Safe Workplaces Now!
Know Your Rights. Take Action for Safe and Healthy Workplaces and Disability Justice for All
Welcome to the University of California Justice Coalition Newsletter. We haven’t written since late 2022 when our union, UAW 2865 signed a tentative agreement, without including the Access Needs or Public Health Conditions articles we advocated for together. We did, however, achieve one aspect of the Access Needs article, “interim measures.” Since then, many of us have continued to brainstorm ways that we might achieve some of the access and disability justice dreams that we aspired to codify in our union contracts. In January 2023, California adopted a new Occupational Safety and Health Standard for airborne viruses, making our case for public health protections at our workplace and schools, even stronger.
Join our Safe Workplaces Action
Today we are writing to invite you to join us in a Safe Workplaces action across the University of California. This collective action seeks to secure safe and healthy workplaces, protecting us against the spread of airborne disease by encouraging disabled and other workers to use our federally-recognized protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act to require universal masking in our classrooms and workplaces, or take our classes online, and to request layers of protection in the form of universal masking and ventilation upgrades, as a “reasonable accommodation.”
At present, the UC has a blanket ban on instructors asking students to mask. That ban is in violation of the ADA The UC opposes hybrid instruction, refuses to bring old buildings up to ventilation code, makes testing inaccessible, and overcrowds our classrooms, putting us all at risk for airborne viruses and other harms from unhealthy indoor air.
Join the UC Justice Coalition in fighting for Safe and Healthy Workplaces by requiring masks in your classrooms or taking your classes online. Even if you are not concerned about COVID-19, support your vulnerable colleagues by joining our collective action. We are Stronger Together.
How to take action
1. Require masks in your classrooms or take your class online. Explain to students and instructors that you are participating in an action for safe worker conditions and that banning instructors from requiring masks is a violation of the ADA. Show them the full pamphlet.
2. If you are a union member, preemptively alert your supervisor to unsafe working conditions. CC your union representatives on these communications to guard against retaliation. For UAW 2865 in particular, we can file grievances against any supervisor who tries to retaliate against you for telling them the truth; colleagues are ready to support you in contract enforcement (Articles 13, 20, and/or 23 may apply)
3. Whether you identify as disabled or not, contact your campus disability offices and request universal masking, ventilation upgrades, testing, contact tracing and online access as reasonable accommodations. “Universal masking” and layers of protection are an accommodation and should be available to all, without medical documentation. And the 2023 CA OSHA regulation on airborne viruses requires employers to contact trace and isolate COVID infections, offering more legal protection for our demands.
4. If you’ve never requested accommodations before, we suggest using language such as “Because I have a medical condition that, according to the CDC, makes me high risk for severe COVID outcomes, my functional limitation is that I can only participate in indoor spaces which require universal masking and adequate ventilation matching at least six (6) air changes per hour as recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists Industrial Ventilation Committee.” OR “I am requesting disability accommodations for a functional limitation where I require universal masking in indoor spaces” Make sure everything is in writing over email. Show the multiple scientific studies linked in this pamphlet as evidence of the risks of COVID-19.
5. Write to us at ucjusticecoalition@gmail.com. Declare you are participating in the action on social media, in your departments, and everywhere you can! Use the hashtag #SafeWorkplacesNow
5. Write to us at ucjusticecoalition@gmail.com. Declare you are participating in the action on social media, in your departments, and everywhere you can! Use the hashtag #SafeWorkplacesNow
Access the full Safe Workplaces Now! Pamphlet Here
Access Should Not Be Rationed. Disability Justice is for All.
We use the framing of Access rather than “accommodations” because Access implies, correctly, that all people have the right to safe and accessible working conditions. Like UC Access Now, we believe our institutions should proactively plan to meet distinct Access needs — and fund those plans— embracing a model of abundance. We fought to codify this in our contracts during our 2022 labor strike, and we’re still fighting for it now.
The word “accommodations” is a legal term that comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Rather than facilitating employee inclusion, employers and institutions frequently use this word as a weapon to police and exclude disabled workers, against the spirit of the ADA. Even when workers provide documentation showing disability status, employers often deny accommodations anyway. When accommodations are offered, they are often in the form of retrofitting inaccessible spaces, which is less effective than starting with Access. Working in Access in from the start in public space, assumes that disabled people are valuable, makes workplaces more inclusive, and is less work for everyone in the long run.
I’m Not “Disabled,” Why Are You Encouraging Me to Use Institutional Resources Meant for More Deserving Disabled* People?
Taking abundance seriously means fighting for everyone’s Access Needs. It means refusing the “scarcity” narrative that says certain disabled people are more deserving than others . Institutional Disability Programs are notoriously under-resourced, meaning our necessary Access Needs are never met quickly, creating artificial scarcity. We ask why, for example, is there money to pay the UC Chancellors half a million dollar salaries but not to quickly purchase $200 standing desk for a worker with scoliosis?
By underfunding disability programs and creating layers of bureaucracy, including requiring medical documentation, the UC rations Access. Disabled workers often become discouraged fighting for individual access needs that they give up. Perhaps by collectively increasing demand for Access, we will force them to fund it.
Plus, the Ability / Disability binary is in part a construction of what bell hooks called the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, in so far as it imagines an ideal worker who is “able” to be maximally productive for capitalist accumulation. Almost nobody can fit into this ideal type, which comes from a repressive world view that functions by creating artificial scarcity and telling us to compete over resources. At Justice Coalition, we do not want to police the boundaries to ability, but rather to welcome everyone into disability justice.
We will write again soon with more updates and a social media toolkit. For now: