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UC Unions Appeal to State Senate
April 19, 2005
On April 7, the UC Coalition of Unions had the opportunity to testify on UC's continuing poor labor relations before the California Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education. The hearings were held as a result of much hard work on the part of each union to bring our story to the legislature. The Coalition, which includes CUE, UAW, AFSCME, AFT, CNA, and UPTE, filled the room and delivered a clear, unified message to the hearings: UC drags out bargaining, fails to meet its obligations to its employees, misleads the public about funding and expenses and consistently pays less to its employees than CSU or any of the Community College districts.
CUE focused on specific points in the Fact Finding Report from our recent Re-opener Bargaining. We pointed out that Arbitrator Gerald McKay found no evidence to back up UC's claim that they could not afford to increase salaries. We discussed the significant lag in UC salaries compared to CSU and Community Colleges. We pointed out that UC has significantly more resources than the other two institutions, but pays 27%-33% less to clerical employees. We urged legislators to look at the full report.
Judy Boyette, UC Associate Vice President, Human Resources and Benefits, testified on behalf of UC. She readily admitted that morale is extremely poor, turnover is increasing, and that something must be done to improve the situation. However, Ms. Boyette continued to blame the State funding for all of the problems with staff salaries, when it is clear that only a very small part of needed salary money comes from the state. She provided no new information and used the same excuses that UC presented several years ago in legislative hearings.
Both Senator Jack Scott and Senator Jackie Speier voiced concern that UC underpays faculty, researchers and support staff, but gives huge salaries to administrators in addition to millions in bonuses. Senator Speier told Boyette directly that she (Senator Speier) realized that Boyette was "just the messenger" but that she had to tell the UC administration that it is "unacceptable to deny salaries to the staff while giving bonuses to administrators." Senator Speier further said that "UC just has to find the money somewhere." The Senate Committee received copies of the CUE Fact Finding report and expressed interest in follow-up hearings this spring to hear more testimony on the findings in this report and to ensure that UC provides the financial reports that the Senate requested as part of the last budget bill.
We wish to thank Senators Jack Scott, Jackie Speier and Tom Torlakson for their interest in hearing from the unions and individual employees about the real financial crises each of us is experiencing while UC continues to build buildings to house more underpaid faculty and staff and to cut services and unnecessarily raise fees for students.