Tentative Agreement Info & FAQ

What is in the Tentative Agreement (TA)?

  • Approximately 4% TA wage increases per year (around 2.4% for UCB, UCLA, and UCSF)

    • This wage increase is about equal to or slightly exceeds current inflation rates

  • Campus pay tiers between “special” and “general” wage campuses are eliminated by October 2029

  • The contract expires December 31, 2029

  • A guarantee that TAs and GSRs will not be appointed below 50% 

  • Raises the childcare stipend to $1900 per 3 months (per fiscal quarter). This quarterly amount increases by $50 every year until the end of the proposed contract

  • Offers dependent healthcare for those parent workers who previously didn’t get SHIP or qualify for MediCal (often the case with dual parent households)

  • Creates a one-time Legal Consultation Fund of $400,000 to fund legal consultations if international workers lose work authorization

  • At most three weeks of partially paid leave for international workers who need to handle visa-related issues

    • Establishes one additional week of paid leave, and the ability to take up to three weeks per year off the job, for immigration purposes

  • Expands Transitional Funding Program to 10 positions per year at each campus.

  • Temporary accommodations for workers with disability that do not require a full medical diagnosis 

  • Faster grievance timelines

  • GSR Personal Time Off (PTO) that will carry over to a subsequent appointment if unused (up to 18 days)

  • Mostly Current Contract Language (CCL) on other big issues, including Respectful Work Environment, Non-discrimination, as well as the individual freedom to not cross the picket line of other unions on campus

What is not in the TA?

  • 12-month funding: we did not win contracts that would guarantee us an optional teaching and/or research appointment for the summer months

  • Guaranteed funding for the entirety of a PhD program. All the TA says (CCL from 2022) is that multiple-year appointments would be nice without guaranteeing anything at all.

    • “The University recognizes year-long appointments provide job security for academic student employees. When practicable, the University shall offer year-long appointments; however, nothing in this article obligates the University to do so when not practicable.”

  • A guarantee that the UC will centrally fund our raises and our departments

  • A cost-of-living adjustment that would kick in during periods of high inflation

  • Enforceable policies to cap course sizes and prevent the boss from unilaterally expanding class sizes for the same amount of pay

  • The elimination of the cap on how many quarters/semesters workers can teach

  • Experience crossing over between TA and GSR appointments

  • An expansion of the existing 3 years of Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition (NRST) fee remission for international workers

  • Severance pay for international workers who lose visa status

  • Funded legal advice if litigation is needed to solve a worker's immigration issue

  • Visa reimbursements for international workers

  • Divestment of retirement funds from weapons companies 

  • Restrictions on the police’s use of campus facilities and UCPD weapons acquisition

  • Any guarantee of completely open bargaining for future contract negotiations

What happens if the TA does or does not pass?

If the TA passes, our new contract will immediately go into effect. Workers will see raises in October of this year, and campus wage tiers will be preserved until the last year of the contract. Workers will work under this contract for the next three-and-a-half years, until contract expiration on December 31, 2029.

If the TA does not pass, then our union goes back to negotiations with the boss. This leaves open the possibility for more demands-based organizing, as well as labor action in accordance with our largely successful Strike Authorization Vote (SAV) of February 2026. 

How does this TA change the conditions of our labor in the years to come?

Job security is the major priority demand that is lacking in this TA. While the TA puts into contract language the precedent that workers are to be appointed at 50%, this does not mean that the 50% funding guarantee extends to the entire length of a PhD program. This TA leaves the door open for the UC to continue restructuring graduate education. This TA codifies the UC’s right to guarantee not one single year of funding to all grad workers, does not stop the UC from dramatically increasing course sizes, intensifying TA labor, or replacing teaching with AI. 

The UC’s plan for PhD education will continue to shorten programs, pay graduate workers less than inflation, and squeeze tuition money from MA and undergraduate students. This amounts to a degradation in our working conditions, as well as the learning conditions of the students we teach (as well as our own). This is the crisis to come, but it is also already upon us: workers in San Diego and Santa Cruz are already receiving offer letters that guarantee only one single year of funding, while workers at Berkeley and other campuses are being told last minute that the teaching appointments they thought they could rely on in their departments no longer exist because of budget restructuring. 

Is this TA good, bad, or just okay?

Ultimately, this is a question that must be discussed by our rank-and-file membership at the departmental, divisional, campus, and statewide levels. We strongly recommend that workers in every department convene a meeting early this week to discuss what is in the Tentative Agreement and what is lacking. The organizing committee of cross-campus rank-and-file workers who drafted this info sheet believes that this TA does not adequately address the austerity politics and restructuring of university labor across various units that awaits us and, in many cases, is already costing dozens if not hundreds of UC workers their jobs. We are seeing a hollowing out of the work we came here to do. Whether or not this TA ultimately becomes our contract until 2029, the task remains the same: we need to continue to develop ownership over our union, build rank-and-file militancy, and organize issue-based campaigns for the university we want.