The CUE Bargaining team met with UC for two days on the Irvine campus, October 7 and 8, 1998.
At the last bargaining session, both sides had adopted a problem-solving approach toward bargaining that seemed to be useful and productive. We were hopeful that this approach would move contract negotiations forward more quickly than traditional adversarial relations. On the first day of this session, we appeared to be making substantial progress towards reaching workable solutions to some problems. However, by the second day of this bargaining session, UC abandoned this approach, refusing to acknowledge that there were real problems that needed to be identified and addressed in the contract.
For example, UC made a proposal for an interim agreement on parking, so that they could raise parking rates this year. CUE offered to accept this if increases would be tied to salary increases in the future, the assurance of space availability or refunds for those who couldn't find spaces, and safety in parking facilities. On the second day of bargaining, UC chief negotiator Sharon Hayden abruptly abandoned the previous days' approach to this issue, and refused to acknowledge any of the parking problems we had discussed earlier. CUE remains prepared to negotiate several alternatives we proposed for addressing clerical parking concerns, while accommodating UC's expressed wish for an interim parking agreement, but UC's regression to its adversarial stance is troubling.
In addition, when we raised the important contract article on nondiscrimination, and explained many of the problems that clerical employees had brought to our attention, UC's bargainers suggested that affected employees should not look to UC or the contract for
protections against employment discrimination - but instead should go to outside agencies to raise complaints.
CUE will meet with UC again in Davis on October 22 and 23, 1998. At the top of our agenda will be a discussion on an interim agreement on wages and cost of living increases, as well as a continuation of catastrophic leave, parking, agreement, non-discrimination, training/development and positions (the article that defines what is a career, a casual and a temporary employee). We look forward to returning to a problem-solving approach to bargaining.
Look for an email about wage increases soon!
CUE's Bargaining Team:
- Kris Amaral (San Francisco)
- Christine Benoit (Riverside)
- Debbie Ceder (Santa Barbara)
- 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)
