The election committee certifies that the ballot tally was fairly and accurately conducted, the secrecy of the ballots was maintained, and that the election results are as indicated below:

• President:

  • Dan Russell (Elected)

  • Elizabeth Milos

• Chapter Chair, UC Irvine:

  • Stephen Lee (Elected)

  • Jonathan Elder

• Executive Board Member, UC Irvine:

  • Sarah Pinka Majchrowski (Elected)

  • Enrique Trinidad

• Chapter Chair, Lawrence Livermore National Lab:

  • Matthew Epperley (Elected)

  • Jason D. Murray

• Executive Board Members, UC Davis:

  • Eugene Burbige (Elected)

  • Jamie McDole (Elected)

  • Jacob Bernhardt

Number of ballots received and counted: 1050

Absent a challenge to the election, the tentative result shall become final after 10 days from the date of tentative certification. Keep reading to learn more.

Despite the union-busting tactics by the University of California around UPTE accretion campaigns, job stability and a robust union contract steered Gabe Castillo to become a seasoned System Administrator 3 at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for the University of California, San Diego.

As a SysAdmin 3, Gabe ensures the smooth functioning of servers for a variety of research data and educational purposes. "A lot of my role is related to server support," he emphasized, highlighting the criticality of his work in supporting Scripps' diverse research missions. "One of the things that attracted me to the job was the sort of diverse nature of the workloads. It wasn't coming into the office and working on setting up a desktop or a server for standard business needs every day. I like the idea of having a melange of problems to solve."

In the latest bargaining session on November 15, UPTE and UC achieved a notable advancement with an agreement on pay scales at UC Davis, marking a significant step forward. However, challenges persist at UC Santa Barbara with proposed reductions in maximum pay and unanswered concerns regarding lower minimum salaries at UC Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara.

It's clear that UPTE's crucial role in safeguarding employee rights against UC's delaying and union-busting tactics leads to improving the material conditions for UC employees systemwide. As we prepare for the next round of negotiations, the win for SysAdmins serves as a rallying cry for solidarity and the collective strength necessary to overcome institutional challenges placed by UC.

As 2023 comes to a close, we can celebrate and rest knowing that our union is stronger than we have ever been. Over the past three months, we collected more than 7,700 bargaining surveys - three times as many as we collected prior to our contract negotiations that began in 2017. In 2024, members will have the opportunity to ratify our Contract Platform and elect our bargaining team before opening negotiations in the summer. Together, we will demand:

• Raises that make up for inflation and keep up with inflation moving forward, as well as bringing our wages up to market.

• Better work-life balance: improved vacation time and rights, flexible schedules, and shorter working hours with no reduction in pay.

• Improved career development: ensuring that increased responsibilities and skills are rewarded and that we don't have to choose between our union rights and benefits and promotions.

• Increased job security and safe staffing, so that we can continue doing this work for the rest of our careers here at UC.

Our fight for better contracts will mean that we can do so much more, while having more time to enjoy other things in our lives.

As you've likely already heard from UC, it is Open Enrollment season again. Unfortunately, UC has not publicly posted the union rates for healthcare plan premiums - perhaps because they don't want their non-represented employees to know the value of a union!

UPTE members won a $25 annual cap on monthly premium increases for Health Net Blue & Gold and Kaiser plans for the duration of our HX, RX, and TX contracts. In 2024, the cap will mean up to $225 monthly savings for those on a Kaiser family plan, compared to non-union employees - more than a full 1% of salary in savings for many of us.

UC Davis employee costs for the UC Blue & Gold Health Insurance plan will have the same cost as the non-UPTE Kaiser Permanente plan for 2024, similar to 2022 and 2023.

UC's higher premium increases on non-represented employees highlights the importance of maintaining a strong and active union. Read more to find tables showing how much UPTE-represented workers save every month on their health insurance premiums compared to our nonunion counterparts at UC.

An election was held via mail ballot from October 25 - November 18, managed by MK Elections. Ballots were mailed on October 25 and the results were tabulated the morning of November 18, 2023. We certify that the ballot tally was fairly and accurately conducted, the secrecy of the ballots was maintained, and that the election results are as indicated as below:

• President:

  • Dan Russell (Elected)

  • Elizabeth Milos

• Chapter Chair, UC Irvine:

  • Stephen Lee (Elected)

  • Jonathan Elder

• Executive Board Member, UC Irvine:

  • Sarah Pinka Majchrowski (Elected)

  • Enrique Trinidad

• Chapter Chair, Lawrence Livermore National Lab:

  • Matthew Epperley (Elected)

  • Jason D. Murray

• Executive Board Members, UC Davis:

  • Eugene Burbige (Elected)

  • Jamie McDole (Elected)

  • Jacob Bernhardt

Number of ballots received and counted: 1050

Absent a challenge to the election, the tentative result shall become final after 10 days from the date of tentative certification. Keep reading to learn more.

For nearly two years, Systems Administrators have been fighting for a fair agreement that properly values their contributions to UC's mission. UC, on the other hand, has continued to propose pay scales that would leave dozens of members above the top step and ineligible for future raises—further contributing to ongoing morale and retention issues.

On October 12, however, SysAdmins at UC Davis took matters into their own hands by marching on their boss and demanding to know why UCD has the lowest proposed SA3 pay ceiling of any campus other than Merced.

"This was a really gratifying experience. For SysAdmins, becoming part of UPTE has been a really long process. Many of us work remotely, or are working on different days, so it can be hard to get us all together. We saw UC making good offers to others campuses like Berkeley, but Davis was still lagging behind and so we felt like we needed to do something," said Joseph Menke, a Systems Administrator at UC Davis.

And at our very next bargaining session, UC came back to the table with an updated proposal that better values our important work.

Physician assistants (PAs) provide medical care under a doctor's supervision, diagnosing and treating illness, prescribing medication, and managing patient care. Physician assistants are vital for expanding access to healthcare, especially in underserved areas.

For nearly a year, PAs at UC San Francisco have been calling out myriad workplace issues that have compromised the important care they provide. Over 100 UCSF healthcare professionals signed a petition eleven months ago highlighting the need for UCSF to focus on recruiting and retaining PAs.

Pamela Chan, a physician assistant at UC San Francisco, shared her passion for patient care: "I love working with my patients. I love the care that I'm able to give to them. I love the interactions I have with my patients. You know, I really want each person to feel that they are heard, that they're taken care of, that they have someone that they can confide in for their medical issues, their medical concerns."

For months, optometrists have been bargaining with UC for an agreement that properly recognizes market conditions for the important work they do. Unfortunately, management has been dragging their heels—motivating optometrists looking for ways they could speed up the pace at the bargaining table.



In the face of mounting challenges and united in their fight to improve patient care, optometrists showed up in force to a recent UC Regents Health Services Committee meeting to make a bold statement about the important work they do and their need for fairer workplaces. Among the speakers was Jennifer Ding, an optometrist at the UC Berkeley campus and UPTE member, who delivered a powerful speech highlighting the crucial role of optometrists in the healthcare system:



”Like many, we work in expensive cities with high costs of living. Yet the compensation the UC offers has not caught up. This has caused recruitment and retention issues, which in turn has meant we are working longer with more cases and in some instances calling patients on our own time. We need the UC to come to the bargaining table with a proposal that reflects reality and to engage in real good-faith bargaining.”

The Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH) is an emergency facility that is open 24 hours a day to provide exceptional care to pets and animals.

Workers at VMTH want to give every animal the skilled care, comfort, and attention they deserve but there are structural issues at work getting in the way. We have been calling on management to address a number issues including high levels of turnover, slow hiring processes, inequitable salaries, career parthways, and the need for weekend and holiday pay differentials to better incentivize filling these shifts.

"When I have a high case load, even if they aren't particularly critical cases or ones that need a lot of care, it's just really hard to keep up. You want to be able to make sure that you're catching all of the little things with each individual patient, because it's so crucial that we chart everything. It's really difficult to keep up with the charting, the feeding, and making sure that you're catching anything unusual when you have such a large patient load," said Gemma Blumenshine, an Animal Health Technician at VMTH.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

On any given day, audiologists perform a wide range of work to help diagnose and treat hearing-related issues. Over time, audiologists at UC San Diego could see that low pay and high turnover rates were impacting the quality of care they could provide.

Audiologists had undeniable evidence that their compensation fell below market rates, but having facts on our side often isn't enough—they also had to show management that they were prepared to stand together until this issue was addressed. The audiologists submitted their research and proposal together as a union and ultimately, they emerged victorious, securing a 17% raise across the board.

"This increase is a clear victory for everyone. It addresses the critical issue of attracting and retaining qualified candidates, which management admits has been a pressing concern. It will make it easier to hire and keep talented audiologists, translating into better service for patients. And of course, it will make it easier for audiologists to stay at UC while also making ends meet here in San Diego," said Charles Ruby, a UCSD Audiologist.

For years, UCSF Campus social workers have been chronically underpaid compared to their counterparts at UCSF Health, despite doing similar work. Their clients are among San Francisco's most vulnerable residents, and inadequate compensation for these social workers only deepens the disparities in the services that these clients receive.

For years, workers were told that raises weren't possible. On July 20, over 30 campus social workers delivered a petition with 100+ signatures to the chair of the psychiatry department, who oversees most of these positions. On August 28, we got word that we had won the increases we've been fighting for, and Clinical Social Worker 1, 2, and 3 classifications within the Department of Psychiatry will all be moved up 7 steps on the wage scale, which amounts to a 14-15% wage increase for most people.

"For me, this fight for pay equity comes from a deep love for my work, my colleagues, and our clients. Equitable pay is crucial to keeping dedicated and skillful clinicians in the job so that our clients can receive consistent support from the social workers they have grown to trust and connect with," said Brenna Alexander, a Clinical Social Worker II at UCSF. "Just as our clients deserve high quality, compassionate care, campus clinicians deserve pay that allows us to stay present in this city and engaged with the most vulnerable folks in our community."

Nevada, along with other CWA leaders. President Biden joined them at a picket line in Michigan, marking the first time a sitting US President has ever joined a picket line.

Autoworkers are not just fighting to undo cuts that they accepted in the 2008 financial crisis; they are fighting to see the benefits of increased productivity, including a 32 hour work week with 40 hours of pay, as their employers bring in record profits.

Similarly, UPS Teamsters settled a contract that ended unfair tiers that had divided their union by leaving new hires behind. Writers may soon approve a tentative agreement, addressing industry-changing conditions brought on by streaming and AI, while actors continue fighting for a similar deal.

UC workers have fallen behind financially too, thanks to inflation and out-of-control housing prices. Despite becoming more and more productive every year while struggling through the COVID 19 pandemic, we are continually asked to do more with less: fewer staff, higher workloads, and lower pay.

When UCLA announced its "Reimagine IT" program, everyone was told they would need to reapply for their old jobs and they ominously pushed employees to accept 'severance payments' to resign their positions. Unionized IT workers immediately jumped into action.

Under UPTE's TX agreement, UCLA cannot impose changes to the working conditions of UPTE workers (such as a requirement to reapply for a job you already have) without giving the union notice and bargaining over those changes and their effects on employees. 

"When the announcement was made, there was a lot of fear from our members in ITS. It has been great to see our ability to show management that they can't just do what they want," said Max Belasco, UCLA IT worker. "That is the power we can exert when IT workers are communicating with each other, standing up for one another, and having our coworkers' backs. Unfortunately, our nonunion colleagues lack those protections and rights, making them subject to whatever unilateral decisions UCLA makes."

UPTE members are now using their rights to demand a seat at the table on how UCLA plans to 'Reimagine IT' and our jobs. 

Lalaine Rojo has spent the last ten years working at UCSF, where she is a Lab Assistant II working in the Anatomy Department. Lalaine's family immigrated to the United State from the Philippines, where she had worked previously as a company nurse at a bank. Lalaine had never been in a union before coming to UC. "In previous jobs, I saw firsthand how workplaces could be unfair or discriminatory, especially to immigrants. That experience really opened my eyes to how much of a risk it can be to try and advocate for yourself as an individual without union protections."

Given Lalaine's Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the role she has played as a caretaker for ill family members, it's no surprise that her motivation for being a leader in our union is focused on others. "Being in a union is about being there for each other. We are the union, as members, and we have to help one another. If we want to make our corner of the world a better place, it can be done. It may not always feel possible, but when you get together with others and work towards a common goal, we can win. It's always easy to find excuses not to do something, but at the end of the day you have to decide what's important to you and what you want to fight for."

Lalaine finished by reminding us that as union members, "Our biggest responsibility is to leave UCSF better than it was when we started, and to train the next generation of union leaders who will come after us and continue the fight to have a dignified standard of living."

Members at UC Davis Health have been busy! Nuclear Medicine Technologists recently won equity increases ranging between 6% and 21% and now, workers in the rehabilitation department are standing up for themselves, too.

"Being able to convince local leadership to support us with ELR and UCOP was helpful. We reworked the job series to make sure that the Sr. Nuclear Med Tech title would be used to recognize people who have gone above and beyond to obtain different licenses, while ensuring that everyone received a minimum 6% pay increase ranging up to 21% based on the licenses they currently hold. People really feel like they have been heard and the fact that they acknowledged that we have been short-staffed for some time helps us all feel valued," said Heather Hunt, a Nuclear Medicine Technologist at UC Davis Health.

"We had a few meetings amongst ourselves as staff and people were really fired up and ready to mobilize when they heard about what others across the UC system were doing. We tried going through all the 'proper channels' but had no luck, so we decided to go for it and march on our boss," said Anastasia Vourakis, a Physical Therapist at UC Davis. "We were inspired by the way our colleagues at UC San Diego and UC San Francisco got organized and fought back against unfair situations. Now, the senior leadership has committed to sit down with us to talk through our issues and to support our efforts to fix them."

UPTE members at Mt. San Jacinto College (MSJC) have been in contract negotiations for the last several months, and have been calling the college out on their misguided priorities and unfair proposals. These adjunct faculty members teach a majority of the college's classes, and members are still fighting over crucial priorities. 

Negotiations are about so much more than numbers in a budget, as UPTE member and adjunct professor in the music department Emily Collins can tell you. The stakes are always high in bargaining but they're higher than ever for Emily, who was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. Emily doesn't receive health insurance through her job.

"After my diagnosis, I had to go through the process of qualifying for Medi-Cal because I wasn't earning money during the summer months. If I had health insurance, I could have begun my treatment sooner. Instead, I had to wait for Medi-Cal to process everything, which in turn meant a delay in my treatment. My oncologist said that if I had waited a week or so longer, my cancer could have spread to other parts of my body. That's really scary to think about. This is my life we're talking about, and I have children and a family," said Emily. "I just think about how many other adjuncts are potentially out there skipping physicals or putting off medical care because they can't afford it. It shouldn't be this way. When our personal health and well-being is such a low priority for our employer, something has to change. I hope management will realize this, and respond accordingly at the bargaining table.”

During a town hall last month, we took a dive into the finances of the University of California and evaluated one of their favorite excuses for not addressing workplace issues—that they simply don't have the money. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The bottom line is that UC has the money to invest in the dedicated healthcare, research, and technical employees who tirelessly carry out its mission. You can click here to see a recording of the town hall.

We're in a consequential moment for working people. Workers at UPS just won a historic contract, autoworkers are preparing to strike the big three, writers and actors continue a joint strike, and organizing continues across the country at non-union employers like Starbucks. New polling released by the AFL-CIO this month shows that 71% of Americans support unions, 88% of those under 30 view unions favorably, and 75% support striking workers.

This sort of pro-worker movement hasn't been seen in generations and we can't afford to let it pass us by. The winds of change are blowing in our favor—but only if we're prepared to rise to the occasion.

One of UC's favorite union-busting tactics in recent years has been to lure members out of union classifications and into newly-created or rarely used nonunion positions, sometimes offering a little more pay along with the new title. This practice, while seemingly innocuous on an individual level, can have catastrophic consequences for us all over time.

At UC San Diego, a Dietitian 4 position has come into greater use in recent years, originally packaged as a promotion to people who were offered the role. Unlike the rest of the dietitian job series, however, this title was typically reserved for people with more experience and higher-level responsibilities. When UPTE Unit Representative and Dietitian 2 Samantha Warsh began investigating, she discovered that people in this new title weren't actually doing that higher-level work, raising questions about the classification and its use.

"I noticed more and more dietitians being moved out of represented positions and into the nonunion Dietitian 4 title. Management is often not totally upfront with people about what moving into a nonunion title can mean. This happened a few years ago when pharmacists at a few places including UCSF and UCSD were moved into a nonunion Pharmacy Specialist 5 title and given a small pay bump," Sam recalled. "But management didn't tell the pharmacists that the new title meant losing out on the UPTE pension tier, which means having to work an additional five years before retirement. That trade-off pales in comparison to a small increase in pay."