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NOTES FROM THE BARGAINING BUBBLE #8
by Bert Thomas, UCLA Representative, CUE BARGAINING TEAM
(A personal diary, not the Official Report)
at UC BERKELEY - NOVEMBER 17-18, 2004
INVEST IN YOUR FUTURE - DONATE TO THE STRIKE FUND
I'm beginning with my conclusion and working backward...some folks don't have time to read these magnificent things all the way through.
Starting now, I'm investing an hour's pay every month in the CUE Strike Fund. I'm sending a check for $13.01-my current hourly rate-on top of my automatically deducted membership dues. I consider it an investment. Which means I expect to get it back. Yes, Virginia, I believe there will be a strike. A really good one. I believe the University is forcing the issue...because they believe we won't do it. Like a game of "chicken".
All day long I hear the seething resentment of workers who've waited a long time for the topmost "executives" of this institution to come to their senses. I believe that all of us are DONE...fed up with the arrogance and elitism that have given rise to the idea that it's OK for so many of us to live in poverty...at payrates 20-30% BELOW market parity. The institution spends like a drunken sailor on buildings, executive salaries, and perquisites for the anointed... pleading "poor mouth" to the press at the same time it maintains the highest possible, most robust credit ratings on Wall Street. Their PR is a fabulous fiction, as is their bargaining position with all worker unions.
UC'S WISH LIST FOR YOU: NO RAISES, NO RIGHTS, NO RESPECT, NO UNION
The bargaining sessions at UC Berkeley were excellent for a heap of reasons. The gloves came off. Things were "clarified".
Ladies and gents, they're presenting this stuff as though it were attractive. They no longer deny that they have the money to pay us every nickel we're asking; they just refuse to give any to clerical workers. People in our jurisdiction are paid 20-30% below market parity. The University says we're too easy to "recruit and retain"...they mean we're too easy to bully and intimidate. Slaves are easy to recruit and retain.
FACT-FINDING...ABOUT TO HIT THE FAN
The FACT-FINDING report on our parallel-track Re-Opener Bargaining of the previous Agreement is due out toward the middle of December. Word leaking out of the hearings is that CUE's case is very, very strong...especially in discussions about Wages. We do not expect a miracle. By law (and ain't it a nice law?), the University can take the report and throw it in the trash. We, on the other hand, can use it to hold a celebrative and joyous strike...shut down a hospital or two, the principal cash-cows of the system--and tell the world what's wrong with corporate bloat at the top of UC. A big pile of public money has drawn flies.
BLESS 'EM ALL AT CUE-BERKELEY
Berkeley is always so very dang good. On the second day, we had CUEsters in the room and out. "Berkeley's Betrayal" of clerical employees was brought to light by every visitor who spoke. Outside, a rowdy demonstration took place at lunchtime with participants from several campus unions. UC's Lead Negotiator, Peter Chester, was observed to take particular umbrage at the happy, noisy crowd while he stood on the steps in witness...saying something about how "CUE should spend more time on its proposals and less on demonstrations..." This, after hearing more testimony at the table from employee after employee talking about the pitiful "choices" poverty forces upon brilliant, loyal, talented human beings confronted with competing needs for rent, food, medicines and car repairs. To say nothing of the expense of sending our own children to college at the institution we serve. Mr. Chester actually said at one point in our deliberations, "We recognize that housing is a terrible, terrible problem for our employees." That was two "terribles" and no offer to do anything about it.
CUE's Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie proposed that Peter Chester consider "employee housing allotments" as something UC could do about it. "I'm just shaking the money tree here, Peter...see if something falls out," she said. Peter hadn't thought of that, said he would look into it.
Something he HAD thought of, apparently, was what would happen if CUE's 17,000 employees pulled out of the University's health benefit plans and shopped around for a plan of our own. Because when Amatullah mentioned that CUE was interested in researching the question, Mr. Chester was...um, surprised. Amatullah explained that low-paid clerical workers were paying the same rates as highly paid management and wondered if we might do better on our own, lowering the cost to clerical workers, and fattening our own paychecks a little. Such a course of action might seriously diminish the University's buying power when negotiating rates for the rest of its employees, and--Heaven forefend!--other UC unions might follow CUE's lead. What a mess that would be for the Benefits Office...they might have to hire many more clericals to handle the zillions of details, such as notifying all non-union workers (including managers) of how their rates were going up. Yes, that would be awful.
BULLYING & BLACKMAIL AIN'T "BARGAINING"
Trying to be nice, for yet another interminable bargaining period, is not even an available setting on my personal mood-scanner. Your cranky correspondent was not born with a gene for "patience and tolerance" of the smug and self-important. I suffer neither fools nor "executives" gladly. Never did; never will. Fortunately, I've had a bit of training...but I fear that is only running on fumes at the moment. It's more than apparent to me that the University team wears invisible "bling-bling" in the form of Golden Handcuffs. They've got too much at stake personally to be anything but what the University calls "Team Players". "Just following orders," would be their defense. You'd have to be as old as I am, and at least as rudimentarily educated, to hear that tin bell ring...all the way from a little town in Germany, long, long ago.
We have tried very hard (and will continue to try) to bring "executives" to the light by bringing the light to them. But it must necessarily be filtered through the agency of Peter Chester...who calls them "my betters", in touching acknowledgement of their power to fire him or anyone else in their purview. These are not Profiles In Courage at the top of UC. Brave men and women do not prosper here. They are fired or forced out.
AND WHO'S LEFT, AFTER ALL, AT THE TOP?
Well, there's BOB DYNES, President of the UC system...JOE MULLINIX, Senior V-P whose canny investment strategy cost us $7 billion (roughly 70%) of our retirement fund in the Enron debacle, and then he got a big raise...but never mind. There's HOWARD PRIPPAS, who, along with JUDY BOYETTE, bears responsibility for the worst labor relations in UC history. And, of course, THE REGENTS... patiently and forthrightly rubber-stamping the Office of the President's "staff recommendations" as though they had actual understanding of what they were doing. At least a couple of the Regents are quite courageous, but they are completely outnumbered by the feckless and insane. It's hard to read anything about Regent Ward Connerly, for instance, without feeling sure the guy needs medication or an improving beat-down. Failing that, the end of his term would spare the University further embarrassment. The others try desperately to appear informed and responsible...once a month. Some of them even show up for their meetings more than half the time.
These "players"...these puppeteers...are not even in the room.
ARE THEY EVIL? OR JUST GOOFY...
Martin Luther King said: "Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie, CUE's Chief Negotiator, said at the end of this Berkeley session: "I am confident that if it were up to the people in this room we could avoid a strike. The problem is, how do we get to the people above you?"
A 10-year-old child would know the answer. A deluded "executive" might need to have it explained.
DECEMBER 1st & 2nd IN SANTA BARBARA
Time is growing short on the stupid "2 Bonus Days" question. CUE will counter-propose and we'll iron it out in Santa Barbara, I think, one way or another. It might get ugly...the University has invested a load of its sagging credibility in this tawdry effort to bully the union. We don't know what they'll decide is in their real interest. We know what is in ours. We'd love to see you there if you can make it, or hear from you if you can't. I believe CUE headquarters in Berkeley will be sending out a notice soon about actions you can take to show support for your Bargaining Team. Please take a few minutes to bring your personal part to the table via email or FAX.
If you haven't actually joined CUE yet, the University thinks you're happy with things as they are. They're wrong, but that's the "LaLa Land" they live in. Real Membership costs an additional 50-80 cents a month depending on your payrate, and you have to fill out a form to join. If you're not sure, you're probably not a member. If your paycheck shows a deduction item called "CUE DUES", you're a member. If it says anything else--typically, "Agency Fee" or "CUE AGENCY FEE"-- you're not a member. We're not talking big money here...it's only inconvenient. Call our Local Organizers and make sure:
And thank you for being a CUE-Ball.
Pass this "Bubble" to a co-worker, via email or photocopy... especially to those who have no email access in their workplaces. Print it. Make copies. Leave them where your boss is sure to find them. (Original, printable versions of The Bubble--without your name appearing anywhere on them--are available on the web next to our Official Bargaining Reports at: http://www.cueunion.org.)
(Now, return to the first paragraph for that canny "investment advice.")
Blessins,
--BT (Bert Thomas, CUE's UCLA Bargaining Representative)
11.28.2004