TL;DR: We need YOU to take three contract actionsthis week: join UA’s internal Slack and opt into UA texts; make our union more visible by flyering your workplace and wearing your UA gear every Thursday; and follow UA on all our socials! Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook.
We hope your Winter quarter is off to a good start!
As you know, we are entering mediation with the administration on January 24th. Bargaining is coming into the inevitable end-game stages where the pressure will continue to increase on both sides. While we have spent hours, days, months explaining faculty needs and fighting unnecessary wage cuts, the administration is still digging in their heels against a fair deal. They have made a choice to divert money from the educational mission of the university. This choice is not driven by their budget— tuition, state funding, and the Educational & General budget (from which our salaries come) have grown faster than inflation. The same administrators who want us to take wage cuts have given themselves higher-than-inflation raises.
It has become evident that if we want to ensure the academic health of the institution, we are going to have to take matters into our own hands. This requires every one of us to take action in support of the contract we all deserve!
The United Academics Contract Action Team(CAT) is a group of your fellow union members who are helping to steer public pressure tactics in support of our contract campaign. We have been collaborating with the bargaining team on a multi-week action plan to publicize and garner support for our bargaining team’s demands for fair wages and working conditions.
We are asking YOU to contribute to this effort by taking various actions in support of our collective needs. Our goal is (still) to divert the need for a strike by building pressure to come to a fair deal. Our ability to win a fair contract depends upon the totality of actions taken by faculty workers like you. Remember, your union activity is legally protectedand if you feel you are being retaliated against for this protected activity, please immediately contact our grievances officer Nathan Whalen.
Small actions make a tremendous difference. Every time an administrator sees someone wearing a UA hat, a UA meme demonstrating student support, or a letter from a department or other faculty group, the administration must take more seriously the threat of a potential strike.
To help you take action in your workplace, we are releasing our Contract Action Team Kit — a toolkit of resources and actions that you can take to help us secure a fair contract. Many of these actions are small, and take only a minute or two. Others may take more time, but have a greater impact — for instance, organizing a meeting with your colleagues and an officer or bargaining team member to discuss any questions your unit may have. In addition to sharing the full kit today, we will be highlighting a few actions each week with the goal of members completing these actions en masse for greater impact.
At this stage of bargaining, all of us need to be having serious conversations with each other about what we need and what we are willing to do to win it. The administration is trying to permanently reduce the amount of money going to the educational mission of the university and the stakes of our fight are very high. For that reason, your fellow union members from the Organizing & Membership Team will be knocking on doors, sharing information, answering questions, and generally taking the temperature of our membership in the run-up to mediation.
If mediation does not appear to be heading towards a deal that the majority of our members are ready to accept, we will begin collecting strike pledges. Strike pledges are not an official strike authorization vote — if impasse is declared (after a minimum of 15 days of mediation) our membership will vote to authorize the bargaining team to declare a strike, if they deem it necessary. Following a vote by the membership, the soonest a potential strike could happen under the legal PECBA timeline is finals week of Winter term (although we are not obligated to strike at that time).
Rather, strike pledges are a way to quantify our collective engagement and priorities, as well as a way for us to project the power of our union. This can move the needle at the bargaining table by pressuring the administration to pay attention to their duty to the mission of our university, and the costs of a potential labor action.
Finally, we are asking you to join the Contract Action Team, which meets from 11am-12pm on Thursdays (in the UA office and over zoom). We need your skills to help us build an effective pressure campaign to win this contract, and we welcome members of all experience levels!
As always — please have conversations with your coworkers about our contract fight! This is the most important step to preparing ourselves for collective action. Next week, CAT will return with another newsletter update including more mass action asks related to the start of mediation.
In solidarity,
Your Contract Action Team