The TSEU University Caucus has been especially busy in 2021. In addition to statewide pay raises, university organizing committees across the state have been pushing for COVID protections—including hazard pay for all university workers—and fighting right-wing attacks on public higher education.
- In August, the UT-Austin Organizing Committee rallied to demand increased COVID protections on campus. We presented our petition with nearly 400 signatures to President Hartzell demanding mandatory vaccinations and masks, frequent testing, and hazard pay for all university workers. Speaking at the event were Austin City Council members Greg Casar and Kathie Tovo; civil rights attorney Mike Siegel; UT Physician and Public Health Advocate Dr. Snehal Patel; and Central Texas TSEU Board member Anne Lewis. When President Hartzell failed to respond to our demands, over 50 picketers showed up at his September inauguration to talk to the crowd about our union’s fight for justice for all UT workers and students.
- The organizing committees at UT-San Antonio and the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio have also been active. Both campaigns have grown our movement significantly since the end of the legislative session, spurred largely by the pressing need for across-the-board raises—some full-time workers at UTSA and UTHSC make just over $20,000 a year.
- Campaigns at UT-El Paso, Sul Ross State University, Texas A&M-College Station, and Texas A&M-Commerce have also seen recent growth We now have organizing committees at nearly every public university in Texas.
On all of our campaigns we’ve made the university systems’ respective Boards of Regents targets. Regents, who are appointed by the Governor, decide the budgets of the six state university systems. When the state legislature deregulated tuition in 2003, it gave regents the sole power to set tuition rates and give university-wide pay raises, which no board of regents has done to date. That is why our Caucus organizes simultaneously to hold the Regents feet to the fire—testifying at Board meetings, massive call and e-mail campaigns—and for the Legislature to re-regulate public tuition.
Like our Union, our Caucus is as strong as we make it!
To get involved in organizing at your campus or becoming more active in TSEU’s University Caucus, please contact TSEU/University organizer Sol Weiner: sweiner@cwa-tseu.org
