October 27, 2022 by The California Aggie

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UC AND TEAMSTERS COLLABORATE ON A FOUR-YEAR CONTRACT FOR CLERICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF The tentative agreement addresses fair compensation, salary progression and affordable health insurance

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VOLUME 141, ISSUE 6 | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2022

AMANDA CLARK CONFIRMED AS NEW JUDICIAL COUNCIL CHAIRPERSON Senate sees ASUCD confirmations, quarterly reports and new legislation at Oct. 20 meeting BY SYDNEY AMESTOY campus@theaggie.org

BY KAYA DO-KHANH campus@theaggie.org On Oct. 3, UC officials announced a tentative agreement with the Teamsters Local 2010 union for a four-year contract that will seek to address issues such as fair compensation, salary progression and affordable health insurance for its members, according to a recent press release. The new contract will affect 11,000 clerical employees, library assistants and other administrative staff represented by the Teamsters. The UC Clerical and Allied Services (CX) Unit of the Teamsters is made up of around 12,000 administrative support workers in the UC system who joined the Teamsters in 2010 and formed the Teamsters Local 2010. The Teamsters work toward winning better wages, benefits and working conditions. Aimee Baror, the communications director for the Teamsters Local 2010, said that the negotiation process for this contract took almost a year and involved 47 formal bargaining sessions with the UC. “Many times it’s a tug of war, so thousands of members took action in the form of rallies, they signed petitions, they signed digital letter campaigns and they taped leaflets to the doors of the campus chancellors,” Baror said. “It shows the university that the

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membership is united and that they are willing to take action […] That visibility and that willingness by the membership really made a difference in what the bargaining team was able to negotiate in the contract.” The tentative agreement includes guaranteed across-the-board raises, annual step increases that are not based on merit or performance, gains on overtime and more, according to the Teamsters Local 2010 website. “The pay steps were very important because many workers were not being moved up their pay scale even after they had worked for the university for five years, 10 years,” Baror said. “Sometimes people worked there even longer than that and they are still below the median of their pay range.” The tentative agreement also includes a change to the UC’s health benefits system that will prevent increases to employee contributions for monthly health insurance premiums from exceeding $25 per member for the length of the contract, according to the UC network website. All bargaining unit members will also now receive annual across-the-board pay increases totaling 15% over the life of the contract. Jenny Hodge, a Special Collections assistant at Shields Library and a CX

bargaining unit team member, said that being on the bargaining team, she was able to learn about clerical workers’ experiences across campus. The team presented examples of UC employees’ work over the past two years, which was part of the reason the Teamsters were able to successfully negotiate a contract, according to Hodge. Hodge said that she believes the new contact is, in part, recognizing the work that clerical employees did to keep UC Davis running through the pandemic. She worked at Shields Library, which was one of the facilities on campus that remained open during most portions of the pandemic. “It’s important because this contract speaks to people’s wages — this is how people are able to live their lives and support their families,” Hodge said. “Working toward this contract is about the UC system valuing their employees, and that’s by paying [us] wages that, frankly, we deserve.” On Oct. 21, the contract was ratified with a 98.3% vote in favor, according to a post on the Teamsters Local 2010 website. The contract is effective through June 30, 2026, and the full tentative agreement is available on their site as well.

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CHRISTINA LIU / AGGIE Vice President JT Eden called the meeting to order at 6:12 p.m., then read the land acknowledgment statement and called roll for the senators. The first things on the meeting’s agenda were various nominations for members and chairs of a few ASUCD committees. The first was the confirmation of Amanda Clark, who was unanimously confirmed as the new Judicial Council chairperson. Clark, a second-year political science public service major, already had experience being a part of the Judicial Council, ASUCD’s judicial branch that provides checks on the Senate. Her confirmation process consisted of a lengthy panel of questions from a few senators about her experience on the council and her goals for the council as chairperson. “I interviewed Amanda when she applied for Judicial Council the first time, and I think she was the most qualified candidate we had in that interview cycle,” ASUCD President Radhika Gawde said of Clark. “We were really impressed by her.” The Disability Rights Advocacy Committee (DRAC) then confirmed its four nominees, all recommended by former ASUCD President and current DRAC Chairperson Ryan Manriquez, who was present virtually. All four were confirmed simultaneously through a unanimous motion. The Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) then unanimously confirmed four new members, out of order in the schedule due to one of the nominees not being able to attend until thirty minutes into the meeting.

Mariah Padilla, a fourth-year community and regional development major and a previous member of the Student Sustainability Career Fair Commission (SSCF), was then unanimously confirmed as the new SSCF chair, which is now a paid position. Yoanna Soliman, a graduate student in the Chemistry department, was then unanimously elected chair of the STEM committee, which oversees student outreach and equity in STEM programs. Soliman was previously a member of the committee. The unanimous confirmation of a new Academic Affairs Commission chairperson finished out the confirmations for the night and was followed by a round of public comments. Senator Aarushi Raghunathan began a discussion about the controversy surrounding Turning Point USA’s coming to campus on October 25. “[President Gawde and I] are meeting with AVC Atkinson on this issue, as well as campus council, to inquire about how they came to this decision, and why they didn’t come up with a different decision,” Eden said about the executive branch’s plans to discuss the on-campus event. It was also brought to the attention of the Senate that the position of Vice Controller was still vacant. Next on the agenda was quarterly reports from some ASUCD units, committees and commissions. SENATE on 4

BIOBREW ANNOUNCES PERMANENT CLOSURE IN LIGHT OF STAFFING SHORTAGES Students, staff sign poster in support of bringing back the SciLab coffee stand BY SONORA SLATER features@theaggie.org Imagine, at 8 a.m. on a rainy day in October, damp fog seeping through your clothes, you slip inside the Sciences Lab Building (SLB) for your morning class. The door makes a dull thud as it closes behind you, echoing through the empty building and shutting out the brisk wind, allowing warmth to slowly begin to seep back into your fingers and toes. Half-asleep after staying up too late the night before finishing an assignment, you walk over to the northwest corner of the building where you serve yourself a cup of BioBrew coffee. With the comforting warmth of the cup in your hands and the sound of rain clinking on the roof above, you head to your lecture

City of Davis to host festivities this Halloween weekend

Events hosted by Davis Downtown and other local groups include trickor-treating, skydiving and stand-up comedy. SEE PAGE 2

hall fueled by caffeine and prepared to take on organic chemistry. BioBrew, a secondary location of the ASUCD Coffee House, alongside CoHo South, closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic. At the time, it was meant to be a temporary closure while on-campus operations ceased. The coffee shop, which opened in fall of 2005, was located in the SLB on Hutchinson Dr. and brewed Starbucks coffee before switching to ecoGrounds in 2018. They also served pastries, fruit, tea and more, and had a small dining and studying area with a few tables and stools under the nearby stairway. When the main CoHo location and CoHo South reopened in Sept. 2021, it was reported that BioBrew would most likely remain closed until the spring due to staffing shortages — but there were still plans to reopen the cafe when it was possible to do so. Earlier this quarter, signs were still up in the area that indicated plans to reopen BioBrew, according to Jill Oberski, a sixth-year PhD candidate in the Entomology Department. However, during the week of Oct. 10, Oberski said that a new sign was put up in the area announcing that BioBrew was closing permanently. “I thought for sure BioBrew would come back after it closed for the pandemic, but it kept being delayed more and more,” Oberski said. “I still haven’t been able to get a clear reason about why they’re closing it.” Lolly Dull, a fourth-year English and biological sciences double major and the CoHo South student manager, explained that while they can’t say exactly who made the call to close BioBrew, the reason for its closure is continued staffing shortages. “As we’ve been getting staffing

Students show support and sadness for the recently shut down BioBrew Coffee Shop in the Sciences Lecture building. (Isabella Smithsuvan / Aggie)

numbers up during this quarter, we’ve been focusing on staffing the locations that get the most business, which are the main and South CoHo,” Dull said. “Since CoHo South employees solely man BioBrew, we needed to focus on getting our staffing up first.” However, according to Dull, there aren’t currently any plans to use the space for something else, and should staffing significantly increase in the future, the “permanent” closure might not be so permanent. “For the time being, it’s going to be permanent,” Dull said. After the sign announcing the

closure was posted, Oberski hung up a piece of butcher paper nearby for students and staff to sign in order to show their support for bringing back BioBrew. “For the first two years of my PhD, BioBrew was a staple,” Oberski said. “Being able to buy a serve-yourself cup of coffee for super cheap right across the street from my building — I took it for granted.” Some of the dozens of messages on the sheet read, “Your uncaffeinated scientists cannot perform at their best without BioBrew,” “All my homies love BioBrew,” “Y’all have fueled us for

years” and even “If you need employees I will work for you.” BioBrew’s singular Yelp review, posted in April 2019 by user David E., reads, “This is still one of my favorite places on campus to grab coffee; [...] give the strange coffee stand inside an academic building a chance if you’re in this part of campus.” Oberski said that because BioBrew has been closed since the pandemic began, many of the students on campus now have never been to the coffee shop. “So many people don’t know what they’re missing,” Oberski said. “We miss it every single day!”