Librarian Contract Bargaining Update #2 – December 4, 2023

Dear UC-AFT Unit 17 Librarians: 

Today your librarian table team convened for a day of contract bargaining at UC Berkeley. Despite a few travel challenges due to fog in the bay area, our team was super productive in our bargaining session (An observation: Wouldn’t it be better if we could avoid these unexpected issues by conducting our bargaining over Zoom?).

Regardless, UC-AFT librarians and lecturers joined us in the room to observe bargaining, and allies met with the table team for conversation and photo at noon outside Bauer Wurster Hall (see pic above) to demonstrate their solidarity. For librarians who couldn’t be there in person, please be sure to register your online support by writing a letter of solidarity on the Jamboard! The messages we read this morning gave us strength throughout the day. Thank you.  

Passed Proposals

UC-AFT passed several proposals across the table. These included clarifications to Article 9 (Health & Safety), and more significant changes to Article 18 (Temporary Appointees), Article 21 (Vacation), and a counterproposal to Article 22 (Holidays). 

The University then passed proposals for Article 1 (Recognition), Article 8 (Layoff), Article 14 (Benefits), and Article 15 (Tuition Fee Waiver). They also shared counterproposals for two articles that we passed last month in San Diego: Article 6 (Personnel Files) and Article 24 (Grievance Procedure). 

Reach out to your local table team members for more details about these proposals.

Looking forward to the new year

With a number of proposals on the table (and several more to present in the near future), our table team is looking forward to the bargaining sessions in 2024. We’ll meet for the next bargaining on January 19, 2024 at UCLA. 

Your table team asks for the ongoing commitment and activism from all represented librarians to make our bargaining a success. The UC-AFT librarian contract campaign committee will be organizing several solidarity actions over the coming months. It’s up to us all to help grow our power together. We know that with massive community support, we can win a compelling contract that protects and champions librarians as the absolutely crucial academic workers we are. 

In Solidarity,

The UC-AFT Unit 17 Table Team

Kendra K. Levine, Bay Area, Chief Negotiator
I-Wei Wang, Bay Area
Timothy Vollmer, Bay Area
Jared Campbell, Davis
Mitchell Brown, Irvine
Xaviera Flores, Los Angeles
Miki Goral, Los Angeles
Rachel Green, Los Angeles
Joy Holland, Los Angeles
Jerrold Shiroma, Merced
Carla Arbagey, Riverside
Michael Yonezawa, Riverside
Tori Maches, San Diego
Laurel McPhee, San Diego
Jenny Reiswig, San Diego
Kristen LaBonte, Santa Barbara
Alix Norton, Santa Cruz
Tamara Pilko, Santa Cruz
Jess Waggoner, Santa Cruz