Our Fight for a Fair Contract Continues

Our contract expiration date is fast approaching, and while the State remains silent on our key economic proposals, we are pushing ahead in our fight to get the protections, respect, and pay that our members need and deserve. By offering proposals to strengthen language around time off and working conditions, including a proposal to add a new holiday for Local1000- represented workers, we are presenting the State with the demands our members have voiced again and again.

State workers across California are outraged by the conditions of their work, the overwork, the erratic schedules, and the low pay. Our contract expires at the end of this month, and our next one must address these issues. The State cannot continue to fail its workforce on these critical issues.

This outrage is being directed to the State’s negotiators. Our members are standing up in their worksites, Purpling Up, and having conversations with coworkers. Our rallies are drawing crowds to bring attention to the disastrous conditions of many state workers. Only with state workers standing together and exercising their rights and power in the workplace will we win.

We are seeing that change reflected in negotiations. Additional days for bargaining have been scheduled to address the outstanding article sections that have been left unaddressed by the State.

“The State must recognize the changes that have happened in California over the last three years,” said Irene Green, Vice President for Bargaining. “Workers put California on their backs and carried that weight through the pandemic. Workers stood up for each other and their rights to get to where we are today, negotiating our contract.”

As more proposals reach the Master Table and committees begin to receive back some, but not nearly all, of the article sections being negotiated, there is potential for real solutions to these problems. We are making every effort to ensure that our members’ demands, expressed in bargaining surveys, seen in statewide statistics, and manifested outside the Governor’s mansion, are met.

If the State wants to show that they are committed to the future of the state, they can do that now by making commitments to the workers who make that future possible. We are underpaid and overworked, leading to degraded services that impact the entire economy. We cannot afford more delays, silence, and inaction. The time for state workers to stand up is here. It’s time for us all to join this fight, join the union, make noise in their workplace, and win what we are owed.