Say NO to Kronos, say no to unnecessary surveillance, time-wasting software, and inequity in your office!

Dear USA members,

Last Wednesday on May 13th, over 140 USA members met together to discuss the potential implementation of the time-keeping software and location tracking system called Kronos for USA members in Administration & Finance (A & F). Management contacted your Executive Board earlier this month to announce this implementation and an impact bargaining team is almost finalized.

You and your co-workers must band together to show management that USA members overwhelmingly stand against this implementation. If management comes for A & F, what is going to stop them from rolling this out for all USA members in the future?

The next step is to unite and put forward our demands to management!

Sign our petition and collect signatures by talking to each other in your departments, buildings, and across campus. To collect physical signatures, get in touch with an organizer by emailing usa@umass.edu. An organizer will provide a signature-collecting sheet, talking points, and more info on Action Communicators.

Here are the main takeaways from the meeting:

According to Article 8, Section 8 (page 18) of your contract, "unit members, except those in Auxiliary Services, shall not be required to swipe under the Kronos system unless all employees in a Department are required to do so."

Management asserts that "all employees" only refers to USA members in this part of the contract, but the Executive Board argues that "all employees" includes all unions in the department and management's assertion breaks the USA contract.

Kronos does not serve a purpose that would help staff with their work or improve their working conditions. It would only lead to more staff surveillance and introduce location-tracking, especially for members who work remotely.

USA members who already use Kronos to track student workers are familiar with how inefficient and time-consuming the software is. Implementing it for USA will disrupt our work and consume a lot of our time and our supervisors' time fighting to fix errors to ensure we are paid properly.

Kronos is owned by UKG, a privately held workforce management software company who recently laid off 950 employees citing AI as the primary reason (Source: Boston Business Journal).

The largest minority shareholder of UKG is Blackstone, a war profiteering investment firm with significant investments in Israeli software and tech companies. The Research Committee will continue to dig up more information about Kronos and UMass' ties to it. UMass Lowell recently declared Blackstone a "preferred partner" alongside Raytheon.