UC system reaches tentative agreement with union representing academic workers
The University of California system has reportedly reached a tentative agreement with the union representing academic workers, who have recently been on strike for weeks.
According to a statement released by the state's second-largest school system, the tentative agreement was reached on Friday.
Nearly 48,000 academic workers, that included around 17,000 student employees and graduate student researchers, began to strike in November, alleging that their contract discussions had reached an impasse as they sought higher pay and improved health care benefits. Members on strike included workers from all 10 schools in the UC system.
"Under the tentative agreements, the University would provide minimum salary scales for Academic Student Employees, including Teaching Assistants, and Graduate Student Researchers, as well as multiyear pay increases, paid dependent access to University health care, and enhanced paid family leave," a statement from the UC system said.
If approved by members of United Auto Workers, the union representing the workers, the deal would run through May 2025.
The negotiations are said to have begun in March and April for the student employees and graduate students, respectively. After months of failing to agree to terms, Mayor of Sacramento and former California Senator Darrell Steinberg stepped in as a third-party mediator in order to "facilitate discussions between them and to help resolve outstanding issues and reach agreements on the contracts for those units."
"I would like to thank Mayor Steinberg, and negotiators for both the University and the UAW, for coming together in a spirit of compromise to reach this tentative agreement," said a press release from UC President Michael V. Drake. "This is a positive step forward for the University and for our students, and I am grateful for the progress we have made together."
The agreement includes wage increase of up to 66%, or an additional $13,000 a year, for some of the workers represented in the negotiations.
"In addition to incredible wage increases, the tentative agreements also include expanded benefits for parent workers, greater rights for international workers, protections against bullying and harassment, improvements to accessibility, workplace protections, and sustainable transit benefits," said Tarini Hardikar, a member of the SRU-UAW Bargaining Team at UC Berkeley. "I am so proud of what we were able to accomplish with this contract."
According to the statement, a six-point graduate student researcher pay salary scale will be set at $34,564.50 for 50% time worked, while academic student employees will have a minimum nine-month salary of $34,000 for 50% time worked. The minimum salary rate for teaching assistants at UC Berkeley, San Francisco and UCLA will be $36,500.
"I want to congratulate the parties for today's historic agreement," Mayor Steinberg said in a statement. "Together, they reached a principled solution to end the difficult impasse. Even more important, leadership and members together with the University deserve enormous credit for what they did to transform graduate education in the world's most dynamic university system. The union fought hard to ensure that the university's graduate students make a living wage at every campus community. They and the University achieved a new national standard for members."
The tentative agreement will go to membership for ratification voting from Monday to Friday next week, if necessary.
Workers rallied on Wednesday in front of the UCLA Luskin Conference Center, where regents had met to discuss a litany of topics regarding the system, including their decision not to block UCLA's proposed move to the Big Ten Conference.