academic workers and hope that a disruptive strike can be avoided. The UC’s graduate student employee salary scale should be brought into line with that of our comparison institutions, and also include adjustments for inflation and the rapidly rising cost of living—especially housing costs—in California. Salary increases will not only help graduate student workers achieve a living wage, but will enable UC to better compete with comparison universities around the country for the best graduate students.