The UC, with its $41 billion annual budget, claims it doesn’t have enough money to pay essential workers like Library Professionals the salaries and benefits needed to make ends meet in California.
Over eight bargaining sessions, the UC has ignored and downplayed LPs’ dedication and exemplary service. Despite mounting job responsibilities and job elimination, Teamsters LPs have worked tirelessly to support remote teaching and learning during the pandemic. LPs have met the needs of students, researchers, and global knowledge consortiums in providing world class preservation services, and LPs have implemented a new systemwide library catalog for the largest academic library system in the world. Library Professionals are essential UC workers.
Although we have reached a Tentative Agreement with the UC on wage ranges, the UC still refuses to pay compensation retroactive to March 2022, when LPs joined the Union. Four months of retroactive compensation is nothing to the UC, a multi-billion dollar system, but everything to us, our families, and our communities.
