We would actually like to take credit for them passing a wages proposal. If it wasn't for our voice and your dedicated following of this blog then they may not have felt the pressure to actually bargain over wages at all.
But lets not celebrate yet.
The proposal they passed had NO NUMBERS in it. None. Zero.... Wait... Not zero because that's a number. Nada? Is that zero in Spanish or something?... Anyways, you get the drift.
How is management supposed to know how much to pay us if they dont pass a number?? How can management pass a counter-offer if they don't know what they are countering??
From the reports we have gathered through our NSA-like intelligence netowork all we know is the following. The proposal calls for a wage that makes graduate education at the UC competitive again, and is based on a competitiveness report put out by the faculty. Th report could probably be found by googling it, and could be read, but like management we don't really feel like doing that much work. Just give us a damn number.
Sure, some might argue that there's a strategic thinking behind trying to control the narrative by talking about competitiveness, but since we don't like AWDU we're instead going to just say that management will be controlling the discussion since they put out a number and we didn't. Studies show that people like numbers. I forget what percent of people like numbers, but that doesn't matter anyways.
We are hereby calling on the bargaining team to only pass numeric proposals from now on. We've created a helpful guide for the team below.
Here's a list of demands that we oppose since they don't have numbers in them:
-Affordable Housing
How much is "affordable" anyways? Its not like anyone knows what this means.
-Fully subsidized childcare
Last we checked, "fully" isn't a number...
-Abolition of the 18 quarter limit
Again, how can management counter if we don't give them a number?!?!
-Anti-Discrimination
Categories of people that shouldn't be discriminated against or harassed are not numbers. This makes no sense.
-Research Assistant Bargaining Rights
Which RAs? How many unions do we want them to have? Again the lack of numbers just stalls the process of bargaining since it gives management nothing to respond to.
-Smaller class size
While no class size proposal has been passed yet, thankfully, we hear that the team is working on a proposal for smaller class sizes. While it isn't finalized yet we bet that there will be no numbers in it at all.
-Better Access at Orientations
A stronger demand would specify exactly how many feet away, and how many, union activists can sign people up during TA orientations.
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