We are now less than 2 months from our contracts’ expiration and UC is showing no urgency to reach an agreement. UC isn’t just rejecting our proposals - they are refusing to even acknowledge that issues like fair pay and compensation, work-life balance, job security, or staffing deserve serious consideration or discussion.

None of us want to strike, but we are not going to watch our talented and committed colleagues leave while our patients, our research, and our students suffer. We need to be ready to strike if that is the only thing that will convince UC to take our demands and their legal obligations seriously.

Fortunately, we are not alone. Last week, leading Mayoral candidates Aaron Peskin and Flojaune Cofer joined our rallies in San Francisco and Sacramento to let UPTE members know that they have our backs and are prepared to walk the picket lines with us. Over the past two weeks, thousands of UPTE members attended mass rallies and signed our pledge to strike.

Sign our strike pledge today at upte.org/strike. All of us need to be ready to vote YES to strike and walk the picket line, if UC doesn’t change course and FAST.

UPTE members at Mt. San Jacinto College (MSJC) have a new contract! Between July 8 and 12, 2024, nearly one hundred UPTE Associate Faculty members cast their ballots to unanimously ratify their new contract with the administration of MSJC.

Santino Labbate, an associate faculty member in the physics department at MSJC's Menifee Valley Campus, has been advocating for associate faculty rights. With twelve years of experience at the University of Redlands, Santino brought his passion for education and justice to MSJC. "At the beginning of working for MSJC, I felt alone because I was new and didn't know anyone," he shared. This sense of isolation fueled his involvement with the union, where he found a community and a platform to address critical issues.

The journey to the recent contract victory was challenging. Traditional bargaining methods with the administration proved unfruitful, leading to impasse and mediation. Santino remarked, "The district filed for an impasse, so we decided to rally at the State of the College address at the Menifee Valley Campus. We made signs, making our presence known to donors, stakeholders, investors, board members, and the president. We wanted to let people know that despite some apparent successes, associate faculty are still treated like dirt." The rally was a crucial step in raising awareness among the community and student population about the struggles faced by associate faculty.

Together, workers will continue building a stronger, more inclusive union that represents the goals and priorities of every UPTE associate faculty member at MSJC.

Earlier this year, UPTE members across the UC system nominated and elected colleagues to represent us as members of our union's bargaining team for our current contract negotiations. Our bargaining team's composition was designed to ensure we had people from each campus and area of expertise in healthcare, research, and technical job titles present at the bargaining table to make sure that we could speak confidently and with first-hand knowledge on the issues impacting UPTE members.

UC didn't seem to think having that experience in the room was important. When we gathered for our first bargaining sessions, first at UC San Diego and later at UCSF, UC leadership refused to release Lalaine Rojo, a lab assistant and one of our elected bargaining team members, from work to participate in negotiations on behalf of UPTE members.

Lalaine has spent the last ten years working at UCSF, where she is a Lab Assistant II working in the Anatomy Department. She takes her role as a voice for her colleagues as both an UPTE Unit Representative and bargaining team member seriously, saying, "I've always been the kind of person who fights against injustice. We have to choose our battles, sure, but we shouldn't just stay silent and accept unjust circumstances. I want to make sure I'm here to speak up about the challenges lab assistants face, and why UC needs to take our concerns seriously."

You can watch a video of that march on the boss on UPTE's social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).

For over seven decades, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has leveraged science and technology to make the world a safer place. The laboratory is a premier, world-leading, federally funded research and development center because its skilled crafts employees, represented by UPTE, have kept the lights on.

Between July 10 and 16, 2024, hundreds of members unanimously cast their ballots to ratify the "2024 UPTE LLNL Contract Platform," a unified statement of the priorities that will be included in bargaining with management, as identified in our bargaining survey.

"Ensuring we have comprehensive and affordable health coverage means peace of mind, knowing that we can handle any medical challenges that come our way," said Robert Perez, a laboratory carpenter. "It's not just about immediate care; it's about long-term security and well-being. Improving our retirement benefits is equally crucial. After dedicating years of hard work and expertise to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we deserve to retire with dignity and economic security."

The 2024 UPTE LLNL Contract Platform demands competitive wages, better benefits, and fairness at work. These priorities are designed to address issues, including severe recruitment and retention cases and a lack of respect from management. The contract platform represents UPTE's core values, including the belief that workers should have more time to spend with their families and loved ones.

Securing strong contracts requires more than just skilled negotiators; it hinges on the active involvement of frontline members from every campus and lab across diverse job titles. Our daily experiences make us the true subject matter experts, giving us unique insights into what is needed to drive forward our groundbreaking research, deliver critical patient care, and ensure our technical skills are duly recognized.

The 25 dedicated members comprise the UPTE bargaining team at the University of California (UC). They represent a variety of healthcare, research, and technical positions across all UC campuses and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Each month, we will spotlight different members of our bargaining team from various UC locations and departments. You can view the complete list of our bargaining team members here.

Eduardo de Ugarte is a Senior Graphic Designer and UPTE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Chapter 184 Chair.

What motivated you to run for the bargaining team?
“I am motivated to advocate for fair treatment, living wages, and better working conditions for the workforce. Collective bargaining ensures everyone’s voice is heard and benefits all members. I aim to create a supportive and equitable work environment that respects everyone’s rights and needs. We’ve found many opportunities to improve retention, recruitment, efficiency, and morale, supporting our research, healthcare services, patient outcomes, and the mission of LBNL and UC.”

This year's UPTE Convention will be held in San Diego, California, from Saturday, September 28, to Sunday, September 29, 2024. The voting period to elect your 2024 UPTE Convention Delegates has concluded, and we extend our gratitude to all candidates for their participation.

Each campus or workplace was allotted a proportional number of delegate positions, with candidates who received the highest number of votes being considered elected. At campuses where the number of candidates was equal to or less than the number of allotted delegate seats, candidates are considered elected by acclamation.

Please find a full list of elected delegates at www.upte.org/elections. Delegates can expect to continue receiving information about next steps soon.

We've been bargaining for two months. Over 10 days of bargaining, we have heard from Pharmacists who don't have the necessary staff to save lives in the emergency room, counselors who don't have enough colleagues to keep students from dropping out - or worse, and researchers whose breakthroughs in cancer treatment and climate change are being put at risk because UC can't retain qualified staff. 

And yet, UC isn't engaging.

On July 18-19, your UPTE bargaining team proposed our second set of work-life balance improvements, focused on priorities set by you and your coworkers regarding reduced workweeks, flexible schedules, remote work, improved parental leave, additional pay for temporarily taking on higher level duties, and more.

After UC initially refused to meet on the UCLA campus, more than 300 workers joined bargaining and a rally at UPTE's office in Los Angeles to send a message that we're united and ready to act to win the world-class agreement we deserve.

Despite testimony from dozens of members demonstrating how the reclassification process is broken, the University insists that the existing reclassification "process is working." We know that this is not true - and made clear that we will not be backing down on this issue.

UC's proposal for Holidays did not address UPTE's proposal for additional floating holidays or a guarantee for healthcare workers to have at least Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year off. Instead, UC is actually proposing to eliminate the option that hospital-based healthcare workers currently have to take Cesar Chavez Day as a floating holiday!

Our first month of bargaining with the University of California for UPTE healthcare, research, and technical members is in the books and our solidarity was on full display all month. You can find bargaining updates after each week of negotiations at www.upte.org/uofcalifornia.

During both weeks of negotiations in San Diego and later San Francisco, members joined us for in-person rallies at lunchtime and packed the bargaining room throughout the rest of the day to observe, show their support for our team, and occasionally provide scheduled testimony on a particular issue. These first-hand accounts, and our visible displays of unity, have a powerful impact on bargaining.

Everything we do this year has to show UC that we are united and prepared to pull off a super-majority strike statewide if they continue committing illegal and unfair labor practices or fail to take our proposals seriously.

We're hopeful we can quickly reach a deal at the table, but we’re also beginning to educate each other early about our rights if a strike becomes necessary. UC needs to see that we’re ready to fight to win the world-class contract we deserve. If you’re eager to get strike school scheduled at your workplace, reach out to your local leadership and staff organizers and let them know. Otherwise, we’ll be sharing more details soon.

Members at the California National Primate Research Center, a federally-funded biomedical research facility dedicated to improving human and animal health, organized a march on the boss late last year over better working conditions and demanded an equity review, which ultimately resulted in equity increases.

Emily Fletcher, an Animal Health Technician 3, shared the challenges and successes of the campaign. “It started with recognizing the high turnover and increased workload. We realized we weren’t being compensated fairly,” she said. The collective efforts and an equity letter led to pay raises for many in the unit, with employees moving up one to three steps, marking a $1 to $2 per hour increase. “It’s making it a lot easier for me to do things and not worry about living paycheck to paycheck,” Emily added, underscoring the personal impact of these raises.

Simultaneously, Animal Health Technician 4s at the Campus Veterinary Services also fought for and won an equity review, comparing their roles to those at the Primate Center.

Kim Alca, another Animal Health Technician 4, highlighted the solidarity that led to these successes. “We wrote a letter with support from our supervisors, showing the discrepancies in our pay compared to other technicians. We had one-on-one conversations with everyone on the team to create buy-in and, ultimately, ownership over what we’re fighting for. That told the university that we are united and won’t back down. These collective actions and the data we presented were crucial in winning our raises,” she said.

The practice of “flexing off” healthcare workers occurs when management believes that the number of staff on shift is greater than needed for the number of patients on caseload. It’s generally seen as a cost-cutting measure because most impacted workers are paid an hourly wage instead of a salary, and can have serious implications for workers.

“We had finally got our staffing levels up to a pretty good place when our census suddenly dropped. Management started to flex people off, first asking for volunteers who wanted to go home. That was less of an issue, but when they started mandating that people go home without pay, we sat up and took notice,” said Lea Bishop, a Speech Language Pathologist and UPTE Co-Chair at UCSD.

“People who have been there for a while were sometimes allowed to use PTO or sick time to flex off, but people on probation had to go home without pay—and the least senior people were the most likely to be sent home,” Lea recalled.

Lea brought these concerns up in a regular meeting that she and the rehab unit reps have with their director at UCSD Health, in which they try to collaboratively address issues before they become larger problems. It’s a meeting that Rehab members fought hard to get, and which includes a committee of leaders from every discipline and location. In that meeting, the staff pointed to the article in our contract that prohibits mandatory flexing off and the changing of schedules. Management put an end to the practice almost immediately.

“It’s a good reminder that having a strong working knowledge of our contract and being confident asserting that knowledge is important, but knowledge is only power if we put it into practice and aren’t afraid to back it up with action,” Lea concluded.

UPTE is proud to be a member-led union, and our annual convention will be a powerful gathering of our member leaders from across the state.

Each campus/chapter is assigned a proportional number of delegates to the convention based on membership. The delegate nomination period for this year's convention was open from May 21 through June 5, 2024. In chapters where the number of confirmed nominations was equal to or less than the number of allotted seats, nominees were elected by acclamation as delegates representing their chapter at this year's convention.

An election will be held to elect delegates from chapters where the number of candidates exceeds the number of allotted seats. This election will be held electronically and managed by ElectionBuddy. The election period will begin on July 8, 2024, and end on July 15, 2024.

You can find a list of delegates elected by acclamation, as well as candidates in contested elections, at upte.org/elections. The campuses with contested elections this year are:

• UC San Francisco (27 allotted delegates)

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (6 allotted delegates)

• UC Davis (23 allotted delegates)

• UC Santa Cruz (5 allotted delegates)

• UC Los Angeles (25 allotted delegates)

• UC San Diego (21 allotted delegates)

• UC Berkeley (9 allotted delegates)

Although strong contracts aren’t won by expert negotiators alone, having frontline members from every campus and across job titles is essential. We are the subject matter experts in our day-to-day work and know better than anyone what we need to advance our world-changing research, provide life-saving patient care, and make sure our technical expertise is respected.

UPTE’s bargaining team at UC is comprised of 25 members from a range of healthcare, research, and technical job titles from each UC campus and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Each month, we’ll highlight members of our bargaining team from various UC campuses and workplaces. You can find a full roster of our bargaining team here.

What motivated you to run for the bargaining team?

Jamie Gardner - UC Berkeley, Staff Research Associate 2: Research workers make up a big part of UPTE’s membership at Berkeley, but we've been less organized than some of our union siblings. A lot of us are the only UPTE members in our lab or work team, we have high turnover, and it's a field that appeals to introverts. So I agreed to step up and help organize. It's been great talking to research workers across the state, talking shop, seeing where we have the same issues, and finding places where the rules are wildly different for no apparent reason.

Jonathan Bradford - UC Berkeley, Principal Lab Mechanician: I wasn't initially planning on running because I was worried about the amount of time I would be away from work and didn’t want to fall behind on projects. After more thought and out of a sense of duty to my fellow members at Berkeley, as well as my desire to win our best contract ever for our members statewide, I decided to run for the bargaining team so I could bring my firsthand experience and perspective to the table with UC administrators and represent the priorities of me and my colleagues.

Thanks to everyone who joined our pre-bargaining town hall last night. There was such demand to get in that we had to upgrade our Zoom account to accommodate everyone—while this is a fantastic problem to have, it does mean that folks who tried to join in the first ten minutes may not have been able to get into the meeting.

As a result, we're sharing a recording here with everyone who RSVP'ed so that you can watch it at your leisure and also share with your colleagues.

Max Belasco, an IT worker at UCLA, asked, "Can someone tell me in the chat what UC loves to say when we come to them and ask them to address our issues like worker retention, staffing, or below-market pay? That's right. When we ask UC to address our concerns, which ultimately impact our patients, our students, and our research, they pretend they don't have the money. Nothing could be further from the truth, as UC continues to spend billions on hospital acquisitions, hand out generous raises to Chancellors and CEOs, and hire more and more top administrators."

"Every action we take between now and winning a new contract is about demonstrating to the boss that we have the unity to pull off a super majority strike statewide," said Anastasia Vourakis, a Physical Therapist at UC Davis. "Now I know 15,000 people sounds like a big number, but if each of our leaders statewide talks to an average of only 10 people, we will hit a super majority of our coworkers across the system."

At our first contract bargaining session at UCSD last week, UPTE's statewide bargaining team came prepared to bargain.

We presented a detailed proposal to fix broken career ladders across the state. Our proposals require measurable, objective criteria to reach higher titles in a job series, and create an enforceable guarantee to receive that title and pay from the date you begin performing those duties.

UCSD members came prepared as well. Hundreds of members from UC San Diego came out to show their support for UPTE's proposals, to listen, and share powerful testimonials and case reports from across the system showing how the same problems impact workers across titles & UC campuses.

UPTE members like you shared powerful examples of how losing qualified staff due to broken or non-existent career ladders endangers patient care and research at UC. It was powerful having members pack the room, rally outside, and show UC we're serious.

Recently, the University of California announced that the annual cost of living raises for workers not covered by a collective bargaining agreement will be 4.6%. That's just for people who don't belong to a union. UPTE members, however, were eligible for a step increase in January and will receive an additional 3% in July—meaning that most UPTE members will receive 5% in 2024.

Over the life of this current contract, we won 29% in raises for RX and TX members and 32% for HX members. This came after a long fight that involved massive statewide mobilizations, including thousands of us going on strike. During that same period of time, our nonunion colleagues had no raises guaranteed—in some years, they received up to 3% depending on UC's discretion, and in years like 2020 they didn't receive a raise at all.

The raises we won in our contract are a minimum: we are actively campaigning for market and internal equity, reclassification, and shift differentials in addition to our contractual raises—and we're winning.

In addition to these contractual benefits, we've also fought and won additional pay and better working conditions up and down the state through our collective strength and solidarity.

You can learn more about those recent victories here.

None of what we've won would have been possible without our members being willing to work together and take action. It's clear that when we're organized and united, we have real power at work. That's the UPTE difference.

On May 21, UPTE’s bargaining team of Systems Administrators reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) with UC regarding pay scales and paid time off for SAs 1-3. Last week, these members voted overwhelmingly to ratify their TA, which now becomes official. 

Under the newly-ratified agreement, we were able to move UC from an initial offer of $74,000 for average SA3 starting pay to $94,000 and from an initial offer of $118,000 for SA3 max pay to $147,000. This means that nearly 100 Systems Administrators who are currently paid below Step 1 will see significant raises, some more than 20%.

"The inclusion of Systems Administrators in UPTE has been a seven-year ordeal in which the University of California repeatedly delayed negotiations and denied contractually obligated pay increases to SAs, making it harder to plan secure futures of ourselves, our families, and our careers,” said Joseph Menke, a Systems Administrator and UPTE Unit Representative from UC Davis who also served on the bargaining team. “I’m proud of the persistence and dedication of every member who was involved in making this agreement possible.”

Joseph continued, saying, “The agreement that we reached is a big step forward, providing pay increases for many long-time staff and a salary floor much closer to industry norms, but much more needs to be done to fix persisting pay inequities and improve how the university supports emerging technologies and secures research data. These are issues that we will be focused on in the upcoming TX contract negotiations and beyond."

UPTE members in the healthcare and research units at UCSF are flexing their collective muscles, winning equity adjustments and putting management on notice that we’re organized and serious about our demands. Physician assistants (PAs) achieved a significant eight percent mid-contract pay equity adjustment effective June 23, 2024, while staff research associates (SRAs) and lab assistants marched on university management demanding recognition of their vital work.

“This victory wouldn’t have happened without the tireless advocacy of UPTE members, colleagues, and our community. It was possible because we did the hard work of engaging with our colleagues and increasing our membership to over ninety percent before we finally were granted this well-deserved adjustment for our non-senior PA colleagues,” said Matthew Stephen, a UCSF PA who serves as an UPTE Chapter Co-Chair and our statewide Secretary. “As UC continues to consolidate and acquire hospitals across the state, now is the time for union members to stand together during bargaining to reset UC’s priorities to better serve PAs and our patients.”

In a parallel show of solidarity and strength, SRAs and lab assistants at UCSF recently organized a march on their boss to highlight ongoing workplace issues. Kaley Vittoria, an SRA 2 at UCSF for nearly a year-and-a-half, said, “Just remember, it starts with one action together, and when you get that ball rolling, it will continue. It’s scary at the moment, but after the fact, now I feel even more powerful because I know the ball is rolling. Whatever will come after that, management will be aware of our issues. If they don’t respect those issues, we will continue to fight for what’s right.”

Earlier in the year, UPTE workers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a center for oceanography and Earth science based at UC San Diego, in La Jolla, won a seismic change in sea pay policy.  As union members, we know nothing is final until a formal written agreement codifies it—and after years of negotiating, the new sea pay agreement is final.

“The old policy, known as remote leave allowance, penalized us the more days in the month we worked,” described Andrew Naslund, a Marine Technician 3 working at Scripps for about four-and-a-half years. “If I went to sea Monday through Friday for the entire month and came home on the weekends, I’d be making almost the same amount of money plus or minus $35 a day, as if I went to sea from the first to the thirty-first. I’m essentially working my weekends for free. I’m not getting those days back; they’re just gone. We are not afforded the weekend.”

The new sea-pay policy was a hard-fought victory for Andrew and his colleagues across all seafaring departments. It aims to correct longstanding compensation inequities and significantly broadens the scope of what qualifies for sea pay. But getting that policy formalized into a written agreement has remained a priority.

“Over the last two years, we’ve repeatedly emphasized that we are the union. Many people refer to the union as a separate entity without recognizing that, as members of a public, member-run union, I am the union, you are the union—we all are. We’re collectively responsible for what we define as the union,” Andrew explained. “We’ve proven that when we, the union, come together, we can make things happen.”

Jere Justice, a pharmacist and UPTE unit representative at UCI Health — Fountain Valley, formerly Fountain Valley Regional Hospital, has been a driving force in labor organizing at his workplace. He thrives in the demanding environment of Fountain Valley, working the night shift and leading a team of technicians.

Since UCI Health acquired four medical centers at Fountain Valley, Lakewood, Los Alamitos, and Placentia Linda, along with outpatient care offices, on March 27, 2024, Jere’s leadership has been a beacon of trust for his colleagues.

Joining UPTE has reignited Jere’s passion for union work. He was impressed by UPTE’s structure and effectiveness, describing his initial Zoom meeting with UPTE leaders as a moment that “got me excited again.” He noted, “The union is well-organized, continually growing, and everyone seems to be on the same page, getting stuff done. It’s an impressive union.”

Jere’s leadership and dedication have significantly impacted his colleagues, who trust him to represent their interests. “They’re pretty excited about that and fired up to become active union members,” he says, referring to the anticipated changes under UPTE’s representation.