UPTE President Dan Russell: "Our 2024 contract fight is our opportunity to reshape our work lives across UC for years to come."
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The University of California is the third largest employer in our state. Workers like us at UC are responsible for providing life-saving medical treatment to millions of patients, life-changing higher education to hundreds of thousands of students, and world-changing research to benefit humanity.
As one of the most influential employers in our state, and one of our largest public institutions, UC also has a responsibility to raise standards for all Californians.
In our bargaining survey, the majority of our members said they did not believe UC was doing all it can to provide the best patient care, education, and research. More than 95% of you said that UC should be setting better standards for what it means to live and work in our state.
What is preventing UC from investing in front-line staff and prioritizing its mission? High compensation for an ever-increasing number of senior administrators and executives, unnecessarily large investment pools, and massive expenditures on consulting, marketing, construction, and land acquisition.
UC pretends they don't have the money to address our issues, but if you attended our "UC has the Money" town hall last year (upte.org/uchasthemoney), you know this isn't the case. UC has over $150 billion in assets, representing a 60.5% increase since 2014.
Over the final months of 2023, we collected nearly 8,000 bargaining surveys - three times as many as we collected prior to our contract negotiations that began in 2017. This platform is what UPTE-represented UC staff have collectively determined that UC must do in order to prioritize its patients, students, and research: invest in the staff who carry out that work, and in the process set higher standards for all workers in California.
You can find details of our 2024 Contract Platform here. We will be asking you to ratify the platform from April 4 - 18, when you also will elect your UPTE bargaining team.
Our 2024 contract fight is our opportunity to reshape our work lives across UC for the years to come. Let's make UC give us the resources and support we need to care for our patients, conduct our research, and support our students. I look forward to standing alongside you in this fight.