SUMMARY
UC has received CUE's entire contract proposal, yet is unwilling to begin substantive negotiations. The University has not presented a full contract proposal yet. UC wants to spend months going over CUE's proposals -- just asking questions, rather than bargaining on wages and other articles. At the rate UC proposes to bargain, we won't even start bargaining 1999-2000 wages until they are past due.
DETAILS
CUE and UC met for three days at the Office of the President in Oakland. At the previous meeting, CUE presented the last of our proposals and on Wednesday, July 14, 1999, we finished the process known as demand-explanation, explaining the content and rationale for every CUE demand.
At CUE's request, near the beginning of bargaining almost a year ago, UC agreed to try a new negotiation format. We proposed a mutual gains approach where issues and problems would be discussed, then articles would be written cooperatively, with an eye toward meeting the needs of both parties. After a few sessions, UC reneged on that agreement and demanded a return to their standard bargaining process where articles are written first, then debated. So, CUE began writing and presenting proposals.
UC has maintained for months that they could not bargain any of the contract until all of CUE's proposals were presented. Many bargaining sessions were spent negotiating a wage pass through for 1998-99, overtime wages, catastrophic leave, and local issues. In addition to all of this, CUE continued to work very hard to meet UC's request for comprehensive contract articles in order to expedite the bargaining process.
Incredibly, UC now maintains that they cannot begin bargaining because they have still more questions on all of CUE's proposals! After completing the demand-explanation process, UC now insists that we start the entire process over, spending several months on the explanations again. In addition, UC has refused to present CUE with a comprehensive wage proposal and with an arbitration article for the grievance procedure. We requested both of these articles on Wednesday and on Thursday, and UC Chief Negotiator, Sharon Hayden, said she would not provide CUE with either proposal. We are very concerned about UC's refusal to provide an entire set of contract proposals, especially after their insistence that CUE do so before serious bargaining would begin.
We are now in a catch 22 situation -- UC said they couldn't bargain until they had all of our contract proposals, and now it seems they can't bargain because they DO have all of our proposals. UC's proposed format for bargaining would further delay the process, and insure that there will be no possibility of even beginning negotiations of wages for 1999-2000 until after our wage increases are past due.
The best way to end UC's game is to join CUE and demand respect, raises and rights for UC clericals.
CUE's Bargaining Team:
- Kris Amaral (San Francisco)
- Christine Benoit (Riverside)
- Debbie Ceder (Santa Barbara)
- Jennifer Goodheart (Santa Cruz)
- Mary Harrington (Santa Cruz)
- Lyn Kelly (Los Angeles)
- Robin Luczak (San Diego)
- Linda Moser (Davis)
- Joanne Murray (Santa Barbara)
- Cynthia Norman (Irvine)
- John Randolph (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
- Margy Wilkinson (Berkeley)
- Mark Blum (Chief Negotiator)
