Workers of UAW 4811 might soon anticipate a triumphant announcement from their bargaining team (BT) lauding the “win” as they pushed the UC to commit to “open bargaining.” Those workers should be wary of any double-speak. 🧵(1/14)

We've learned a lot from our comrades at U-Mich & their 2023 strike. Here, they write about the fight for 12-month funding, which they won after a 5 month strike. This is a demand central to our current bargaining campaign, and we too can win it. Read on to find out how:

Workers in the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) in Karajan, Armenia recently carried out a wildcat strike demanding higher wages along with health and safety precautions in a mine still operating with ‘60s-era technology.

To donate: Venmo @rebeccalynngross Paypal: rebeccalgross0@gmail.com & use the caption: fundraiser If you want merch in exchange for your donation, please fill out this form: https://t.co/iC9WbwnLDA please share widely! [5/5]

With a $25 donation, receive a "UC's Most Striking Campus" t-shirt (Sizes Small to XL), OR a zine + print + pin With a $50 donation, receive a shirt + zine + print + button OR two shirts [4/5]

With a $5 donation, receive a "UC's Most Striking Campus" button With a $10 donation, receive a "Long Live The Strike" print, OR two buttons With a $15 donation, receive a "Lies Employers Tell Us" zine, OR a button + a print [3/5]

To donate: Venmo @rebeccalynngross Paypal: rebeccalgross0@gmail.com use the caption: fundraiser In exchange for donating, you'll receive these fabulous prizes! [2/5]

Solidarity request! We're fundraising to support our international worker comrade whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration in April. While his visa has been reinstated, we are trying to raise $500 to support his lost wages and legal fees by this Thursday, June 12. [1/5]

Grad workers at UC, sign your name here to demand our bargaining team push for open-hybrid bargaining: https://t.co/EI7y7c5hae

“The US higher-education labor movement has experienced an ‘upsurge’ of militant rank-and-file organizing since 2012. The legal maneuvering and post-strike backlash we are experiencing fits into a broader pattern of attempts to reverse this trend.” https://t.co/44khz66580

UC workers, sign here to push for open, hybrid bargaining:

Combatting these forces will take power from below. Our bargaining team cannot waver at the first hurdle. Call on them to fight for open hybrid bargaining here: https://t.co/5bXJ8u1sTr (14/14)

...in the face of federal, state, and (so-called) local structural budget shortfalls, one might anticipate more stonewalling and tighter pursestrings than in 2022. (13/14)

The fight for open hybrid bargaining will surely be the first in a long process. Workers should be aware that the boss we’re meeting at the table this time will not be the same as the last time around... (12/14)

As we learned in 2022, R&F workers are galvanized by the craven administrative reactions to worker testimony at the table, the UC’s inability to take bargaining seriously, and a sense of engagement with the process by being able to be part of it in open caucuses. (11/14)

Power is not a dashboard metric, a spectacle, or a performance for the boss to see. Power is a deep structure of rank-and-file workers committed to wielding it through strike action. (10/14)

The statewide line now is that power can be performed by packing the room at in person sessions. Notwithstanding the obvious access needs issues to this plan — as usual, it misses the point. (9/14)

Wary of the overflow Zoom rooms we came to expect in 2022, into which hundreds of workers from across the state flooded to watch the bargaining table at all hours of the day and night and consistently pushed their bargaining team to hold the line with the UC... (8/14)

While the Contract Action Team is left to drive up membership numbers and lobby in Sacramento, the contract bargaining process is happening without them by a team of organizers afraid to replicate the (at times) difficult democracy of remote bargaining in 2022. (7/14)

Instead, the rights of decision-making appear to have been funneled to a small ring of staff and select bargaining team members who have internalized all the wrong lessons from 2022. (6/14)

The decision not to push for real, open bargaining is not one made where it should be: by the rank-and-file or by the Contract Action Team, even. Surely, these groups would not make such a call. (5/14)