Against the backdrop of the fantastic win that UW Postdocs and ASEs made possible today and throughout yesterday’s historic direct action, today we saw some incremental progress on a key issue in bargaining.  UW Administration responded to our comprehensive non-discrimination and harassment proposals by moving on our earlier proposal for new joint trainings in which the union and university would co-develop sexual harassment trainings and student employees would be hired to build and implement it.  This is a positive step, and indicative of the University Administration moving in a productive direction. However, we have a significant distance to go before such a proposal (check out today’s full summary here) could be developed into an anti-oppression program that is fully responsive to and effective at addressing the well-documented and heavily reported needs of members.  Further action by all of us will clearly be needed.

Our next bargaining session is April 4 from 9am-5pm in Roosevelt Commons West — please make it for all or part to participate and demonstrate your support! Please also be on the lookout for upcoming opportunities to take increased action as members escalate attention to these very important topics.

Also be sure to mark your calendar for March 29th at 5:30pm (location TBD)! Members from across campus will be coming together for an Organizing Summit to collaborate on reaching out to others in our departments, plan direct actions for the coming week, and develop a mobilization campaign for making strong wins on our anti-discrimination and union rights demands.

In Solidarity,
Theresa Aliwarga
Douglas Avella-Castro
Dianne Baumann
Andrea Canini
Anthony Castanza
Monica Cortes Viharo
Meg Drouhard
Kristen Garofali
Katya Kolesova
Dylan Mayer
Mandy McCourt
Kristin McCowan
Elizabeth Mills
David Parsons
Shua Sanchez
Maddie Smith
Sam Sumpter
Arash Tarkhan
Judy Twedt