Posts tagged University of California
UAW members aren’t all assembling cars. More and more are unionized grad students
October 23, 2023 // These days, the "A" in UAW might as well include academia, as roughly 100,000 of the union's 383,000 members work in higher education. They include graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants, clerical and technical workers, adjunct professors and postdocs.
When California’s public workers go on strike
August 11, 2023 // On Tuesday, thousands of city workers across Los Angeles, including staff at LAX and Van Nuys airport, City Hall, animal shelters, public swimming pools and other facilities, walked off the job for a 24-hour strike, reports the Los Angeles Times. There have been some efforts in the Legislature to expand strike rights for public workers. State Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat from Santa Ana, has proposed a constitutional amendment that would enshrine every worker’s right, including public sector employees, to join a union and negotiate with their employers “to protect their economic well-being and safety at work.” Another measure, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes of San Bernardino, would protect public employees from disciplinary action if they join a sympathy strike, refuse to cross a picket line or refuse cover work for striking co-workers.
Hotel Workers Strike against Scab Staffing App and Anti-Black Racism
August 2, 2023 // Bradley said he’s been trying to get a permanent hotel job for more than a decade, and suggested that discrimination was the reason he was passed over. “I think I’ve proven myself, and it’s still not enough,” he said. UNITE HERE has negotiated contract language to push hotels to hire Black workers, starting in Local 1 in Chicago in 2006, with similar language in contracts in Boston and Los Angeles. “Often we’re put against each other, right?” said Briceño. “So through all these years that we’ve been bargaining, we take the opportunity to educate our top leaders, folks that come to the negotiation, to understand the need to speak with one voice for the workers and the inclusion of Black workers.”
Minimum Wage Laws Increase Homelessness, New Study Finds
July 20, 2023 // Separate research, however, suggests California’s own policies have exacerbated its homelessness epidemic, including a new paper written by University of California economist Seth J. Hill titled “ Minimum Wages and Homelessness ” published last month. Utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other sources, Hill examined 100 cities from 2006-2019 to determine the relationship between wage floors and homelessness. The findings are bleak. “Merging administrative data from HUD to state and local minimum wage laws suggests that minimum wages induce increases in homeless counts,” Hill writes. “When cities raise their minimum wage by 10%, relative homeless counts increase by three to four percent.” This is why even left-leaning publications such as the New York Times, until relatively recently, conceded that using minimum wage laws to combat poverty was an “old, honorable — and fundamentally flawed” idea because it would “price working poor people out of the job market.” That minimum wage hikes increase unemployment was once hardly a debatable subject among economists, and even today a scouring of the literature shows that a “clear preponderance” of the scientific research shows a job-killing impact.
Changing institutional culture from the inside out: why more and more US museum workers are forming unions
May 19, 2023 // Organising efforts at Storm King, the PMA, the Hispanic Society and elsewhere reflect a trend that has been growing in the US art and heritage sector over the course of the past five years and accelerated with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Workers at more than 20 institutions have formed a union since 2020 or are actively in negotiations for their first contract, including the Jewish Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Mass Moca in Massachusetts. In March, after 16 months of negotiations, workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who had formed a union in spring 2021, ratified their first contract. State of the unions: why US museum workers are mobilising against their employers Tom Seymour The issues prompting workers to form unions across the country and across a broad range of industry sectors are remarkably consistent: wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of wage and salary workers who belonged to a union in 2022 was 14.3 million, a 1.9% increase on 2021.
The president of the United Auto Workers union has been ousted in an election
March 27, 2023 // A court-appointed monitor declared challenger Shawn Fain the winner over incumbent Ray Curry. Fain's slate of candidates won control of the big union, as workers rejected most incumbents in the wake of a bribery and embezzlement scandal It was the 372,000-member union's first direct election of its 14-member International Executive Board, which came in the wake of the wide-ranging scandal that landed two former presidents in prison. The vote count had been going on since March 1, and the outcome was uncertain going into Saturday because of challenges against several hundred ballots.
Workers exert leverage in tight labor market: Strikes doubled in 2022
February 23, 2023 // About 224,000 total people walked off the job in 424 strikes, up from 279 strikes in 2021. Most of them were demanding better pay and healthcare. Fast food workers with the "Fight for $15" campaign and Starbucks baristas organized over 100 strikes. In one of the most memorable, a number of Starbucks workers at stores across the country refused to man the espresso machines on "Red Cup Day" — the start of the profitable holiday drink season for the company. But education workers put the biggest stamp on labor action. About 60% of the workers striking in 2022 were educators, meaning the spotlight continues to be on frontline sectors after healthcare workers drove most of the action 2021, during the height of the pandemic.
Unions challenge U-C plan to dock pay of workers who went on strike
February 9, 2023 // Ryan King, a spokesperson for The University of California Office of the President, wrote in an email Friday to CalMatters that UC "may not legally pay our employees or gift them funds if they did not provide a service to the institution." He cited state and federal rules that forbid the university from paying employees who didn't work.
‘It’s about damn time’: College workers organize amid nationwide labor unrest
February 8, 2023 // A historic strike at the University of California kicked things off in November. And the six-week standoff among 48,000 campus workers, a broader surge in labor strikes across industries, a depleted pandemic workforce and a friendlier atmosphere in Washington has culminated in a wave of uprisings.+
Temple University graduate workers strike over ‘living wage’
February 6, 2023 // Following the lead of University of California graduate workers, teaching assistants and research assistants at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania went on strike Tuesday morning. The Temple University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA) announced on Twitter, “After bargaining for over a year, Temple still refuses to meet our demands of a living wage, dependent healthcare, longer leave, and better working conditions. We’re ready to bargain: is admin?”