Union Organizing

Under California's Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) passed by the California State Legislature, UC employees have the right to decide whether they want to unionize and have collective bargaining as the sole means of determining their wages, hours and working conditions. Employees also have the right to refuse to join employee organizations or to participate in the activities of these organizations subject to the organizational security provision permissible under HEERA. The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) administers and enforces HEERA.

Currently at the University of California, eleven groups of employees have made the decision to unionize. However, there are still groups of employees who have not made this choice. The Employee and Labor Relations Unit has provided the following links to information to help employees understand their rights under the law.

Current UAW Organizing of Postdoctoral Scholars

As you may know, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union has petitioned the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to represent Postdoctoral Scholars at the University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The University encourages you to gather as much information as possible about the meaning of union representation for those in the Postdoctoral classifications. As a starting point, you may wish to review the documents linked below. You may also wish to visit the UAW's local web site at http://www.uaw2865.org/. We also suggest that you review the Public Employee Relation Board web site at http://www.perb.ca.gov/.