AFSCME 3299

The UC Board of Regents met Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss AI investments, immigration status and work-study jobs, ableism training for faculty and staff and budget reports. The board also voted to unanimously approve UC Berkeley’s new College of Computing, Data Science and Society, or CDSS.

On Jan. 3, 2023, the university invested $4 billion in the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc., or BREIT. Three weeks later, it announced the investment of an additional $500 million, bringing the total investment up to a whopping $4.5 billion.

Across AFSCME 3299 wage scales, about 45% of service worker positions and about 5% of technical patient care worker positions at UC Berkeley earn less than $25 per hour, according to a Daily Californian analysis.

The UC system reached a historic tentative agreement Tuesday with service workers of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 Union, or AFSCME Local 3299. The tentative agreement ultimately puts an end to outsourcing UC service jobs, while also making it easier for eligible contract workers to convert to UC employment.

Show your support for these invaluable workers by joining the strikes. Don’t break the picket line — and do what you can to remind the university that it needs these employees.

Unions representing more than 35,000 workers are going on a systemwide strike May 16 to protest alleged violations of worker rights by the UC.

As I prepare to leave UC Berkeley in the spring, I realize that UC Berkeley hasn’t changed, but I have.

In thinking about the midterm elections, it is hard to not reflect on the UC Berkeley community’s political activism in response to the current presidential administration, and how such moments compare to the rich history of free speech on campus.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, Local 3299 — the UC’s largest employee union — announced at a UC Board of Regents meeting Wednesday that it will hold a vote in October deciding whether it will go on strike for the second time this year.