Bargaining Update #4: July 11-13, 2001, UC Irvine
Last week, the CUE bargaining team met with UC for 3 days at UC
Irvine. The first day, our team worked on language for several articles,
which we presented to UC on Thursday. Before giving UC our new language we
continued our discussion concerning the agreement on
casual (limited
appointment) employees. In April 2001, the California State Auditor's
office issued a
report about casual employees at UC.
The report concluded that casual positions were misused at several campuses
and stated that because of the changes in UC policy those abuses would
end. The report says: "Effective January 1, 2001, the university revised
its policy on casual employment. While the impact of these changes has not
yet been fully realized, one intended effect of the new policy is to
improve access to career status and benefits for casual employees. Through
the new policy, the university intends to stop the practice of releasing
casual employees or reducing their work schedule for the sole purpose of
avoiding career status."
UC's chief negotiator contradicted the report and seemed to be unaware
of the report's existence. UC's chief negotiator told us that UC planned
to continue to release casual (limited appointment) employees to prevent
them from achieving career status. CUE has offered contract language that
would end this abuse. The full text of the State Auditor's report is
available at:
http://www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa-pdfs/2000130.pdf
The new articles we passed over to UC included Arbitration, Grievance,
Military Leave, Catastrophic Leave, Positions, Probationary Period,
Corrective Action/Discipline, Holidays, Personnel Files, Leaves of Absence,
Payroll Deductions, Training and Development, and Transfer
Promotion/Reclassification. We also continued to answer questions about
proposals we had previously given to UC.
The University seemed to be particularly concerned about our demand that
everything in the contract be grievable. CUE has stated several times that
we do not wish to take away the administration's right to make decisions --
but that we believe that all decisions need to be made for rational,
business reasons and that agreements made with the union and included in
the contract need to be enforceable and therefore need to be subject to
challenge. UC has yet to offer any counter proposals to any language we
have given them.
At this bargaining session we welcomed Irvine CUE's newly elected
bargainer, Elaine Hernandez. During the course of our three days there,
we were joined by a number of UCI members in the bargaining room. A big
thank you to the Irvine members for the enjoyable ice cream social and
their all-important support at the bargaining table.
We meet again with UC on Wednesday, July 18, 2001 in Berkeley at UCB's Institute
of Industrial Relations and on Thursday and Friday, July 19 & 20, 2001 once
again at UCOP in downtown Oakland.
The next bargaining dates after July 18 - 20, 2001 are:
August 1-3 at UCLA
August 15-17 at UCSF
August 28-30 at UCSC
Please plan to join us when we come to your campus.
CUE's Bargaining Team:
- Margy Wilkinson, Chief Negotiator
- Chris Benoit, Lead Negotiator
- Mark Covington, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Becky Croll, Davis
- Piccola Evans, Berkeley / UCOP
- Deborah Freeman, San Francisco
- Jody Galluzzi, San Diego
- Elaine Hernandez, Irvine
- Jack Joshua, Santa Barbara
- Connie McGrath, Riverside
- Zoe Sodja, Santa Cruz
- Anita Windom-Jones, Los Angeles
