UPTE President Dan Russell: "Now's your chance—complete a bargaining survey and help us lay the foundation for a historic next contract"

We are nearing the close of our UC bargaining survey campaign, and we're set to begin negotiations in less than nine months. So far, thanks to the great work being done by unit and workplace reps across the state, we have nearly three times as many participants as we had prior to our 2017 negotiations and are closing in on our goal of 7,000 systemwide. If you have yet to complete a bargaining survey, you can do so by visiting www.upte.org/negotiations.

In the new year, we will be presenting the results of the survey, along with a more detailed Contract Platform for comment and - ultimately - ratification by our membership.Together, we can pave the way for the University of California to provide world-class working conditions that reflect the exceptional services and resources we deliver. Winning better contracts here at UC won't just benefit us; it will benefit our patients, students, and research. 

Adding your voice by completing a survey will show UC that we are united in our demands—this will help us ensure that they take our demands more seriously and pave the way for us to win the agreement we deserve quicker.

We also need to bring more and more of our co-workers along into every step of this campaign, so that we can be prepared to strike as soon as our contracts expire in 2024, if necessary. The United Auto Workers' historic victories at Ford, GM, and Stellantis are a reminder of the power we have when we withhold our labor. 

However, UAW knows that winning even more ambitious demands will require organizing many more workers who do not have a union at Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Tesla, Hyundai, and Subaru. Here at UC, UAW-represented academic workers organized 17,000 new Student Researchers in order to increase their leverage, leading to their historic victory less than a year ago. 

Similarly, we have to see the next contracts we will negotiate as a stepping-stone to organizing thousands of workers at UC who don't yet have a contract - many of whom work alongside us. We continue to discuss pathways to joining UPTE with many of our colleagues in titles who do similar work to our own.

This will mean even more power to win the pay and working conditions we deserve - along with the education, patient care, and research that Californians deserve. If you haven't already, please take a moment to share your priorities for this next contract with us by visiting www.upte.org/negotiations and submitting your bargaining survey today.