About 40 teaching assistants walked off the job at UC Davis last week, participating in picket lines as part of a systemwide effort by the Association of Graduate Student Employees/United Auto Workers Local 2865. A total of 311 TA-led sections were scheduled for Friday at UC Davis. Ultimately, 36 sections were affected by the strike; but faculty filled in to teach 11 of those classes. Systemwide, UC employs some 10,000 teaching assistants, tutors and readers. The graduate students are charged with duties including leading undergraduate discussion sessions and lab sections and grading papers. Of the about 1,425 such titles at UC Davis, 525 are dues paying union members. Their bargaining unit’s contract with UC expired Sept. 30. Union members have been negotiating for, among other things, the right to sympathy strike and to have workload issues resolved by an outside arbitrator. Here, Elif Sonmez and Quinton Shaw assemble placards as fellow union members strike Friday near the corner of First and A streets.