Contract Demands
During the 2022 negotiations, union leadership made backroom deals to cut key demands–like a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), disability rights, and cops off campus—with no input from membership, sacrificing the needs of some of our union’s most vulnerable members in favor of a meaningful wage increase that they also failed to deliver. This resulted in a contract that has created more problems than it solved; the lack of a specified funding source, for instance, has meant that UC Administration pushes its financial responsibilities onto departments, which then cut our members’ appointment levels. Even after the contract was in place, Union MADE accepted UC Labor Relations’ unilateral amendment to our working conditions in a closed-door meeting, which put UCLA ASEs on two different pay scales based on the year they began teaching. Our colleagues who began teaching in Fall 2023 now receive less pay for the exact same work because of leadership’s backdoor bargaining. Our caucus proposes contract demands that will fight back against austerity measures, abolish tiers, and stand up for our most vulnerable members:
Appointment Guarantees. UC administrators are attempting to negate the wins of the strike by decreasing employment percentages, increasing workloads, and cutting the number of available appointments. The UC is also evading its contractual obligations by pushing them off on departments and subjecting departments to austerity measures. We need appointment guarantees under a centralized funding source to protect workers from department austerity.
No Tiers. The UC creates an unequal, tiered system of employment that systematically divides workers and weakens our union. The highest-paid graduate worker makes around $15,000/year more than the lowest-paid. We need a simplified system that abolishes steps and brings everybody up to the highest ASE payscale. No step tiers. No ASE vs. GSR tiers. No appointment length tiers. No “prestige campus” tiers. Abolish all tiers.
A Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). An annual wage increase that lifts all students out of rent burden, indexed to our local rental market with a cap on university housing costs.
Support for International Students. Abolish Non-resident Supplemental Tuition (NRST), which exploits international and out-of-state students and creates division in our union. Provide adequate support for workers moving to the US.
An Injury to One is an Injury to All. Our current contract fails to provide much-needed resources for disabled workers, parents, undocumented students, professional and masters students, undergraduates, and international students. We will prioritize the needs of our most vulnerable workers, and empower them to form subcommittees to draft their own contract demands.
Defending Academic Workers. Our contract must strengthen protections against sexual harassment, supervisor harassment, doxxing and online harassment, and workplace discrimination, and include guaranteed transitional funding for survivors as well as those who change research projects for ethical reasons (i.e. to avoid contributing research to the military-industrial complex or fossil fuels).
Divestment. We are committed to upholding the Palestinian trade union picket line and supporting the BDS movement. We will continue our efforts to force the UC and our union to divest from military contractors like Blackrock and from other harmful industries, and to provide researchers with contractually guaranteed alternatives to these industries.
Cops Off Campus. Policing and surveillance are workplace safety issues. We will work toward abolishing UCPD and reinvesting in community safety programs and support for our members.