Last week, standing together as Teamsters, we accomplished great things, and showed power that will be with us well into the future as we continue our fight for fair treatment of CSU workers. When we return to the bargaining table, we’ll sit down with the power of the longest and most effective strike in CSU’s history at our side.
Our statewide ULP strike was an overwhelming success. Across all 22 campuses, not only did we turn away trucks and shut down construction sites simply by withholding our essential labor, we impacted daily campus operations across the state in a big way. Leaks went unfixed, buildings flooded, elevators were out of order, pipes stayed clogged, and more. Supervisors panicked as they tried to maintain campus infrastructure during a week of torrential rain, hail, and snow. We exposed — for all of California to see — CSU’s greed, dishonesty and mistreatment of workers.
When CSU sits down and tallies the cost of the strike provoked by their unfair practices and broken promises, they won’t like what they see. In damaged buildings, lost deliveries, delayed construction, and a tarnished reputation, they cost themselves a lot more than what they have attempted to steal from us. They’ll see they can’t afford to lose our work.
We’re ready to sit back down at the table and negotiate fairly for our promised raises. Now that we have demonstrated the value of our work — and the harm that is caused to CSU operations when we are not there to do it — we know they will think twice about breaking their promises again.
Our solidarity is our power. And last week proved, for the Chancellor, the Trustees and every campus president to see: CSU Teamsters are pretty damn powerful.
“I’m incredibly proud of the strength, determination and leadership our members showed during our historic strike last week. We had virtually universal compliance with our strike. Our members stood strong and ran effective, disciplined pickets at every location – even in the face of CSU’s lies and intimidation, in the face of rain, wind, cold, snow and even hail. We showed CSU power like they have never seen before and exposed CSU’s greed and mistreatment of workers for the whole world to see. With the power we have built through our strike, we will continue our fight for fair pay at CSU until we win!”
Jason Rabinowitz
Secretary-Treasurer
