At the University of Washington, Academic Student Employees teach the majority of student contact hours and carry out an enormous amount of research. Without us, UW would lack both critical operating revenue and academic prestige -- UW works because we do!

But UW is falling behind its peers: our wages are well below average compared to peer schools, especially when adjusted for Seattle's cost of living. Student workers continue to report discrimination, harassment, and alienation from the UW community. And we continue to face poor access to mental healthcare, gender affirming care, childcare, and international student support.

These are the issues we are bargaining over in our contract with UW, but despite their stated desire to address these issues, we're hearing the same tired talking points. The administration says there’s no money to give us competitive, living wages, despite their $8 billion budget. The administration says they can’t improve our healthcare, even though they saved money on our health plan last year. Our demands around equity and diversity continue to be sidelined. To win a fair contract, academic workers at UW are getting organized and pushing back, to show the UW administration that we mean business.

And as a union we won't stop there, because our members are inseparable from the broader University and Seattle community. We must continue winning victories for tenants, like our local did in the Tax Amazon coalition. We need to defund the police and put them under community control, which our local supported by helping to kick SPD out of our MLK County Labor Council. In sum, we need a broad working class movement against cynical corporate politics, like those being pushed onto our community by the UW administration.

To win a fair contract we need the solidarity of the University and Seattle communities. Our 4/26 virtual rally with 1000 members and community supporters in attendance was powerful proof that the community has our back. But the UW administration has continued to stonewall us at the bargaining table, so we need you to join the hundreds who have already signed on to this petition demanding that the UW administration bargain with us in good faith and meet our demands:
 - Fair and competitive wages so that UW can keep up with other schools and improve recruitment and retention of underrepresented ASEs!
 - Expand access to healthcare, including mental healthcare, gender affirming care, and reproductive care!
 - Expand our successful peer-to-peer EPIC anti-harassment training!
 - Establish a paid peer Equity Team to provide support for ASEs at the department level!
 - Improve mentorship for ASEs, establish the right to Individual Development Plans and a secondary mentor!

Solidarity!