Teamsters Picket UCI Health to Demand Parity with SoCal UCs!

Our K9 Bargaining Team continued to stand strong in our demands for a contract that makes our pay competitive with other Southern California UC campuses during our most recent contract negotiations on May 15 and May 22. While some progress was made, UC Irvine continued to downplay the importance of improving differentials and on-call pay in our successor Teamsters K9 Unit Skilled Trades contract.

There has been some progress made with respect to Union Rights to better represent our new members from Tenet on the Health side, as well as movement on improving Shift Differentials. But overall, it is not enough to bring us up to par with our fellow Teamsters at other UCs in Southern California. 

UCI started the May 22 session with a discussion centered around what they deemed a “very rich package” as part of a last, best and final proposal. This was centered around a woefully inadequate wage proposal that refuses to address parity with other UCs.

To show UC the level of members’ commitment to making those improvements, we held our first worksite action with a march across the UCI Health facility in Orange on May 21. We will continue to hold concerted member actions on campus and at UCI Health facilities, starting with a rally at UCI campus on June 4 from 11:30 AM till 12:00 NOON.