Campus announces agreement to end ‘speakers boycott’

The campus today announced that it reached an agreement with AFSCME 3299 to end the union’s “speakers boycott” at UC Berkeley.  As part of the agreement, the campus will extend job offers to all regular night shift and athletics custodians who presently do this work through private contractors. In addition, the campus will make employment offers to all campus stack parking attendants who are currently contracted through LAZ Parking.

While the campus has been working on a plan to in-source the custodial night shift since last summer, this agreement builds on the plan and streamlines the hiring process. Under the agreement, the campus will make job offers to all contract custodians and parking attendants within 30 days. The campus is also offering to hire all temporary custodians into full-time positions at UC Berkeley.

This is part of the university’s broader efforts to support fair wages for employees who work on campus. It builds on the UC President’s new Fair Wage/Fair Work P​lan, which requires that all workers who are scheduled to work more than 20 hours/week be paid at least $14/hour by October 1, 2016.  The Fair Work/Fair Pay wage will move up to $15/hour in October 2017.

In addition to ending the “speakers boycott,” AFSCME plans to write to all of the speakers they previously contacted to inform them that they no longer object to the speaker’s participation in scheduled engagements at UC Berkeley.