Frequently Asked Questions

Our union, RPSP-UAW, is officially certified as of September 15th, 2025.

We are a group of Research and Public Service Professionals (RPSPs) who seek to unionize in order to improve our research and employment experience at UC. Our work not only benefits the UC system and the California economy, but also has positive impacts worldwide in disciplines from energy and the environment, to medicine and astronomy. RPSPs may work in many different fields and have varied experiences, but our dedication to research unites us all.

By coming together to form a union, RPSPs are democratizing the workplace. Forming a union has enabled RPSPs to have more rights and power to make improvements at work, guarantee UC policies that we want to keep, and increase transparency as to the terms and conditions of our employment. More broadly, forming a union as part of the UAW means joining the tens of thousands of researchers and other higher education employees who are already UAW members. Like the members of other academic unions across the US, RPSPs can increase political power to impact policy and funding decisions on both the state and federal governmental levels.

There are many job titles that fall under the umbrella term of Research and Public Service Professional. You are included if you fall within any of these job classifications:

RSCH DATA ANL – Research Data Analyst
PROJECT POLICY ANL – Project Policy Analyst
PUBL ADMSTN ANL – Public Administration Analyst
CMPTL AND DATA SCI RSCH SPEC – Computational and Data Science Research Specialist
AEROSPACE ENGR – Aerospace Engineer
GEOGRAPHIC INFO SYS PROGR – Geographic Information Systems Programmer
CLIN RSCH ANL – Clinical Research Analyst
BIOINFORMATICS PROGR – Bioinformatics Programmer
ACAD PRG MGT OFCR – Academic Program Management Officer
RSCH CMPLNC ANL – Research Compliance Analyst
RSCH GNT PRG OFCR – Research Grant Program Officer
RSCH ADM – Research Administrator
CURATOR – Curator
EXHIBITIONS SPEC – Exhibitions Specialist
FIELD RESEARCHER – Field Researcher
SURVEY RESEARCHER – Survey Researcher
PROJECT MGT PROFL – Project Management Professional

There are also business titles or common use titles that fall within these official job titles. Some of us are on short-term contracts while others are in career positions. Some are hourly and others are salaried.

The determination of exclusion based on supervisory status isn’t made unilaterally by UC leadership, it’s ultimately made by the Public Employment Relations Board. Over the next couple of months, the University will identify RPSPs who they believe are supervisors/managers as defined by state labor law and share that list with the Union. If the University and Union don’t agree, the Public Employment Relations Board has final say over whether certain employees should be excluded from the bargaining unit. You should expect to get a survey in the coming weeks about your work duties so this can be resolved appropriately.

Many RPSPs perform duties in relation to other UC employees, such as providing guidance or direction in work assignments, approving schedules, providing trainings, etc that would not warrant exclusion from the bargaining unit as supervisors based on a legal standard. State labor law only precludes workers from being in the same bargaining unit as other employees if they have independent authority to take actions such as hiring, firing, transferring, disciplining, adjusting grievances, or providing salary increases to multiple employees. Under HEERA (the California law that governs labor relations for public higher education employees), individuals are generally included in the bargaining unit if these supervisory duties are infrequent or clerical, if they have substantially similar job duties as their subordinates, or if they otherwise have sufficient shared interests with other workers in the bargaining unit.

We just elected the bargaining team from among our peers to negotiate with the UC over our shared priorities. RPSPs are continuing to share our priorities through conversations with our colleagues and filling out the bargaining survey.

Soon the bargaining team will draft initial bargaining demands, which are a broad set of initial demands that will set a framework for the bargaining team’s specific proposals. At the end of October, we’ll vote to ratify these demands and join over 40,000 other UC-UAW employees at the bargaining table. Through our collective action, we can win improvements and protections to our workplace and keep doing the jobs we love sustainably.

The best way to learn more is to speak to a colleague who is organizing. You can schedule a meeting via Calendly or via a email to rpsp.info@uc-uaw.org.

• Wage increases that outpace non-union workers at UC. For example, Postdocs won 20-23% salary increases (up to $12,000) this year and 7.2% annual increases for the next 3 years. Academic Researchers at UC won the same percentage of raises in just 4 years that they had seen in the previous 15 years with no union.
• Equitable career advancement opportunities
• Guaranteed experience-based raises
• Transparent job expectations and protections from overwork
• Strong protections against arbitrary firings and disciplinary action
• 24 days of paid vacation
• Childcare subsidies
• 8 weeks 100% paid parental leave
• Improved dependent healthcare
• Among many other improvements

Forming a union with collective bargaining rights is the only way to have the power to negotiate with the UC Administration as equals and reach a legally binding contract.

This effort began when RPSPs started talking together about how to improve their working conditions. Before we voted to form our union, the UC administration had exclusive control over our pay, benefits, and workplace rights. Many of us have high work loads, low pay, and few career advancement opportunities, which make our jobs at UC unsustainable in the long-term. Without a union, we had no way to preserve the things we like about our jobs, because UC could change them at any time without our input. For example, before our election vote, the UC recently unilaterally decided to increase the cost of our healthcare where they could not do so with unionized workers at UC. In response to recent threats from the federal government, UC administration has responded in various ways without RPSPs having an equal say. With a union, we gain the right to collectively bargain with UC and a greater voice in our workplace.

RPSPs will not pay dues until after negotiating and voting to ratify our first contract. Once a contract is ratified, each individual worker can decide whether or not to become a dues-paying member. Dues provide the resources to enable effective collective bargaining, enforcement of rights, and every aspect of having a strong union. UAW membership dues are 1.44% of gross income.

There are 4,500 unionized academic researchers—like specialists and project scientists—across the UC system. Many of us do similar work to researchers in these titles, but do not have the same rights and power over our working conditions. In addition, more than 5,000 student services and advising professionals just formed a union with UAW, and are currently bargaining their first contract alongside 36,600 UAW 4811 academic workers. Thousands more belong to unions campus wide: you can see a full list here.

While UAW began as an auto worker union, there are now over 100,000 higher ed workers in UAW, making UAW the largest academic worker union in the country. Nearly half of those workers are here at UC and include a wide variety of job titles. About 1/3rd of UAW workers are higher ed workers.

UAW has historically been one of the largest and most diverse unions in North America. By joining this movement, Research and Public Service Professionals will also gain political power to impact policy and funding decisions on the local, state, and federal levels.

Read more here.

Forming a union can provide political and social benefits. The power of collective action can result in better public policy—an organized group can influence elections and legislation that benefit the RPSPs and broader society. For example, workers in UC-UAW have secured benefits for international workers and increased funding for research at the federal level. Additionally, workers use their union for socializing, community building, and professional development. By joining this movement, RPSPs can have more say in how and what we do to improve California and its system of higher education.

Currently, UC administration determines our pay rates and benefits unilaterally, and those rates – as well as projected increases – are factored into grant proposals to agencies like NIH, NSF, DOE, etc. With collective bargaining, we would negotiate as equals with UC for improvements to our pay rates which would continue to be factored into future grant proposals. Student Researchers and Postdocs at the University of California and thousands of other grant-funded employees at universities around the country have negotiated guaranteed annual increases to their pay rates through collective bargaining, while the headcount of unionized researchers at each of these campuses has continued to rise.

There is no evidence of collective bargaining having these effects. Both Research Staff and the administration have to agree on a contract and neither party would want that result. Collective bargaining simply means we can negotiate as equals in order to hold UC more accountable to do the best it can do. As the largest employer in California with a $43 billion annual budget, there are plenty of ways the administration can find resources to offer a fair wage to retain those of us who carry out its research and public service mission.

Tens of thousands of UC employees have unionized at UC, including Project Scientists, Specialists, and Student Researchers, and recently UC has not opposed new efforts to unionize. Importantly, unionizing, and talking to coworkers about unionizing, is legally protected.

Bargaining happens with the UC Office of the President, not individual supervisors, so relationships with supervisors are rarely impacted. In fact, many workers have found that their relationships with supervisors have improved because they no longer have to push their supervisors to advocate to address problems stemming from higher up. For instance, instead of pushing your supervisor to spend months or years advocating for a promotion for you, RPSPs would negotiate collectively with those empowered to make sweeping improvements like guaranteed cost of living adjustments and experienced-based raises.

While there are many ways for the RPSPs to engage with the University, forming a union means that UC will be required to negotiate a contract with us as equals. Unionizing also protects our right to take collective action free from retaliation, and, once we have a contract in place, will give us a mechanism to enforce the rights and benefits we bargain for in our contract. Many RPSPs have found that other efforts to make UC a more equitable workplace have been under-resourced or not taken seriously by UC. By unionizing, RPSPs would have the power to more effectively implement improvements.

Currently there are no guaranteed experience based raises and many RPSPs find it difficult to be reclassified or advance in our careers. With a union, RPSPs are able to bargain for experienced based raises (steps) within our job classifications as well as guaranteed regular merit reviews. Unionized workers at UC have been able to win guaranteed annual raises by salary increase, annual experience based raises by “step”, and possible merit raises every 2-3 years through guaranteed merit reviews.

Since RPSPs will democratically decide what we choose to negotiate for, our proposals can reflect the various needs and interests of different workers within our bargaining unit. Union contracts can, and often do, include different terms and conditions for different groupings of workers based on whatever the bargaining unit voted to demand from the employer. For example, recent contracts negotiated by other UAW academic unions have emphasized protections against excessive workload or “scope creep” while allowing flexibility to allow for different work arrangements to address various needs.