Our Berkeley labor siblings, members of the UAW academic student employees—teaching assistants, graduate student instructors, tutors, readers, and postdocs—across the University of California system and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, are asking for your solidarity in the biggest fight of their union lives!
I hope you will join us in solidarity with workers:
– Join a picket line! – Starting Monday @ 8am-5pm and beyond
https://www.fairucnow.org/picket/
– Donate to the strike hardship fund:
https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw
– Sign the California Labor Federation petition:
https://tinyurl.com/CalLaborFedPetition
– Learn more:
https://tinyurl.com/EastBayMajorityArticle
This is exactly what we’re working towards in our own union. What a great opportunity we have right here in our neighborhood to feel directly what power and solidarity look like as well as get inspired for our own organizing and escalation! Two dozen of your City co-workers recently completed an organizing training and now have a detailed multi-month plan to build power ahead of multiple fights and our next contract.
Over the past few years Berkeley UAW Locals have been organizing their members deeply and have been pushing for rights in their workplaces at UC Berkeley. Beyond increases to wages and benefits, they are seeking a broad range of basic improvements in their workplaces including protections from workplace harassment, expanded parental leave and childcare, affordable housing, climate-friendly transit, anti-bullying and anti-racism measures, support for immigrant workers and workers with disability. These are things all workers deserve but that very wealthy UC system has refused.
And so these workers have voted by a supermajority to strike. The strike will begin Monday morning at 8 am and continue everyday from 8-5pm in ten locations around campus.
This is a coordinated action by a coalition of four groups representing close to 50,000 workers including student researchers, graduate teaching assistants, tutors, readers, postdoctoral researchers, non-faculty academic researchers and graduate student researchers across all ten UC campuses including UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
This is a crucial time for labor and community groups to stand together and demand basic protections and rights for all workers.