We need more in our contracts. To win stronger contracts, we need better, easier ways for more members to get involved in the bargaining process. We can do this by continuing to hold regular bargaining strategy sessions for each unit, building up a network of Contract Action Team (CAT) members, and practicing for bargaining by bringing in as many leaders as possible to enforce our contracts through department campaigns, direct actions, and more.

We need to diversity and broaden union leadership at all levels. Union leadership isn’t just the people who are elected to the Executive Board or the Joint Council. More important is the existence of a network of union members who are willing to take collective action in their departments by having conversations with their coworkers and being public about their participation in the union. International and non-citizen workers make up half of Postdocs and a third of ASEs—we need to be building up more international and non-citizen workers as leaders of our union, especially in this moment of increased attacks on non-citizens. We can do this by strengthening our organizing committees and implementing programs like the Contract Action Teams (CAT) program to diversify on-ramps to getting involved in our union.

We need a much more serious political program. It’s time for a political movement that really serves workers — more members from all units need to be involved in making decisions about where we put our time and our money. We need to create real worker control in politics, and we can do this by building a member-driven political vision for the world we want to win and empowering thousands of members to get involved in our political program.

We need better contract enforcement through educated, empowered members. More members need experience enforcing our rights through direct confrontation with supervisors, organizing mass-participation actions in their departments, and using the grievance process to hold management accountable. Enforcement of our contract can’t be relegated to a small group of people. We can do this through a participatory political education program that empowers every single member to take action to enforce our contracts — and knowing that it will take all of us working together, getting trained, and taking action as a group to stand up to management right where we work.

We need to grow our movement. Our power lies in numbers. We need to organize thousands of workers at UW who don’t yet have a union so that we can all have more power together. We can do this by continuing to build strategic cross-unit organizing structures and utilize smart allocation of resources to support new worker organizing campaigns at UW and other research institutions across Washington State so we can build off of each others’ wins.