Your Academic Researcher (AR) Bargaining Team has met with UC twice in the past week for negotiations covering Project Scientists, Specialists, Professional Researchers and CPPs. Below are some of the high/low-lights. We will be back at the bargaining table on Friday, July 15. Please fill out this RSVP form if you’d like to attend and listen in, or simply reply to this email if you’d like to get more involved!
- UC gave Academic Researchers a proposal on Compensation under which ARs would have to wait until July 2023 to get a 4% increase. Annual salary raises would then decrease to 2% moving forward for the next 3 years. This is insulting and woefully insufficient. We are currently preparing our own Compensation proposal, which will address the rising cost of living and rates of inflation in connection with our value to UC.
- Quick reminder that our current contract (2019-22) includes an AR salary scale increase of 3% on July 1, 2022; we are negotiating for a new contract beyond Sept. 30, 2022.
- UC passed their first counter in response to our article to address bullying and abusive conduct (the article is called Respectful Work Environment). Given that in the last round of AR bargaining UC refused to even consider including anti-bullying protections, this counter proposal is good progress. However, UC is not recognizing yet that we need enforceable protections – e.g. UC wants the ability to put cases on pause indefinitely while UC is “investigating” and UC wants to be able to unilaterally change definitions of what constitutes bullying.
- We exchanged proposals on Grievance and Arbitration procedures, which describes the process to resolve issues and violations of AR rights. While we proposed expansions of our rights and more ways to hold UC accountable, UC wants to weaken the process and drag out timelines to resolve issues. We have all heard about fellow researchers’ difficulties of getting basic issues addressed such as correct pay and benefits enrollment, so we will be pushing back against these regressive proposals.
- We also passed proposals on Appointments (to provide earlier appointment letters to ARs), Layoff (increase the time of notice and more rights for ARs), and we proposed to eliminate the articles Medical Separation and No Strikes.
- We reached a Tentative Agreement with UC that keeps the current contract language on 8 articles (Recognition, Labor Management Meetings, Past Practice, Personnel Files, Severability, Training, Travel Reimbursement, Waiver). We also agreed on a set of “Ground Rules” for bargaining, in which we were successful in keeping bargaining open to all AR union members to attend without restrictions.
This tracker shows all the proposals that have been exchanged so far, and has links to every document if you would like to have a closer read.
How you can help Academic Researchers win!
The simplest and most important step you can take is to sign up to be a dues-paying member of your union! Our leverage at the bargaining table is directly related to the number of ARs who are dues-paying members. If you’re not currently a member, or you are not sure, please click here to join!
In solidarity,
Bargaining Team members and alternates:
Howard Isaacson, UC Berkeley
Stacey S. Frederick, UC Berkeley
Paul Lott, UC Davis
Conor White, UC Davis
Mia Villegas, UC Irvine
Gabriel Edwards, UCLA
Tony Shahin, UC Merced
Cecilia Rodriguez Furlan, UC Riverside
Sonia Podvin, UC San Diego
Chunnan Hsu, UC San Diego
Maike Roth, UCSF
Luke Russell Bonser, UCSF
Vitor Hugo Serrão, UC Santa Cruz
Margherita Zavatta, UC Santa Cruz
Ryan McGreal, UC Santa Barbara