UAW-QUAD Minority Report on the Tentative Contract Agreement

UAW Local 2865 Sacrificing Minority Rights

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights

“…because I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper. It’s not even the back of the bus anymore—it’s the back of the bumper. The bitch on wheels is back.” -Silvia Rivera, transgender revolutionary

The bargaining team’s summary of what we won in bargaining fails to offer an explanation of what we did not win. At the beginning of the bargaining process the bargaining team developed a necessary set of demands around the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people at the UC:

• The bargaining team’s email bargaining report to membership dated 10/4 includes a section on what we won around “Non-Discrimination.” This short sections highlights the admirable fact that the final agreement between the Union and the University includes the addition of gender identity/expression and pregnancy status to the contract’s Non-Discrimination Clause. Unfortunately, however, this section is most notable for the lack of an honest explanation of the anti-discrimination issues that our Union did not achieve.
  
• Gender Confirmation Services: Most UC undergrad and grad healthcare plans discriminate against transgender people. For example, GSHIP (Grad Student Health Insurance Plan) at UC Santa Cruz includes the following exclusion: “Expenses incurred for transsexual surgery or any treatment leading to or in connection with transsexual surgery.” The bargaining team’s initial healthcare proposal—which demanded that the University provide all transition-related procedures and services to trans people—acknowledged this utterly unacceptable and blatantly discriminatory practice. However, when the University exhibited reticence about conceding to this proposal, and in order to come to an agreement in an unnecessarily rushed process, a majority of the bargaining team agreed to maintain a healthcare proposal that leaves out the medical needs of transgender people. This low to no cost benefit is already provided in the employee and staff healthcare plans, recognizing the medical necessity of providing these services to transgender people. Considering all of this, trading away “trans inclusive healthcare” cannot be understood as an acceptable loss, collateral damage, or strategic bargaining.
  
• The bargaining team decided ultimately to trade away gains around healthcare for domestic partners, spouses, or dependents. Currently, the cost of this health coverage is prohibitive. This issue equally impacts straight and queer people, but it must be highlighted that inclusion of domestic partner health coverage was a key part of an initial package that was inclusive of the needs of queer people – most of which we did not win.
  
• Leaves: It is true the new agreement includes provisions for some paid leave, while previously our contract had no provision for paid leaves. However, the leaves coverage provides four weeks paid leave for childbearing mothers, while providing only two weeks paid leave for the other parent or for parents who adopt. This sets up a two-tiered system of benefits in which queer people, who are much more likely not to give birth, are at a serious disadvantage.

Undergraduate Rights
The new contract privileges the rights of salaried Academic Student Employees (ASEs), most of whom are graduate students, at the expense of hourly employees, most of whom are undergraduates. In a union that representatives graduate and undergraduate ASEs, it is unjust to negotiate a contract that has a two-tiered system of rights and benefits. Specifically, this round of contract negotiations built on what has already become a two-tiered system of rights and benefits in the local. On all campuses, there are groups of tutors and undergraduate TAs whom are not even recognized in our contract; on Santa Cruz, all tutors are completely exempt from union protections. As per the last three contracts we have negotiated, hourly employees who are in our unit – whom are primarily undergraduate tutors but are also graduate and undergraduate readers – have been systematically excluded from the rights and benefits that have been bargained for graduate TAs. Fee and healthcare remissions are the most obvious site of this exclusion; in addition the Local has bargained contracts that do not offer Tutors and Readers the same appointment notification rights (supplemental documentation) and do not offer Tutors, Readers, TAs protections against discrimination based on the degree they are working towards.

The recent round of contract negotiations demonstrated the unwillingness of the majority on the bargaining team to undo some of these past wrongs, and to move towards bargaining not only for rights and benefits that include tutors and readers, but that also might specifically address their working conditions. Instead, the team negotiated a leaves package that explicitly excludes Tutors and Readers; this group of workers still has NO rights to paid sick, family, or bereavement leave. Many of the members of the team expressed their satisfaction with the leaves package as a groundbreaking right for part-time workers (i.e. salaried TAs); however, they were/are unwilling to press for the right to include the truly part-time workers in our unit.

Our bargaining team also negotiated a pay wage increase of 5% for the current academic year. Through negotiations, they settled an outstanding grievance that addressed the hourly wages of Tutors at UC Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside (who were not paid wages that were equal to Tutors at other campuses). The settlement in negotiations now includes a stipulation that Tutors will not be paid less than $12.00/hour at these campuses. This settlement is treated as a bargaining victory, instead of being recognized as a settlement of a grievance that need not be “negotiated.” The Tutors implicated in this decision will not receive the 5% increase on top of their minimum wage; the wage increase instead is being treated as incorporating the percentage into the hourly increase. So, we have a “victory” that in fact could have been dealt with outside of negotiations, could have possibly resulted in an even higher hourly increase, and yet is being treated as a bargaining triumph and is being presented to tutors as proof that the Local really does care about Tutors after all. If we as a Union cannot be committed to aggressively bargaining for the rights of the hourly workers in our unit, we will continually lose the ability to mobilize and protect this group of workers. We know that corporations engage in a “race to the bottom” in efforts to minimize expense and maximize profit. Our current practice of bargaining a two-tiered system that privileges graduate workers only enables the UC corporation in this endeavor, and does not – in the lease – demonstrate a commitment to the kind of praxis/philosophy we should be committed to as a “labor union.” By allowing and facilitating the continual under-representation of undergraduate workers, our union is participating in and enabling the exploitation of a group of workers within our union.

International Students
We were able to maintain our 100% tuition remission for resident ASEs, but only set up a non-binding committee to explore tuition remission for non-residents, who once again make up a minority of the membership of the union. It is far from clear that it was necessary to settle on a contract that excludes a fee remission for non-residents, especially given the admittance by the UC Office of the President’s own report that the UC is competing poorly with similarly situated top-tier research universities in the financial packages they offer to attract candidates to their graduate programs. International students are situated in a hostile xenophobic climate, precariously positioned with student visas. The Union needs to take a stand and fight for fee remissions that would better protect their access to the UC. Our Union’s commitment to protect the integrity of a world-class university is dependent upon international exchanges of students. But UAW Local 2865 only paid lip service to the position of International Students. What more could have been done? What additional public pressure could we have put on the University to achieve non-resident fee remission? Rather than exploring how best to achieve non-resident fee remission, a majority of the bargaining team rushed to come to an agreement that excluded non-resident tuition remission. Again, a key minority population and its needs was easily removed from the purview of the bargaining team.

Family-Friendly Issues
A new child entering the world should not enjoy privileges bound by the higher social value placed on biological birth at the discriminatory expense of those parents that do not give birth. When the majority of the bargaining team accepted the dynamic that privileges childbearing mothers far more than other parental positions, the Union sends a strong message that non-childbearing parents are not integral caregivers to a child. Apparently the union endorses a view that a birthing female parent is worth twice as much as all other formations of parents who do not give birth. Furthermore, this benefit contributes to maintaining patriarchal parental norms that presume the birthing mother must shoulder the majority of the burden of caring for a new child while the other parent, of any gender, is not supposed to share in that stage of the child’s life with equal responsibility.

Moving Forward
What is terrifying and at the same time utterly unsurprising is the overall message from some of the bargaining team has sent to the larger UC community: continuing discrimination is a success! The material consequences of what this means for trans folks at the UC is quite obvious: we will continue to be forced to pay for “health care” that explicitly excludes us and our needs. In short, trans people, international students, and undergraduates are just not worth it; they are not worth fighting along side, or supporting in any way that might place one’s own privilege in question. Sacrificing the rights of minorities for the sake of the majority should never be seen as a great success. We encourage future bargaining teams, moreover, to respect members and be honest about what we won and what we did not win.

In struggle,
UAW Members for Quality Education and Democracy