At the UC Davis Genome Center, staff research associates win 6% equity raises through collective action

The UC Davis Genome Center comprises a group of six core facilities which provide specialized research services to a diversity of client laboratories worldwide including labs from UC Davis, labs from various other universities, and in some cases corporate labs which need specialized research support.

Research performed at the Genome Center improves humanity's scientific understanding of both genetic and environmental diseases, as well as our understanding of human nutrition and plant science/agriculture. Discoveries facilitated by research conducted at the Genome Center have great potential to eventually yield substantial public benefit, such as improved medical treatments of challenging diseases.

Recently, after coping with excessive staff turnover, increasing responsibilities, and high inflation, lab members from one of the core facilities met together with UTPE and decided to take collective action. The core's UTPE worksite representative composed a letter on behalf of the lab to request an equity increase for all UPTE-represented staff members. After participating lab members signed the letter, it was submitted to management. Management responded positively with a 6% raise for the majority of lab members, excluding probationary employees who were new to the lab.

"This example highlights the power of collective action, which can be effective even with a relatively small number of participants. Group action can be very persuasive to management, whereas individual requests may be prone to rejection. Certainly, group action on an even larger scale such as the UC-systemwide group action facilitated by UPTE has even greater power to improve pay and working conditions for UC staff," said Jeremiah Wells, a Bioanalytical Chemist at UC Davis.