We are a group of Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professionals (ComMas) who seek to unionize in order to protect and improve our jobs at UC, as well as to have a greater say in strengthening the mission of the university. By forming a union as part of UAW, we are joining a movement of over 125,000 higher education workers who are raising workplace standards and increasing funding for higher education.

This effort began when Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professionals (ComMas) started talking together about how to gain a stronger voice in our workplaces and greater power to counter the attacks on higher education. After seeing the important work that our unionized colleagues in UAW are undertaking to fight funding cuts and save jobs at the UC, hundreds more of us decided it was time to join that movement. 

Without a union, we have no way to safeguard the things we like about our jobs because UC can change them at any time without our input. For example, in the past year the University has increased the cost of our healthcare and our parking and instituted return to office mandates on some campuses. Whereas with a union, we gain the right to collectively bargain with management and a united political voice to advocate for a stronger UC.

The 60,000 UC employees who are already part of UAW have been leading the way in the fight to protect the University against attacks from the Trump administration. These unionized colleagues have organized rallies, lobbying, and town halls with congresspeople that have led to the reinstatement of tens of millions of dollars in funding for the University. UAW members also joined lawsuits and introduced new legislation to expand state funding to the university. By forming ComMas-UAW and joining with these unionized colleagues, we can make even greater progress together.

Full-time, part-time, and contract employees in all of these UC Path titles are included in ComMas-UAW:

• Acquisitions Editor

• Comms Specialist

• Digital Comms Specialist

• Marketing Specialist

• Media Comms Specialist

• Prg Repr

• Publications Production Specialist

• Sales Specialist

• Visual Comms Specialist 

• Writer Editor

Many of us perform duties in relation to other UC employees, such as providing guidance or direction in work assignments, approving schedules, providing trainings, etc that would not warrant exclusion from the bargaining unit as supervisors based on a legal standard. PERB (Public Employment Relations Board) has final authority to make the determination as to who is a supervisor, not the University administration, and they will do this after the union is formed. In the meantime, if you are in one of the UC Path titles in ComMaS, you are encouraged to vote.

State labor law only precludes us from being in the same bargaining unit as employees for whom we have independent authority to take actions such as hiring, firing, transferring, disciplining, adjusting grievances, or providing salary increases to multiple employees. Under HEERA (the California law that governs labor relations for public higher education employees), individuals are generally included in the bargaining unit if their supervisory duties are infrequent or clerical, if they have substantially similar job duties as their subordinates, or if they otherwise have sufficient shared interests with other workers in the bargaining unit. If you have doubts about whether or not you are eligible for the union based on supervisory duties, the state labor board will resolve those doubts after the union is formed.

Once our union is formed and a contract is democratically negotiated and ratified, each individual worker can decide whether or not to become a dues-paying member. Dues provide the resources to enable effective collective bargaining, enforcement of rights, and every aspect of having a strong union. Dues are 1.44% of your gross salary. A majority of all UC employees in UAW choose to pay dues because they have seen firsthand how they’ve been able to advance their rights and benefits through their union. 

In the history of UC and UAW unions working together, no one has reported any case of retaliation in response to voting in a union election. Importantly, it is unlawful to retaliate against anyone for union activity. The majority of our coworkers at the UC are already in a union, and right now, UC is depending on the partnership with unionized employees to fight the attacks from the Trump administration. Just in the past few months, 12,000 other UC staff have successfully formed unions with no push-back from the UC administration.

Your boss will not know that you signed because card signers’ names will never be publicized. Bargaining happens with the UC Office of the President, not individual supervisors, so relationships with supervisors are rarely impacted. In fact, many workers have found that their relationships with supervisors have improved because they no longer have to push their supervisors to advocate to address problems stemming from higher up. For instance, instead of pushing your supervisor to spend months or years advocating for a reclassification for you, all Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professionals (ComMas) would negotiate collectively with those empowered to make sweeping improvements like guaranteed cost of living adjustments and experience-based raises.

Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professionals (ComMas) are forming a union to improve the status quo. Just like the other groups of UAW staff currently negotiating with UC, our goal is to create a contract that benefits all of us, while maintaining flexibility that recognizes everyone’s differences. Other professional staff who have organized with UAW and are currently bargaining have already made improvements to the status quo.

Once a union is formed, UC cannot unilaterally alter any terms and conditions of employment—including pay and benefits. Instead, changes to terms and conditions of employment are subject to collective bargaining, through which ComMas have the power to negotiate with UC administrators as equals and democratically approve a binding, enforceable contract.

No. Management cannot make unilateral changes to our working conditions for the duration of contract negotiations. And once a contract is agree to and ratified by ComMas, the terms cannot be changed unilaterally by the University.

We expect negotiations to take between 6 months to 1 year. While a contract is being negotiated, UC legally cannot make unilateral changes to our working conditions.

Our strength in negotiations comes from our strength in numbers. The more democratic participation we have, the more leverage we’ll have at the bargaining table. We are working towards forming our union soon so that we can work together at the bargaining table with two other newly formed unions: Research and Public Service Professionals (RPSP) and Student Services and Advising Professionals (SSAP).

UAW unions have set a precedent for that. Salary increases and merit awards have continued during negotiations in previous situations where a UAW union was bargaining with UC.

In UAW, workers decide democratically if and when to call a strike. In order to authorize a strike, a supermajority (more than 66% of voting members) must vote in favor. Though sometimes workers vote to strike to exert pressure on management, there are many other avenues for securing a strong contract. UC Postdocs and UC Academic Researchers both negotiated strong first contracts without striking.

Unionizing does not mean that the flexible work arrangements we’ve worked out with our managers will change; in fact, it means that those arrangements can no longer be changed unilaterally by UC leadership. By unionizing, we have an opportunity to negotiate a contract that formalizes what we already enjoy and ensures an employee-centered process for making changes. 

Our 12,000+ colleagues in the recently formed SSAP-UAW and RPSP-UAW units are currently negotiating for a contract with a fair process for considering operational needs and employee input of a particular unit. Joining this movement offers us all greater power to win improvements that will stabilize our working conditions and help us work with confidence.