After 101 days of bargaining in the EECS/DS staffing negotiations, the ASE bargaining team has reached a tentative agreement with the university. The tentative agreement represents the best deal the ASE bargaining team believes is possible given the amount of power, time, and leverage we have. The tentative agreement will now be put to a vote of ASEs in the EECS/DS departments for us to decide whether or not we want to accept this agreement—or whether the full union contract is better.

Contents

Voting information

Voting for the tentative agreement began Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. and will last
through Monday, May 22, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. The election will be held entirely via an online ballot. An invitation to a secret and secure ballot should have been sent to eligible voters from a secure online voting platform, Simply Voting (vote@simplyvoting.com) at the beginning of the voting period. (Your vote is anonymous; see here for more information.)

Eligible voters will include all members in good standing of UAW 2865 who have served or are currently serving as an undergraduate ASE in EECS, EE, CS, or DATA courses. If you are eligible but have not received a ballot, you can request one here. (If you’re not a member of UAW 2865, you can join and become an eligible voter by filling out the ballot request form.)

While the bargaining team has approved the tentative agreement, we are remaining neutral in the vote. The university and its agents have agreed to refrain from communicating with ASEs about issues of bargaining during this period to avoid exercising an undue influence on the vote. We encourage all ASEs to make an informed decision in this vote.

Regardless of how you feel, it is important for you and your colleagues to vote in this ratification process. High participation in the ratification vote will be how we signal to the university that ASEs care about our working conditions and that we will work diligently to enforce whatever agreement we ultimately operate under. Please talk to your coworkers about voting in this campaign.

Voter resources

Summary of options

As part of the tentative agreement, a new staffing structure would be created for
undergraduates that is more permissive than the titles currently offered by the university. Undergraduate TAs would receive lower raises (16% over two years) than those offered under the full union contract (46%), and lower fee remissions (40% at 8 hours, 50% at 10 hours, 60% at 12 hours) than those offered under the full union contract (100% for all TA positions). The union would also agree to withdraw its unfair labor practice charges against the university and several grievances concerning overwork, misclassification, and wage theft within the departments. In exchange, the university would make a binding commitment to maintain a ratio of TA hours to tutor/reader hours of at least 55-45 and would agree to spend 100% of EVCP
Temporary Academic Support funds on hiring ASEs and instructional staff. The university would also agree to a litany of non-economic provisions including additional overwork protection measures, better ASE orientations, and a guarantee that 375 pedagogy courses are offered (for free) in the summer. The tentative agreement does not contain a commitment to increase staffing from the university, which was a major priority of ASEs throughout the bargaining process.

On the other hand, rejecting the tentative agreement and going with the full union contract would mean full raises for all TAs in EECS and Data Science—some 46% over the next two years—and 100% fee remission for all TAs. In this scenario, the university will likely eliminate all TA positions at less than 20 hours per week. The university has also threatened to cut staffing or to shift TA hours into tutor and reader hours; we would fight back against these measures via a vigorous contract enforcement campaign that would involve systemic and individual grievances, unfair labor practice charges, and other large-scale actions (e.g. a work-to-rule campaign).

Arguments for and against ratification

“No” argument against ratification

ASEs have fought for decades to achieve the wages and remissions guaranteed in our union contract. Many ASEs went on strike last year specifically to win these increases. The tentative agreement bargains away most of what we won under the strike for very little in return.

The university has made no commitment to increase staffing or even guarantee that staffing issues will not get worse under the tentative agreement, which was the point of these negotiations in the first place. Agreeing to this side letter would not improve instructional quality and would merely leave TAs in EECS/DS with hundreds of dollars less per month compared to other departments. For a 20-hour TA, the tentative agreement means $760 less per month compared to peers in other departments.

Lower wages without a binding commitment to increase staffing would not necessarily mean more staff. It could allow the university or department to simply cut the amount of funding provided to ASEs, putting the departments in the exact same staffing situation they would otherwise be in but with significantly less wages. For example, the EECS department for several years has used extraordinary measures to fund ASEs; with lower wages and benefits, the EECS department might be less motivated to secure these funding streams.

The largest concession from the university—the 55% TA guarantee—does not represent progress because that ratio is substantially lower than the current proportion of TA hours, 68%. Additionally, this guarantee would not even be necessary if the tentative agreement did not create new permissive job titles that allows the university to convert TAs into tutors. On the other hand, under the systemwide contract, grievances relating to tutor and reader misclassification could continue; if those are successful, the university would be forced to hire far more TAs than it otherwise would.

Rejecting this agreement would be a decisive show that the university cannot unilaterally force us to pay the price of their budget mismanagement out of our own pockets. We would continue to file grievances en masse, pursue unfair labor practice charges, and engage our colleagues to fight back against staffing cuts and efforts to violate the contract. This campaign would allow us to fight the root cause of these staffing issues, which is the university’s unwillingness to allocate sufficient funding towards hiring in our departments.

“Yes” argument in favor of ratification

The tentative agreement will ensure our wages and benefits get healthy increases while preserving to the greatest extent possible the system of undergraduate teaching that has made EECS/DS the number one undergraduate computing programs in the world.

While teaching assistants would get paid less under the tentative agreement compared to the systemwide contract, the TA still ensures that all workers get raises. Taking these slightly lower wage increases (16% vs. 46%) will incentivize the department to hire more ASEs than it otherwise would. Under a fixed budget, lower cost workers means that more workers will be hired.

Under the systemwide contract, all TAs receive 100% fee remission; this makes lower hour appointments prohibitively expensive, and 8-hour TAs would therefore likely stop existing under the systemwide contract. In comparison, the tentative agreement prorates fee remissions for 8-, 10-, and 12-hour TAs, making it cost-effective to hire undergrad TAs in these positions. The tentative agreement is the best shot we have at preserving these intermediate workload TA appointments and the pipeline they create.

In exchange for creating more permissive job titles, we receive an unprecedented commitment from the university that would preemptively prevent it from creating a “tutor army”—that is, replacing TA labor with tutor and reader labor. The university has never before in its history agreed to such a provision, and this agreement therefore represents a major step forward not only for the priorities of ASEs in EECS/DS, but also for the abilities of ASEs across the UC system to control their working and hiring conditions.

The tentative agreement also grants a variety of protections that would improve the working conditions for ASEs in EECS/DS. These include overwork protections, guarantees that summer 375 is offered, better union orientation meetings, and assurances that head TAs will not have unsupervised authority over hiring decisions. The better union orientation meetings, in particular, present an excellent opportunity to talk to every ASE at the beginning of the semester, improving knowledge of rights and bolstering organizing efforts in EECS/DS for years to come.

Not every bargaining process is a smashing success for the union. While the 2022 systemwide contract campaign was one of the most successful in the union’s history, other rounds of bargaining have been less successful. The tentative agreement does not have everything we wanted, but it does make serious progress toward a better future in EECS/DS, and often the best indicator of a good compromise is the fact that it makes both sides unhappy. At the next round of bargaining in two years, we will have the opportunity to renegotiate and push to win more of our priorities. On the other hand, rejecting the tentative agreement means that bargaining specific to EECS/DS has ended; there is no guarantee that the university will agree to bargain with us again.

Although the systemwide contract would preserve more of our rights, progress is only meaningful if there are ASEs to enjoy it. This agreement is our best shot of preserving these jobs and building organizing infrastructure so that we can live to fight another day.

Detailed comparison

For a more detailed comparison, please see the full tentative agreement and union contract.

Titles and duties

Full union contract

Under the full union contract, the university employs tutors, readers, and GSIs in the EECS/DS departments. Tutors are not permitted to perform grading duties. Readers and tutors are not permitted to hold instructional office hours.

Under the full union contract, the university has stated an intention to attempt to convert much of the work currently performed by TAs to tutor and readers. In one of the scenarios threatened by Professor John DeNero, the
university would maintain a ratio of TA hours to hourly hours of 26–74%. (Currently, the ratio is 68–32%.)

We could fight back against this effort. There are a number of grievances currently being processed that, if successful, would make it very difficult for the university to make such a
change to the instructional model. In the
event the full union contract is maintained, we would double down our enforcement efforts and ensure that the university is not using tutors and readers to do TA work.

Tentative agreement

A more permissive staffing structure would be created that allows lower paid workers to complete a broader array of duties:

  • Undergraduate Course Staff II (UCS2): Performs TA duties, including office hours, teaching discussions and labs.
  • Undergraduate Course Staff I (UCS1): replaces tutors and most readers, and is explicitly allowed to perform office hours.
  • Reader: May perform grading work. May not perform instructional office
    hours.

Additionally, the university would be required to maintain a ratio of UCS2 + graduate TA hours to UCS1 and reader hours of 55% to 45%. (Currently, the ratio is 68–32%.) This requirement would prevent the university from implementing an instructional model where almost all TAs are shifted to be hourly workers.

The university has also made a legally
binding commitment to spend 100% of EVCP Temporary Academic Support (TAS) funds on hiring ASEs and instructional staff.

Wages

Full union contract

The TA wage would increase by

  • 25.1% on Oct. 1, 2023
  • 16.7% on Oct. 1, 2024

This represents a 46% increase over the
lifetime of the contract.

Tutors and readers will receive a $1 per hour raise on 10/1/23 and 10/1/24. Additionally, we would proceed with a grievance that argues that all ASEs who perform office hours are TAs; if successful, this would raise the wages of most readers and tutors.

Tentative agreement

The TA (UCS2) wage would increase by

  • 7.5% on Oct. 1, 2023
  • 7.5% on Oct. 1, 2024

This represents a 16% increase over the
lifetime of the contract. By the end of the
contract, wages for a TA in EECS/DS would be 21% lower than wages for other TAs at Berkeley—including other undergraduate TAs in other departments.

The new UCS1 title would be compensated as much as group tutors, and would therefore receive $1 per hour raises on 10/1/23 and 10/1/24—the same as under the union contract. In the tentative agreement, all readers who perform office hours would be reclassified as UCS1 and receive an additional $3.16 raise. However, we would lose our right to argue that office hours is a TA duty.

PositionCurrent2023-242024-25
8-hour section TA (monthly)$1000$1251$1459
20-hour head TA (monthly)$2500$3127$3649
Undergraduate group tutor (hourly)$21.69$22.69$23.69
Undergraduate reader (hourly)$18.53$19.53$20.53
Scheduled monthly TA salaries under the full union contact
PositionCurrent2023-242024-25
8-hour section UCS2 (monthly)$1000$1075$1156
20-hour head UCS2 (monthly)$2500$2688 $2889
Undergraduate group tutor (hourly)$21.69$22.69$23.69
Undergraduate reader (hourly)$18.53$19.53$20.53
Scheduled monthly TA salaries under the Tentative Agreement

Fee remission

Full union contract

All TAs, regardless of appointed hours, are
entitled to 100% fee remission.

Tentative agreement

UCS2 appointed at 12 hours or less would
receive prorated remission—that is 40% for 8 hours, 50% for 10 hours, and 60% for 12 hours. TAs appointed at more than 12 hours per week would receive 100% fee remission.

Staffing levels and overwork

Full union contract

There is no legally binding commitment to
increase staffing. In fact, the university is
likely to cut staffing significantly and eliminate the 8-hour TA position.

We can fight back against these efforts. By
educating our peers on their rights under the contract, we can ensure that no ASE feels pressured to work over their appointments. The filing of broad, systemic overwork grievances is another tool against university efforts to cut staffing.

Tentative agreement

There is no legally binding commitment to
increase staffing. In fact, the university is
likely to cut staffing, albeit less than under the full union contract. The 8-hour TA position is likely preserved due to economic incentives.

The tentative agreement requires the
university to notify all ASEs at least once per semester that overwork does not confer an advantage in hiring.

Non-economic issues

The tentative agreement includes provisions on several non-economic issues:

  • Required UAW orientation meetings would be course specific and integrated into staff meetings instead of campuswide.
  • The department will host orientation meetings for its faculty members.
  • The university will commit to ensuring that head TAs who review ASE applicants will not exercise unsupervised authority over hiring decisions.
  • The university will guarantee that summer 375 courses are provided to ASEs for free.