January 11, 2023
Unfair Labor Practice charge/hours reporting
In case you’ve missed our emails over the past few weeks, last week, we filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against UW. They violated their legal obligation to bargain in good faith when they converted 157 RSEs to hours tracking positions without providing our union notice, the opportunity to bargain, or information as required by law.
As a follow up to this, we want to start this email with some good news. Several RSEs have reached out to share that they have successfully had conversations with their bosses and negotiated that their salaries get raised above the overtime (OT) eligibility threshold ($65,478.40 a year), moving them out of an hours tracking position. If you are thinking about having this type of conversation with your boss and you’d like some support, please reach out. We’d be happy to run through some talking points with you.
Also, now that we are several weeks into many of us being required to track our hours, a reminder that our email from last week contains some key information for RSEs in hours tracking positions, specifically the actions that you should be taking and what your rights are as an OT eligible employee.
Actions happening this week
There are several actions taking place this week around the UW Board of Regents meetings. These would be both meaningful and also lower commitment ways of being involved and supporting, as they simply require being physically present. These include:
Housing 4 the People rally on Wednesday, 1/11 (today!) at 4:30pm in Red Square (RSVP) to hold UW accountable as landlord and employer. The rough schedule is:
- 4:30pm kid friendly/community focused activities on the square
- 5pm speakers from affected communities
- 5:20 attend the Board of Regents (BoR) public comment session
If you are unable to attend but would still like to support, please sign the petition.
Board of Regents Public Comment, Day 2 on Thursday, 1/12 at 12pm in the Petersen Room in Allen Library, 4th floor (RSVP). The focus will be to share updates with the BoR about bargaining. Having a group of RSEs and librarians (who are also experiencing massive bargaining delays) present will send a meaningful message to the BoR.
Bargaining Update
We spent yesterday bargaining and did manage to reach tentative agreements on a handful of articles. However, we still have 13 proposals that UW has not even bothered to provide us an initial counter-proposal on and we only have two more bargaining sessions that they’ve calendared with us.
You can see all of the proposals we passed yesterday, along with previously passed proposals at our Bargaining Center.
And as always, in case you aren’t already a follower, a quick plug for our social media accounts; they are an easy way to stay in the loop: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and also, reach out if you have any questions.
In solidarity,
UWRU/UAW Bargaining Committee
Thaddeus Armstrong
Leila Blair
Nick Bolten
Jai Broome
Erin Carll
Shelly Carpenter
Bonnie Chang
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
Kambiz Tavabi
Jacob Tietsort
Stacey Wedlake
Ryan Will
Tricia Wu
Joshua Yee