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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022
Contract deal goes to union members By Monica Stark Enterprise staff writer Striking students have until Friday at 5 p.m. to vote on the tentative agreements between the United Auto Workers and the University of California. The “yes” and the “no” campaigns have been ramping up since Monday, when online voting began. Under the tentative agreements, UC would provide minimum salary scales for Academic Student Employees, including Teaching Assistants and Graduate Student Researchers, as well as multiyear pay increases, paid dependent access to University health care, and enhanced paid family leave. If approved, the contracts will be effective through May 31, 2025. “Our union’s membership is the highest decisionmaking body, and it is now up to all members to vote on this tentative agreement. We have engaged in an extensive democratic process up to this point, including open bargaining sessions and widelyattended bargaining caucuses,” said Rafael Jaime, President of UAW 2865.
“The progress we’ve made has been due to mass participation of membership, and it’s the membership who will decide on contract ratification.” UC Davis Ph.D. candidate and bargaining team member Aarthi Sekar agrees: “We’ve been able to win through negotiations with UC, and if adopted, this contract will make UC so much more accessible to scholars from all backgrounds, not just to people with familial wealth. And you’ll see we’ll finally be able to support a diverse workforce,” she said. As the week progresses, however, conversations between rank-and-file members are mounting, and not everyone will vote in favor of the tentative agreement. If the majority of the members vote no, the strike will continue. UC Davis Physics grad student Spence Norwood describes the no-vote campaign as a “large grassroots movement” with “the benefits of people and energy on our side.”“Large swathes of the grad student community have been mobilizing to educate our
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Rahul Lal/CalMatters photo
Dennis Susan (left), a graduate student instructor at UC Berkeley, marches with UC workers through downtown Sacramento on Dec. 5.
Profs teach around UC strike By Megan Tagami CalMatters For UC Riverside student Amanda Soto, the drive to campus is a twoand-a-half hour round trip. But the commute didn’t stop her from attending the picket line more than five times in the last month of the fall quarter to support thousands of University of California academic workers on strike.
Soto, a fourth-year ethnic studies major, said she would have attended the strike of her own accord. But she is also a student of Dylan Rodríguez — a professor of media and cultural studies at UCR who seized the strike as a teaching opportunity. Rodríguez encouraged his media studies class to visit him on the picket line, challenging students like Soto to consider how campus events tied into course themes of class
Grants available soon for nonprofits By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer Davis expects to award up to $1.2 million to provide affordable housing and social services to lowand moderate-income Davis residents in the coming year thanks to the city’s’ share of federal funding. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awards the Federal Community Development Block Grants and Housing Investment Partnerships program, and a portion is awarded by the city to local nonprofit organizations that deliver critically needed services such as meals, shelter, transportation, healthcare, elder care, mental health and home-
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Business Focus B8 Forum �����������������B3 Sports ���������������B1 Classifieds ���������A6 Gift Guide ���������B4 The Wary I ���������A2 Death Notice �����A3 Living �����������������B6 Worship Page ���A4
less services, and housing to low-income residents. The city expects to receive approximately $780,000 in CDBG and $460,000 in HOME funds for fiscal year 2023-2024, although exact amounts will not be known for several months, until Congress appropriates funding for these grant programs, according to the city. The funds can be used for affordable housing and other community development activities, for vital public service projects and for removal of architectural barriers. Some of the organizations that have received funding in the past include Yolo Hospice, Davis
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Community Meals, the Short-Term Emergency Aid Committee, Meals on Wheels, Yolo County Children’s Alliance and Yolo Community Care Continuum. Only 15 percent of anticipated CDBG grant funds are available for public services. Funds are also spent to make public facilities, sidewalks, crosswalks and parks more accessible to those with disabilities and to develop or improve affordable housing. An applicant workshop webinar will be hosted by the city on Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 10 a.m. via Zoom. The webinar link will be provided on the city’s website
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Yolo DA settles Davis-area pesticide violation case By Lauren Keene Enterprise staff writer The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday a settlement of pesticide-violation allegations against a Northern California farming operation. A civil complaint filed against Heer Farms, its owners and other defendants in December 2021 alleged that the operation failed to follow certain safety laws and regulations while applying pesticides in the Davis area a year earlier. The Yolo County Agricultural Commissioner learned of the alleged
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and racial disparities. “When being in solidarity with the strikers, we can also see the power structure that we see within a lot of the concepts and theories within the course,” Soto said. The strike of approximately 48,000 academic workers represented by the United Auto Workers union has limited academic
violations in January 2018, according to a District Attorney’s Office news release. “Further investigation by District Attorney investigators revealed numerous additional violations of pesticide laws and regulations, including repeated failures by Heer Farms to submit timely pesticide use reports to the Ag Commission, as required by law,” the news release said. A settlement agreement approved earlier this month by Yolo
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