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NOTES FROM THE BARGAINING BUBBLE #10
by Bert Thomas, UCLA Representative, CUE BARGAINING TEAM
(A personal diary, not the Official Report)
at (LBNL) LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB - JANUARY 12-14, 2005
THE FOLKS WHO WORK ON THE HILL
"The Lab" in Berkeley is a special place. Of the 9 or 10 clerical jurisdictions represented by CUE, it is the only one that currently
requires specific bargaining for itself because of Federal funding (Dept. of
Energy) and the different rules that apply to employees paid with Federal dollars.
Generally, CUE employees at The Lab make slightly better wages than you and me.
Sort of paradoxical, actually. Under Dubya, our Federal Government has trashed the greatest budget surplus in history since taking office 4 years ago, and now blissfully spends its imperial way into the most breathtaking budget deficits the nation has ever known--and STILL finds it possible to pay employees better than our crybaby corporate university...currently wallowing in more than $5 billion of excess cash. Go figure.
Note that Peter Chester, UC's negotiator from the Office of the President, and his team, were spared this exercise. The Lab bargains for itself.
Present for the meetings were: Paijoun MontannaBronte, Local CUE President, Edith Perry, Local CUE Bargainer, Helane Carpenter, CUE Bargaining Rep for the Lab, and a number of local CUEsters. For the CUE Bargaining Team were:
MEET MR. BILL
The Lab management team was comparatively enormous...at least 7 people from
Labor Relations, Finance & Human Resources, led by Bill Elkins, Assistant
Director, Labor & Employee Relations. Mr. Elkins introduced his team's
interests as follows: "We want a fair and reasonable wage package for the
Lab, and fair and reasonable resolution of non-economic issues. We want
this to be a collaborative process. I hate an adversarial relationship."
Heck, I began to feel good about all this...Bill sounded like he'd been to CUE's "Interest-Based Negotiating" class. Then he handed out some proposed "ground rules". Oh well. We discussed them briefly, and tabled them forever.
CUE members at the Lab have long complained of apparent racism--often disguised as "favoritism"--and selective enforcement (targeting) of disciplinary action affecting promotions and wages in this small jurisdiction. Although the University bridles at the charge of racism, all the bristling seems to come from a chorus line of white faces. "Not guilty!" they say. But a class photo of senior management belies this. And if there's a lack of ethnic diversity down the management food chain, well, it's probably unconscious...you know? At the very top, it's all white folks. That's probably unconscious, too...
Another "cloud" that hangs over the Lab is the possible loss of its Dept of Energy contracts. The University has been embarrassed and scandalized over the past few years by well-publicized deficiencies at a couple of its National Labs--Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, I believe--over matters of "security" and "materials management" involving things that go boom. The problems have been charged to the administrative account of the University of California, leading the Department of Energy to seek bids from other institutions to handle the work. One didn't get the feeling in these discussions that Berkeley Lab management was much concerned about this. Hard to say whether this was confidence that the contracts would be renewed, or just whistling in the dark. Should the work go away, employees at these institutions would be seriously affected. The issues were discussed: protection of retirement funds and rights, training & development rights, preferential re-hire in the event of layoffs...the non-economic issues. Mostly an expression of our concerns.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS: "WEIRD SCIENCE"
We began to get a clearer picture of how the Lab (and the University)
treat employee "Performance" by means of ratings that have less to do with the
quality of our work than the quantity of money management makes available
for "rewards". As their compensation-guy, Matthew Mleczko, tried to
explain, you could be a SUPERIOR employee but you might not get rated that
way because...um, well, say there were three other genuinely superior
employees, and um, well, you can't ALL get the big bucks...so somebody has
to decide who is more superior than somebody else. Or something.
Dangedest thing I ever heard...an artificial "budget" driving an artificial
performance evaluation, resulting in a payrate that has nothing, really,
to do with your job performance at all. Unless you're absolutely the worst
employee in the known universe, in which case you get nothing but a
warning letter or notice of intent to dismiss. The latter, at least, is clear as
a bell. But performance at "Meets Expectations" or above...only confuses
them. Gets the big smart University all tangled up in its own dumb idea
that your job performance rating is determined, somehow, by...the budget?
Excuse me? Are these two things logically connected? No one speaking for
the University could explain it in a way that made any sense. It was
"current practice...a formula."
In three days of meetings, the teams reviewed one another's non-economic proposals and counter-proposals. Mr. Elkins of the Lab alluded often to a "wage proposal" he was anxious to present to CUE once the non-economic issues were satisfactorily resolved. When non-economic issues grew contentious in the 1st and 2nd days (over CUE members' charges of favoritism and apparent racism in matters of promotion, performance evaluation, and wages), Bill Elkins said: "We withdraw our non-economic proposals in order to facilitate these discussions." When CUE's Chief Negotiator Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie asked how this would facilitate things in light of his earlier stated determination not to show us his Wage Proposal until we were "done with non-economic issues"...Mr. Elkins withdrew his withdrawal. It was the end of the day, anyway.
AND ALONG COMES THE WAGE PROPOSAL
On the third day, CUE's Amatullah submitted what the CUE Team hoped might
be an acceptable proposal on the non-economic issues. We asked whether we
might be allowed to admire Mr. Elkins' promised Wage Proposal while he was
admiring ours over the lunch hour. With some reluctance, he was persuaded
at last to make the swap.
It was 2%. Hence, his reluctance. For this we'd waited two and a half days. CUE representatives and officers from the Lab were extremely disappointed. CUE's brilliant Bargainer from UC Santa Cruz, Kevin Parks (who studies classical literature in the original Greek and Latin) began at once to use the special Lab compensation formula to counter-propose at 4.75% for the first year of the agreement. Even the University team admired his grasp of the arcane math in their "formula", but rejected the proposal anyway. And much later in the day, Mr. Elkins made a "last, best offer" of 2.75%.
To their credit, the CUE local bargainers--Edith Perry, Helane Carpenter and Paijoun MontannaBronte--recommended to their jurisdiction that the proposal be rejected. And a few days later, it was.
Now that the teams have felt each other out, another session is scheduled for February 15th at the Lab. We are hopeful that respect for CUE's interests--and the looming likelihood of a strike that could shut down the Lab just when it's trying to look all prettied up for the Department of Energy--may bring the University to its senses.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...
On the same day, here at UCLA, a "Labor Action Teach-In" is being held at Ackerman Student Union from 2-7pm, featuring some nationally known speakers and student activists who are focusing their considerable energy and attention on the issues that CUE workers and ALL University employees face daily. CUE will be there. CUEsters tend to catch fire at these events and get re-acquainted with their own self-worth and dignity, no matter what a scared and foolish supervisor has done to them. Take an hour or two to drop in and raise a ruckus...or just observe the ruckus being raised for you. It'll do you and CUE a world of good...might even make a cheerful warrior out of you. One less set of butt-prints in the Sands of Time is a good thing.
ON FEBRUARY 23-25, WEDNESDAY THRU FRIDAY, THE TEAMS WILL BE MEETING HERE AT UCLA!
Watch your CUE email for more details as soon as they are available.
Lunchtime rally (with sandwiches provided) and testimony from the
Bargaining rooms are being planned. Should be a rousing good time for you to join
and contribute to the process. You are absolutely welcome to sit in, be
introduced, and address the room if you'd like.
"Bubble 11" on the Bargaining Team's visit to UC Santa Cruz late last month, will be forthcoming soon. It was an impressive and powerful display of campus and community support for ALL of UC's clerical workers at UC Santa Cruz and statewide. All previous "NOTES FROM THE BARGAINING BUBBLE" (a veritable froth) are available on the web.
Blessins and Solidarity,
--BT (Bert Thomas, CUE's UCLA Bargaining Representative)
2.9.05