Contract Campaign 101
Hello, and welcome to our Contract Campaign Updates blog! This is the first of many updates we’ll be putting together as we fight to win our next contract. Keep checking in here to stay in the loop!
On June 30, 2025, our contract with Columbia will expire, meaning that once again it’s time to bargain for a new contract. But what is bargaining, and what work has already been started? Essentially, bargaining is when we come together as a union use our collective power to win things like higher pay, more comprehensive workplace protections, and better healthcare benefits. Because we already have our contract which we won through striking in 2021, we’re bargaining for what’s called a successor contract. This means that won’t be starting from square one again with Columbia. You also won’t be losing anything once our contract expires, as our contract becomes “status quo” once it expires up until our next one.
The drafting of our next contract has already started! Over the past semester, you might have seen our issue-based town halls, department events, or our bargaining survey. These are all important points of feedback that our contract working groups have been using in order to start drafting. Anyone is free to join a contract working group, and we encourage all members to get involved. A full list of these groups and what they do can be found here.
As for what’s next, our union’s working groups will be completing drafts over the break so that we can discuss them as a union and further decide on our bargaining priorities through our democratic processes (more on that below). Then, we’ll be ready to start bargaining with the university. Judging by our last contract fight, this will likely be a long process, and we can’t do it without the participation of everyone in our union! We’ll fight to make sure that our bargaining meetings are open to all via Zoom, so that when it comes time to go to the table with the bosses, we can get feedback from all our members.
Union Decision Making
SWC is a rank-and-file led union whose bylaws center principles of democracy and transparency. For that reason, all of our decision-making bodies use a one-member-one-vote principle. No decision is ever made behind closed doors or exclusively by union officers.
Typically, our union makes decisions through Workplace Council (WC) and General Body Meetings (GBMs). Although there are small differences between the timing of the two meetings, they are both essentially the same in that all members in good standing can participate and vote in both.
SWC is unusual in that our bargaining committee — twelve elected members from every school and district — have no special decision-making powers. Instead, they act as the rank-and-file’s mouthpiece during bargaining, while our rank-and-file makes decisions through binding votes.
Our list of bargaining committee members can be found on our Stewards and Officers page.