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RE-OPENER BARGAINING TIME LINE
August 21, 2003--CUE and UC went back to the bargaining table for just three issues: wages, parking, and health benefits. These three articles were included in the 2001-04 contract that we signed in April 2004 and were "reopened" for bargaining new language that will be effective the last year of the 2001-04 contract. The wage increase for which we were bargaining would be effective October 1, 2004.
April 14, 2004--CUE and UC agreed to a joint submission of a declaration of impasse in the re-opener negotiations that began in fall 2003.
August 2004--the State of California established a fact-finding panel to recommend a settlement between the University of California and the Coalition of University Employees (CUE). This panel included one member appointed by the University (Peter Chester, a University Labor Relations Assistant Director), one member appointed by CUE (Henry C. Levy, a certified public accountant) and a neutral Chairperson selected jointly by the parties -- widely respected Arbitrator Gerald R. McKay. The panel held a five-day evidentiary hearing in November 2004, and the parties submitted over a thousand pages of documents for the panel to review.
February 17, 2005--neutral fact-finder McKay issued his report. In the report, McKay concluded that UC's claims that it cannot afford to provide wage increases to its clericals are untrue. UC not only enjoyed huge profits (hundreds of millions of dollars) in recent years, but diverted $20 million dollars specifically earmarked for clerical wages away from that purpose, spending the money elsewhere or adding to the University's vast reserves. McKay found that UC clericals are paid some 22-33% less below comparable clericals at CSU. McKay found that the University's failure to provide a reasonable wage increase to make equity wage adjustments for certain large groups of clerical employees cannot be justified.
March 3, 2005--UC submitted to the Coalition of University Employees a final offer that included a 10 percent salary increase for several police dispatchers at the Irvine campus, and a two percent increase for a few clericals working in the nutrition services department at UC San Diego Medical Center. CUE did not accept this as settlement of all issues, and UC implemented this "last, best, and final" offer anyway -- small increases to fewer than a dozen people and nothing at all for the rest of the 16,500 clericals.
April, May 2005--At hearings in Sacramento, legislators called this situation "appalling" and "unacceptable."