Equity survey: Last week!
Be sure to complete the equity survey before Friday!
The UW-UAW annual Equity Survey gathers information about the specific harassment, discrimination, and inclusion issues Academic Student Employees and Postdocs are facing at UW. By participating in the survey, you are taking part in a union-wide effort to build our collective power for bargaining in 2021 as this survey will help generate powerful evidence to take to the bargaining table. Note that this survey is administered through Catalyst in order to ensure each person only fills it out once, but your responses won’t be connected with your identifying information. To share the survey with others in your department, you can use the link tinyurl.com/uw-uaw-es1920. The survey closes this Friday 2/28, so add your voice today!
Solidarity with University of California ASEs
Academic Student Employees at our sister Local at the University of California, UAW 2865, have recently demanded to bargain with UC administration over a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for all ASEs at the University of California. This has come off the heels of a wildcat strike at UC Santa Cruz, which has included a fall quarter grade strike, building occupations, and the blocking of university entrances. With their COLA For All campaign, 2865 members are organizing mass collective action around a set of progressive housing demands, including providing housing subsidies to ASEs at all UC campuses, eliminating rent burden in current on-campus housing, and building affordable social campus housing.
Recently, some members at the Santa Cruz campus who took part in wildcat strike actions were threatened with termination. On Friday, members at multiple campuses held actions against this retaliation, in addition to filing grievances under their contract. Following this pressure, UC admin did not take the threatened action. However, admin continues working to avoid the accountability that would come from bargaining changes into a legally-binding contract by attempting to circumvent the union entirely.
UAW 4121 is in solidarity with our union siblings at UAW 2865 in this critical fight for a UC for all. To add your support, sign on to this petition today!
EPIC is hiring!
Empowering Prevention and Inclusive Communities is hiring a new graduate training specialist! The EPIC program is an innovative peer-to-peer harassment prevention training program jointly run between our union and the university, and was a major win from the most recent ASE and Postdoc contracts. EPIC training specialists are primarily responsible for developing intersectional anti-harassment training for UW Academic Student Employees and Postdocs and working with members in departments across UW to develop highly tailored training sessions. This is a 50% FTE appointment beginning Spring Quarter, with equivalent pay and benefits to a standard TA or RA position. All UW graduate students are eligible to apply, and the application closes on Thursday 2/27. Learn more and submit an application at the UW Hires posting.
Sign now to support new overtime rule
The State of Washington is moving to implement a long-overdue update to wage and overtime rules by increasing the wage threshold for salaried employees. If finalized, these rules could provide for needed wage increases for 400,000 Washington employees, whose work under outdated rules has significantly fallen behind costs of living (especially in places like Seattle). Maintaining fair wages for salaried employees is good for science and good for a strong economy. By remaining competitive and enabling all scientists – not just those of independent means – to stay in academia, we can maintain a strong commitment to basic research and improving our communities. You can help ensure this new rule is adopted — please take a minute to sign this petition to Washington State Labor and Industries. For more information, check out this post.
In solidarity,
UAW 4121 Joint Council
Tina Angerer
Douglas Avella-Castro
Leandro Casiraghi
Monica Cortés Viharo
Meg Drouhard
Max Friedfeld
Vern Harner
Dan Hart
Sam Kastner
Kyle Kubler
Kristin McCowan
Emily Myers
Anzela Niraula
Jacob O’Connor
Nayon Park
Marissa Parker
David Parsons
Cristian Proistosescu
Shua Sanchez
Paige Sechrest
Solmaz Shakerifard
Sam Sumpter
Judy Twedt
Jon Witt |
