UC, Academic Workers Negotiate

As the two parties sit down together, one of the main issues union representatives are saying needs to be addressed is workload.

“Whenever you overwork graduate and undergrad TAs you sort of get this negative double-wammie,” said Local 2865 President Scott Bailey Clifthorne. “We’re not able to provide the good in-depth commentary and we end up spending too much time evaluating other students and not concentrating on our own work.”

Bailey Clifthorne said the union is aiming to renegotiate the procedure for dealing with workload issues, which he said is currently different from other conflict-resolution procedures in the contract.

Under the current contract, if an academic student employee is feeling overworked and is not satisfied with the initial resolution of the issue, they can appeal to a panel of faculty members, whereas with other conflicts, Bailey Clifthorne said a neutral third party is brought in to mediate.

University officials said the system is working well the way it is currently structured.

“The university is happy with the system,” said UC spokesperson Nicole Savickas. “The university doesn’t see a need to change it, but that clearly is being discussed in the negotiations right now.”