In this update:
- We are happy to say that the university’s latest proposal makes significant movement toward us on wages and remission.
- However, the university has removed all language related to staffing from the side letter, representing a significant regression from their previous position offering a non-binding staffing increase.
- At the end of the day, the university is asking ASEs to take binding cuts to wages and remission while the university makes no commitment to improve instructional quality.
- The university did not reject Darrell Steinberg as a mediator. We are continuing to talk about mediation. Mediation has not yet begun.
At Friday’s bargaining session, the university released a new supposal. We are happy to see that the university made significant movement toward us on wages and remissions for the first time in the bargaining process. Unfortunately, their latest supposal completely removes any commitment to increase staffing in EECS/DS, binding or non-binding.
Here’s what was in the university’s latest supposal:
- Maintenance of the agreed-to staffing structure with minor changes to the job duties of UCS2
- UCS3 = Head TA
- UCS2 = 8-hour TA
- UCS1 = Tutor/reader
- UCS2 wages and remission
- Wages 29% lower than guaranteed under the union contract by 2024–25
- No fee remission
- UCS3 (Head TAs, 8-hour and 20-hour) wages and remission
- Wages 21% lower than guaranteed under the union contract by 2024–25
- Full fee remission for 20-hours, 40% fee remission for 8-hours
- No commitment to increase staffing. The university completely eliminated the language in its proposal about staffing, representing a significant regression from its previous position.
(For more information on the economic part of the latest supposal, please see our updated wages and remission explainer.)
The University of California signed an agreement with ASEs to negotiate over increasing staffing and improving instructional quality. This continues to be the number one priority of ASEs. We are disappointed to see that the university still does not seem to be willing to provide the resources necessary to improve instructional quality. The university’s latest move does not reflect an institutional good faith intent to come to an agreement on staffing.
Agreement and Trust
At the bargaining session, Professor Adhikari noted that she and the other faculty hope for a shared respect and trust in this process. At the end of this bargaining process, ASEs and faculty will need to come together and teach these courses again. We agree. There is an importance in recognizing the immense value brought to this program by both faculty and student workers.
The faculty on the university side of the bargaining table want to maintain access to classes, keep open options for undergrads to teach, and to keep the program sustainable. We wholeheartedly agree on a need for this and like the faculty want what is best for students. No one knows better than ASEs—who are students themselves—the dangers scenarios in which enrollments are cut or instructional models are shifted to the detriment of students.
The best way to create long-lasting trust between faculty and ASEs is to come together as a department and demand the resources that our students deserve, and have the university put those guarantees in writing. All sides need to commit to compromise in order to demonstrate good will and mutual respect. ASEs are committed to continue to work in good faith to come to an agreement on the side letter.
Access
ASEs, by and large, would like classes to be as large and as accessible as possible. That scenario is great for students and great for workers. However, access is only good if courses continue to be of a high quality. As such, ASEs have asked for there to be required staffing increases relative to enrollment to help address widespread issues of staff overwork and a lack of student support. The university has noted that, in their latest supposal, they would hope to increase staffing in CS classes by 15% relative to enrollment. However, they removed all language surrounding staffing from their proposal, and we do not feel that an unwritten, non-committal target is a strong enough guarantor of access to a high quality education. Our students deserve more.
Ultimately, the best way to improve instructional quality is to increase resources. There are a few ways to optimize courses to run better with limited staffing, and most courses in our departments have already implemented these measures. ASEs at the bargaining table have also expressed great willingness to change the terms of employment in order to allow the university to use more efficient staffing structures. But at no point in the last 3 months of bargaining has the university offered to increase resources whatsoever. They’ve just come up with more and more creative ways to slice up a fixed pie. It’s simply not enough.
We don’t know exactly how the university will change instructional models in the future. But we’ve been concerned by the open admission that the intent of the departments is to replace TAs with tutors, and to cut important instructional services like discussion and lab sections. We’ve also been concerned that Professor Josh Hug acknowledged in a bargaining session that significant staffing and enrollment changes could occur after 2023–24 resulting from further decreased budgets. In other words, lower wages and benefits with no staffing guarantee allows the university to continue to remove resources from our classes, potentially leaving us back at square one.
ASEs are at the bargaining table to get more resources for our students. Agreeing to cut ASE wages might temporarily make things slightly better, but without a guarantee, it would be a band-aid that ultimately does very little for long-term access in these departments.
Teaching Positions and Pipeline
We are largely in agreement with the university bargaining team about the value of having a teaching pipeline and creating a staffing structure that allows undergraduates to grow and develop as teachers. The formal creation of the UCS2 (8-hour section TA) position between UCS1 (tutors/readers) and UCS3 (head TAs) was something that was originally proposed in the ASE supposal on March 6, and we have largely come to agreement with the university about the existence of this position and its job duties. The university supposal only minorly changes the job duties of a UCS2.
The university bargaining team in a video said that 8-hour uGSIs would continue to exist as 8-hour UCS3s and receive 40% fee remission. While this may be true in limited circumstances, we believe that the vast majority of current 8-hour TAs would be classified as 8-hour UCS2s under the university supposal, and would therefore receive no fee remission and wages 10% lower than 8-hour head TAs.
We also have major concerns that—because the university has not included any language about the composition of the workforce from its proposal—the pipeline would largely collapse. In the supposal, the apparent cost of hiring at UCS3 is 70% more than a UCS2 working the same number of hours. This means that the department would have a very strong financial incentive to not hire people into the UCS3 position. And indeed in the university’s predicted staffing model, we see the narrowing of the pipeline to become a funnel:
It’s important to note that the university is not obligated to appoint at these numbers. Under their supposal, they would have the right to narrow the pipeline even more than they have specified here.
While the experience of those on course staff comes second to course quality, it is still an important metric in this bargaining process. Morale and motivation on course staff also suffer when progress seems futile and the staffing structure is designed with harsh hierarchies.
It’s also important to ensure that there will be enough staff to do the jobs they are meant to do. While the exact staffing assumptions behind the university’s supposal are unclear, there are concerns that TA work will be assigned to hourly workers, or that the great decrease in the number of TAs will either result in more overwork or the cutting of important instructional services such as lab and discussion sections.
The ASE supposal solved these problems by requiring the university to guarantee a certain staffing level for the different roles and to create cost parity. The ASE supposal also created cost parity between UCS2s and UCS3s to ensure that there was no incentive in hiring more 20-hour or 8-hour positions.
Why more funding is possible
There is still a pathway to get a deal that invests in instruction in EECS/DS. All it takes is a 0.1% reallocation of the university’s budget that would save the departments that grant 25% of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate degrees.
We are optimistic that progress can be made in mediation. We are also continuing to engage with politicians and journalists who can bring light to this very important issue.
Our ULP charges and grievances are also moving along, which will place additional pressure on the university to come to a deal.
We should acknowledge that while the faculty on the university side of the bargaining table are highly respected professors, they are also representing the university administration—an institution that for years has failed to provide their students with the resources that they deserve. The university must answer for its failures. And if the bargaining team is not able to answer for the university’s actions, the university should provide negotiators who can.
Next Steps
The university and ASEs continue to search for a mediator. Mayor Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento—who mediated the resolution to the systemwide contract—has offered his services for free. Both sides are also open to meeting with Paul Roose, a San Francisco-based mediator.
We want to hear from you. If you’re interested in getting involved with bargaining, or if you would like to share your thoughts with the bargaining team, feel free to respond to this email.
Best,
Gabe Classon
CS 61A uGSI