Hi Colleague,
UW Admin continues to make little movement towards our next contract. This Friday (3/29) at noon on the Quad – join your coworkers under the iconic UW cherry blossoms to demand that UW Management make substantive proposals on compensation, non-citizen ASE support, accessibility, and more – NOW.
With 34 days until our current ASE contract expires, we call on UW Admin to present real offers now on our key demands:
- Close the income gap: ASEs make less than a tenth of what UW employees at the top make. We demand real raises now.
- Support non-citizen ASEs: International ASEs face extra financial precarity, making them more vulnerable to workplace exploitation. We demand visa fee reimbursements, paid immigration-related leave, and job security.
- End pay-to-work fees: UW pays ASEs with one hand and takes back with the other. Mandatory student fees lower our take-home pay by 9.6% at the start of each quarter. We demand no more paying to work at UW.
While our work makes UW one of the top research institutions in the world, many of us are struggling to keep up with the Puget Sound’s extreme cost-of-living. Our contract negotiations are an opportunity to ensure UW is a place where all workers can thrive, rather than contributing to the wealth inequity gap plaguing so much of the Puget Sound region.
Join your coworkers among UW’s famous union-made cherry trees (shoutout to our WFSE union siblings!) to give UW Admin a taste of what’s to come if we don’t get the contract we deserve.
Yesterday, UW Admin gave us counter-proposals on Articles 4: Appointment & Reappointment Notification and Job Description, XX: Reasonable Accommodations, 21: Parking and Transit, 27: Travel and Purchasing, 9: Health and Safety, and 36: Workplace and Materials.
With yesterday’s counter-proposals on reasonable accommodations and appointments, UW Admin sent a clear message: Management believes they should be able to fire ASEs when convenient, while forcing us to pay more to work at UW.
Article 4 (Appointment & Reappointment Notification and Job Description)
UW continues to insist on language that can fire us if our supervisor has not seen us for three days, claiming that they need protection from ASEs’ “job abandonment.”
Article XX (Reasonable Accommodation)
UW Admin continues to want to fire disabled ASEs if they think necessary accommodations aren’t reasonable—this effectively means that ASEs can be fired if the university is uncooperative about their workplace needs. We passed a counter on accommodations that demonstrates movement on accessibility training and pregnancy accommodations, while maintaining the rights of disabled ASEs requesting accommodation.
Article 21 (Parking and Transit)
Admin passed us a proposal without significant changes to these benefits. We’re continuing to fight to make campus more accessible and to fix the summer UPASS gap for Graduate Summer Research Assistants (GRSAs).
Article 27 (Travel and Purchasing)
UW wants 30 days to even begin to process travel reimbursements. We are continuing to propose that UW prioritize paying costs for travel and materials upfront. If that’s not possible, we proposed 14 day timelines for reimbursement, ensuring that ASEs no longer have to front UW money for months at a time for the work that we do to keep UW running.
We made progress towards a strong contract yesterday by reaching tentative agreements with UW Admin on A9: Health & Safety and A36: Workplace & Materials.
Article 9 (Health and Safety)
We reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) with Admin to add the university’s policies and practices around ergonomic equipment to our contract—making access to ergonomic evaluations a grievable right for ASEs.
Article 36 (Workplace and Materials)
We also tentatively agreed to Admin’s proposal for Article 36, which affirms that ASEs should not be paying for materials needed to do their jobs.
Questions? Want to get more involved? Reach out to ase-bargaining@uaw4121.org.
ASE Bargaining Team
Natalie Wellen (Applied Mathematics)
Justin Applegate (Biochemistry)
Tahiyat Rahman (Physics)
Anastasia Schaadhardt (Information School)
Soohyung Hur (Geography)
Yuying Xie (Geography)
Francesca Colonnese (English)
Candice Young (Molecular & Cellular Biology)
Natasha Crepeau (Mathematics)
Nelson Niu (Mathematics)
Jayden Wood (Mechanical Engineering)
Peter Lindquist (Earth & Space Sciences)
