May 25, 2023
Bargaining Update
Thanks to your organizing efforts– reaching out to your coworkers, talking to your PIs, sending letters to faculty and department chairs, and impactful presentations to the Board of Regents– for the first time since bargaining began back in August of 2022, UW has made some significant movement on increasing the salary range minimums for RSEs.
That movement happened because of you!
But their most recent proposal still has some major gaps. Incredibly, management has retracted their previous offer to compensate employees whose 3.25% merit increases they withheld last year. This was a conscious choice by UW; they should have given RSEs merit increases back in September, but they now have an opportunity to correct this and fairly distribute them once we ratify our contract.
Despite what we’ve shared at the bargaining table about the insufficiency of current RSE salaries, UW has still not agreed to salary increases that would significantly impact individual RSE salaries. Their proposal does not bring UW RSE salaries up to market rates, nor does it address the extent to which many RSEs are currently struggling financially. They are moving in the right direction, but they still need to make more movement to ensure that UW RSEs are paid livable wages that are competitive in order to retain talented RSEs. Below is a comparison of the differences in our most recent salary proposals:
As you see above, management proposed that increases to salary minimums should be uniform. We are continuing to push for larger increases to the minimum salaries of the lowest paid employees in our unit, as they are the ones struggling the most to get by. This is an equity issue.
UW’s own website states that “diversity is integral to excellence,” yet they continue to strike our proposal for a childcare fund. Maintaining parent participation in the workplace should be a priority for this institution; not supporting childcare access perpetuates gender gaps in science. UW Admin also continues to strike our proposal regarding RSE participation in the peer-led harassment prevention training program, EPIC, despite its successful track record and basis in sound scientific principles.
All of your engagement and mobilization has gotten us here, but in order to secure fair contracts, we need you to attend tomorrow’s Massive May Action and to demonstrate the power of your labor by being ready to withhold it. We’ll be at Drumheller Fountain at noon. RSVP here! We will be making noise, and each unit will be deciding our next steps, including the option of striking.
You can see information about the articles/MOUs we’ve reached agreement on and what we have already tentatively won here. You can see an overview of the remaining articles that we are negotiating here.
Strike FAQ
Should we need to strike, we’ve prepared a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Please review and reach out if you have a question that you don’t see answered here.
Since yesterday, we’ve heard some recurring questions and we have created a mailbag to address these questions:
Mailbag – this document is where we’re collecting and answering questions that are coming from RSEs.
We will continue to update the mailbag with new and recurring questions.
We’ll see you this TODAY at Noon for our Massive May Action at Drumheller Fountain! Get excited to make some noise!
Stay Informed
Stay up to date with our latest news and actions by following our social media accounts: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and also, reach out if you have any questions.
Additionally, if you’d like to keep up with what’s happening more broadly than just our Research Scientist unit, check out the UAW 4121 email updates. Also we are part of UAW Region 6, which represents over 100,000 people across 9 states.
In solidarity,
UWRU/UAW Bargaining Committee
Thaddeus Armstrong
Nick Bolten
Jai Broome
Erin Carll
Morgan Crotta
Iván Cruz
Abby Gambrill
Jay Mas Gilvydis
Anya Kalata
Julia Kobelt
Katherine Lasdin
Ellen MacLachlan
Katie Osterhage
Deborah Nemens
Van Redila
Annelise Smith
Galen Stewart
Jacob Tietsort
Stacey Wedlake
Ryan Will
Tricia Wu