Hi, my name is Julea Shaw and I am honored to be running for Trustee. I’ve been a member of our union and an Environmental Scientist at CDFW for five years. I started my union journey as a member of UAW 2865 as a graduate student at UC Davis where I was an organizer for the Ecology Graduate Group. From that experience, I learned the true power of collective action and knew I wanted to be involved in the union when I joined state service.

During my time with CAPS-UAW, I’ve led organizing efforts for the over 150 rank and file scientists at the CDFW West Sacramento office as a Contract Action Team (CAT) and Worksite Co-Coordinator with Anne Hilborn. My focus as an organizer has always been member empowerment through education, transparency, open discussion, and collaboration. Over the years, I helped develop resources and trainings such as the Know Your Paycheck Training, the Bargaining Jargon Raises Cheat Sheet, and the UAW Affiliation Presentation to ensure that members had the information they needed to make decisions and enforce our hard-earned rights. 

Currently, I am on the Member Support Team for District 3 where I assist members with questions and representation issues. In the past, I served as a Strike Captain at our historic Defiance for Science Strike and as a member of the Catalyst Committee, which developed our new leadership structure as a UAW local.

Through our work, I have seen us grow at my worksite where our solidarity breaks have expanded from a small handful of people meeting in the hallway to two solidarity lunches every week and facilitating a chat with over 300 state scientists from across the state and departments. One of the most important things I learned in this process is that access to information and transparency are paramount to building the trust needed to fight and win together. As Trustee, I will bring the same drive for transparency to auditing our finances as I have brought to leading solidary breaks, focusing on making sure members have the information they need to make informed decisions and feel confident in our leadership.

There is still a lot of work to do as we transition to this new era as a member-led union, and I am excited to be a part of it. State scientists are a diverse and talented group of people, and I am running because I want to create and sustain an environment where every member can bring their experiences, ideas, and skills to bear in our collective fight for fair working conditions.