Bargaining Update #6: August 1-3, 2001, UCLA
Summary:
- CUE tries to strengthen seniority protections.
- UC wants to eliminate the administrative holiday if they give Cesar
Chavez day
- Respectful Fair Treatment - what does it mean? How do we enforce it?
- Take the Health and Safety survey!
CUE and UC met for three days at UCLA, August 1-3, 2001. UC continued to
give responses to CUE's proposals.
1. SENIORITY PROTECTIONS IN LAYOFF LANGUAGE
We discussed the article on Layoff at length. CUE has proposed to greatly
limit UC's ability to use "special skills" as a reason for laying off
someone out of seniority order. This is important because UC currently
uses the excuse of "special skills" to pick and choose who to lay off
(generally laying off a more senior employee instead of a favorite employee
with questionable "special skills"), and this erodes the strength of
seniority. CUE believes that the phrase "special skills" needs to be
clear, quantifiable, and narrowly defined. Examples might be speaking a
foreign language, competence with medical terminology or knowledge of an
unusual computer software. UC described "special skills" as something as
vague as "being able to keep a department running with no interruption."
UC's definition makes a mockery of seniority and gives management the right
to base layoff decisions on vague, subjective judgment. This is the kind
of language that can be used to protect discriminatory practices and the
exercise of favoritism. While UC has initially rejected CUE's proposal to
limit the meaning of "special skills", we are continuing to discuss this
matter.
UC gave CUE written counter proposals on Transfer, Promotion &
Reclassification, Holidays, Payroll Deductions, Catastrophic Leave and
Vacation in which they agreed to some minor changes. In almost every case
where CUE proposed substantive changes, UC rejected our proposals. The CUE
team was disappointed that UC simply offered "current contract language" in
response to CUE's proposals on many of the other articles. However, all
issues are still on the table.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE HOLIDAY VS. CESAR CHAVEZ DAY
Rather cynically, UC is proposing to replace our current administrative
holiday with the Cesar Chavez holiday by renaming the existing holiday.
CUE's proposal is that the Cesar Chavez holiday should be added to the
existing holidays. The matter is still unresolved.
CUE gave UC a proposal on the one article besides wages that we have not
discussed. We propose to simply eliminate the "No Strikes" language in our
current contract.
CUE and UC have agreed to discuss wages at our next bargaining session
which is scheduled for San Francisco on August 15-17, 2001.
On Thursday, UCLA CUE and UPTE members had a lively supportive picket line
outside of the bargaining building, which we very much appreciated.
3. TALKS CONTINUE ON RESPECTFUL/FAIR TREATMENT
On Friday morning, the CUE team was joined by CUE president Claudia Horning
(a library assistant at UCLA) and we spent nearly 2 hours in a "labor
management meeting" discussing implementation of the Respectful/Fair
Treatment article that we bargained in our first contract with UC. CUE
bargainers gave overwhelming evidence to support our position that
stringent standards should be set for compliance with this new contract
article and that meaningful remedies should be allowed when the article is
violated. CUE had previously offered UC guidelines for determining
"respectful/fair treatment" and proposed remedies to be used when those
standards had been breached. UC did not agree to our proposal and no
conclusions have yet been reached. Both sides said that the
discussion had been useful.
4. NEW SURVEY ON HEALTH & SAFETY
Finally, we urge you to take the Health & Safety survey that is on CUE's
web page. You should have received a notice earlier in the week about it.
Your participation will be very helpful in bargaining on this issue.
Future bargaining:
August 15-17, 2001 at San Francisco
August 28-30, 2001 at Santa Cruz
September 13-14, 2001 at Davis
Please join us when we're in your area. And, if you have an opinion or
comments for the bargaining team, please send it to us right away. We want to know what you think!
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
