Recent:
22 October 2010
Members of the bargaining teams of the University of California and UAW Local 2865:
We are teaching assistants, GSIs, readers, and tutors of the University of California - union members organizing to support UAW Local 2865's demands for a fair wage increase, improvements to child care subsidies, union access and rights, and adequate appointment notification in a a successor agreement. Reaching a fair contract is not only important for our ability to make it as students and campus workers, it is also critical for our ability to provide high quality education to our undergraduate students, a task which falls increasingly to us. Our teaching conditions are undergraduates' learning conditions!
1) The UC Administration's last proposal - a 2% wage increase per year, for a three-year contract - represents a decrease in real wages, since projected rates of inflation are well above 2%, and we had a pay freeze in 2009-10. We are well below wage parity with other institutions, and deserve a much more significant wage increase; raises that don't keep up with inflation are unacceptable.
2) The UC Administration rejected the union's proposal to double childcare subsidies and make subsidies available during the summer, even though this would only cost around $75,000 system-wide. $75,000 is less than a pittance compared to the $11.5 million the UC is spending in executive salary increases and bonuses for fiscal year 2010 (see State Senator Leland Yee's press release).
3) The UC Administration has moved to eliminate pay for members of our collective bargaining team as provided in our contract. This proposed change would force members of the bargaining team to seek employment elsewhere or would decrease the representation of each campus in bargaining. This attempt to reduce our collective power is completely unacceptable.
4) The UC Administration has refused to provide greater notice for job appointments. It's impossible to plan your life when you don't know if you have a job a few days before term begins. UC should dispense with excuses and commit to providing advance appointment notification.
Teaching assistants, GSIs, readers, and tutors do the vital work of the university for low pay; most of those of us who have children qualify for food stamps. We are not willing to accept a decrease in real wages! We will do whatever it takes to reject the UC Administration's bad faith bargaining, up to and including going on strike to protest the UC Administration's unfair labor practices. If this becomes necessary, we will organize our fellow academic student employees to make such a strike a success.