Our Teamsters CX Unit Bargaining Team was back at the table with UC administration on January 13-14 in Oakland. During the two-day session, we came to tentative agreement on Article 38 Training and Development and made additional proposals, including binding arbitration for the removal of Bargaining Unit work (Article 2), enhanced out-of-class pay after 10 consecutive or intermittent days (Article 22), protections against contracting out Bargaining Unit work to artificial intelligence (Article 37), increased pay by two steps for promotions (Article 39), and movement on wages (Article 45).
The UC started the new year by proposing more takeaways… while they have agreed to add 1 ½ times regular pay for work on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, they are still refusing to agree to an additional floating holiday after giving one to other unions. UC is also refusing to increase shift differential amounts for those who work nights and weekends, refusing to allow the use of vacation leave at the choice of the employee when sick leave has been exhausted and slight movement on wages and maintaining longevity payments for those who reach 20 years of service but only for 2026. The UC team also made punitive statements about taking the “me too” language away. Rather than lifting up our essential workers, they would rather push employees down and take away the gains of our last hard-fought contract.
They also included a new proposal that would allow for emergency layoffs without any notice to the employee for reasons like decreased workload, low census, or unforeseen occurrence that limits the availability of work. With language like that, they could seriously and negatively impact employee pay and create hardship for workers’ households and families. Our Bargaining Team recalls when the UC wanted to do mass layoffs during COVID, wildfires, and recent threats to federal funding by the federal government.
“If the UC had ‘emergency layoff’ rights during the 2020 CZU fire complex, they would have used the fires as an excuse to lay off every Teamster who worked at UCSC when the campus was evacuated. I would have been laid off with no notice amid the uncertainty over whether my home was going to burn down. With the frequent wildfires in California, the UC wants a convenient excuse to lay off workers, rehire favorites and implement AI systems.”
Sarah Harker
Bargaining Team Member
AO2 at UC Santa Cruz
Our biggest fight over wages, healthcare benefits, and caps on premium and parking increases still lies ahead, and we need all Teamsters to be “action ready”.
Please sign our petitions to the Board of Regents, Healthcare CEOs, and Chancellors, letting them know that we deserve top dollar.
And since the UC agreed to bilingual pay in the last contract but refuses to certify or pay anyone for conversational bilingual skills, we are calling for a “bilingual black out day” on March 11, 2026. We want to send a message that sending students, patients and family members to call lines with excessive wait times and no context to the support and services that we provide, especially in public safety and emergent health situations, while taking advantage of our diverse language skills for free is unacceptable. We keep the UC running, are essential, and we deserve additional pay for these skills. – In short, if you are not getting paid for your bilingual skills, don’t do it.
We are also looking for members to share their concerns at the UC Board of Regents meeting scheduled for March 17-18 over the lack of bilingual pay and bad business practices. The UC’s stonewalling of the bilingual certification and selection process only hurts our student and patient population. Please contact your Union representative today for speaker training and scheduling.
Learn more about our contract negotiations and have your questions answered at a membership meeting at your worksite. Find a CX Unit member meeting by clicking here to go to our online calendar.
