Bargaining Bubble #1

NOTES FROM INSIDE THE BARGAINING BUBBLE #1

by Bert Thomas, UCLA Representative, CUE BARGAINING TEAM
(A personal diary, not the Official Report)

As UCLA's representative on CUE's Statewide Bargaining Team, I am reporting to my friends at UCLA (roughly 3,800 clerical workers) on the progress and details of negotiations with the University about our next CUE contract. Both sides want a 3-year agreement.

Our current contract expires soon, on September 30th of this year. Certain features of that contract (Wages, Parking Fees, Benefits/Insurance costs) are now in a non-binding fact-finding phase, meaning that no matter what the fact-finders discover, the University can refuse to do anything at all. Should something wonderful develop from that parallel track, CUE will make a timely announcement.

These notes are my personal observations, as witness and participant. They are by no means the "official" report of the new Bargaining Team.

"WIN-WIN"...You betcha.

We met for the first time with UC's Chief Bargainer, Peter (don't call him "MISTER") Chester and his team on Wednesday and Thursday July 21 and 22, here at UCLA. My great thanks to those of you who gave up your lunch hour to come up and give us a shout at the Faculty Center...it was a joy to see you. We even had CUEsters from UC Riverside and Santa Barbara, even a few from UC Davis, showing up in their tee shirts to observe the proceedings. You have the right to do that anytime you can, by the way. Kinda fun when you do...makes the other side a little wacky just seeing you there to support us.

Chief Negotiator for CUE is Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie of Berkeley...she is a gentle, soft-spoken woman of surpassing intelligence and kindness... unmatched, I'd have to say, by her glib and supercilious counterpart across the table. Unmatched by me, for that matter...for I am admittedly an impatient and irritable bargainer, which is not to say that I am a good one.

The CUE side is attempting to utilize an "interest-based bargaining" technique, which involves isolating the real interests of both sides in a joint effort to arrive at solutions. This is to be contrasted to the traditional method of coming to the table with hard and fast positions from which there can be little or no retreat.

Our team (11 CUE Members-one from each campus and a Chief Negotiator) is posting these "interests", theirs and ours, on the wall to keep both sides focused on what is real. The technique is unfamiliar to UC, but some of their team members seem to be paying attention to it, if not their Lead Negotiator, (don't call him "MISTER") Chester, who seems to have underestimated the problem here. He said, for example, that he favors a "win-win" bargaining strategy...and then presented a University proposal containing NO pay increases and a slew of "take-aways" of CUE rights won in previous contract negotiations. He said, further, that he hoped that we might all have the goal of reaching agreement "in 30 days"...after offering a proposal which, on its face, was offensive and insulting and would never be agreed to in a thousand years.

ALL THIS CONTRACT, SO LITTLE TIME

Unable to reach agreement even on ground rules (Peter Chester doesn't want students allowed to witness these sessions, and wants "tentative agreements"--TA's--on specific items to be final; CUE sees the first as patently discriminatory, the second as needlessly inflexible), we moved to several other areas of discussion.

Generally, the University opposes new employee access to CUE information and seeks to delimit or nullify such access. UC's spokesman actually used the word "frivolous" to characterize CUE's growing volume of grievances filed on all campuses in recent months, and he proposed reductions and restrictions on the number and training of CUE Stewards, even for the quasi-legal processes of arbitration hearings. When I suggested that this was like "challenging us to a race, but insisting first of all that they break our knees", UC's Negotiator interrupted my remarks to say that they were "inflammatory and not helpful". Perhaps he was right. Or else he is dead wrong. He had the same reaction to my suggestion that the University might profitably look at those individual managers/supervisors who seem to be "Grievance magnets", and fire or discipline THEM instead of the employees who file grievances against them. Oh well...I'm just an "inflammatory" cuss.

SHOW US THE MONEY

Finally, our CUE Chief Negotiator, Amatullah, suggested that we begin talking about WAGES at the very next session, August 10th & 11th in the North. Because without immediate and significant pay raises, these negotiations are dead in the water. According to UC's own research, the University's Clerical Workers lag the market pay rate for comparable jobs by roughly 20%.

CUE has proposed a three-year agreement with a 5% increase for all in the first year, 7% in the second year, and 9% in the third...as the California State economy recovers from the predations of Enron and others of the politically-connected class. UC's "win-win" proposal for Clerical workers? No pay increases at all. Nothing. Zilch. Until a fair and sensible pay proposal is offered up and agreed to, there's nothing else really worth talking about.

IN CONCLUSION

Our first meetings gave us a chance to see what we're up against. I'm pleased and proud to say it gave them the chance to meet us, too. I believe they were surprised. They were ill prepared, certainly...did not seem to understand their own proposal. We are determined to make WAGES the primary issue, effective immediately. We'll see them again August 10th and 11th.

Please pass this message along to friends and co-workers, especially those who have no email access in their workplaces. And join CUE! Make sure that you're a MEMBER. Call our wonderful busy new Organizer, LIZ CAMPBELL, at her Local 4 office: 310/473-8910. She'll be delighted to hear from you.

Blessins,

--BT
7/26/04