Posts tagged Salaries
In landslide victory, 7,200 UC professionals join United Auto Workers in unionization effort
September 8, 2025 // In a win for labor, 7,200 researchers and public service professionals, or RPSPs, across the University of California system announced Tuesday the formation of a new union after a vote in late August. The vote passed with 83% of the 3,692 ballots cast voting “yes.” The thousands of previously nonunionized employees now represented by RPSP-UAW, will join over 50,000 UC workers organized with the United Auto Workers, or UAW.
Postdoctoral scholars and research assistants at Penn vote to unionize
July 24, 2025 // Research Associates and Postdocs United at Penn would join the United Auto Workers labor union, which represents over 120,000 academic workers across the country, including 4,000 graduate workers at Penn who voted to unionize last year. Will Drayer, a postdoctoral researcher in materials science and engineering at Penn and a forefront member of the campaign to unionize, said the next steps include democratically electing a bargaining committee and surveying members to establish clear priorities before entering contract negotiations with the university.
CBS News Digital Staffers Say Fight for Contract Improvements Continue a Year After WGA Unionization
June 20, 2025 // The unionized journalist, editors and social media producers call on management to meet “in good faith” ahead of their current last scheduled bargaining date of June 24
NJ Transit CEO rails against union as strike looms
May 8, 2025 // The NJ Transit Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen could strike as early as May 16 if the two sides do not reach an accord. They’ve remained at odds over the level of wage hikes, with engineers seeking increases that would bring their average salary to $190,000, while the agency has pushed for a contract that would bring that wage up to $172,000. “If there’s any citizen, private or government, in this environment who’d get a $25,000 pay raise and say, ‘No, no, that’s not good enough,’ does that sound like a group of people who are grounded in reality, or more importantly, on what is actually happening in the world we live in?” Kolluri told the Assembly’s budget committee. In written responses to questions asked through the Office of Legislative Services, NJ Transit warned it could face cost increases as a result of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, though it said it lacks the information needed to gauge the impact tariffs would have.
Fringe benefits boost average Kentucky teacher’s compensation to nearly $100,000
May 7, 2025 // Though teacher compensation has grown, the much-larger increase in school funding indicates that a great deal of funding is going elsewhere. Moreover, student academic performance hasn’t come close to keeping pace with increases in either funding or teachers’ compensation. “Public education should be about preparing students for future success, not propping up an overfunded mediocre system,” said Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters. "Large increases in school funding – including nearly $2 billion in fringe-benefit payments for teachers – have not translated into better student outcomes.”
In unusual move, doctors vote to unionize at N.J. healthcare giant
May 5, 2025 // A group of doctors who work for both RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University voted to unionize earlier this week, union officials said. The physicians — who work for Rutgers 10% of the time and RWJBarnabas 90% of the time — were hired as “clinically focused university practitioners,” or CFUP. They are both physicians and faculty members at the state university.
Over 1 in 3 Illinois government workers reject AFSCME Council 31 membership
April 24, 2025 // The union claims to represent more than 90,000 state and local government employees in Illinois. Yet not even 60,000 of those workers are members of the union, according to the union’s annual LM-2 report to the federal government. That means more than 1 in 3 workers have rejected membership in the union that is supposedly representing their interests. It could be because just 21 cents of every dollar the union spends is on representing workers – what should be its core priority. It could be the millions of dollars AFSCME Council 31 spends on politics, or the exorbitant six-figure salaries it pays its bosses. And it could be the union’s questionable spending on restaurants and hotels.
Clark University undergrad workers on strike: Here are the latest developments
March 19, 2025 // A strike fund for the Clark student workers has been set up to pay students who are losing income while striking. There is a separate fund, organized by the Teamsters, which students can also access. According to The Scarlet, students must participate for a minimum of 15 hours of picketing and other strike-related activities in order to claim money from the Teamsters fund. Undergraduate students who work at Clark University are seeking unionization, with employees citing a desire for higher salaries and guaranteed working hours. The students have partnered with Teamsters Local 170, that has been negotiating on their behalf with the university.
Unions sue DOGE, Labor Department to block access to worker and Musk competitor data
February 6, 2025 // The lawsuit comes amid a swirl of controversy regarding efforts by Musk and members of his DOGE organization to cut federal spending, size down the federal workforce and readjust or outright close certain government agencies — efforts that have sparked an ever-increasing amount of litigation. Musk has moved to overhaul the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Education since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
Foreign aid freeze results in mass layoffs that could ‘crash’ the industry
February 5, 2025 // The U.S. is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance globally, deploying billions of dollars through multiple agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development. The majority of USAID’s funds are awarded competitively through contracts, grants or cooperative agreements with international development groups and private federal contractors.