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)
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If discussions continue on their current path, open bargaining in this case might not be the expansive and worker-driven format we came to anticipate in 2022... (2/14)
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... but rather a series of back-channel negotiations and in-person sessions in Los Angeles and Oakland — further replicating (and worsening!) the existing divide between the “top tier” workers at UCLA, UCB, and UCSF and the rest of the state. (3/14)
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Already, workers at these institutions make more than their comrades elsewhere. In this version of “open bargaining” being proposed by our BT, they’ll effectively be the only ones allowed at the table. (4/14)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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...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)
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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)
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