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CUE'S WAGE PROPOSAL & UC'S LIE
June 10, 2005
CUE'S WAGE PROPOSAL & UC'S LIE
Have you heard UC's most recent lie? Labor Relations staff are claiming that CUE has turned down a 12% pay raise for clericals. Not true! This is the same University that diverted 20 million dollars from clerical salaries last year. Do you think we should believe them this time?
In fact, CUE never turned down UC's "offer" and is responding to UC's position today, by their deadline. Our proposal includes the same 12% overall increase, but in our proposal, people would start to see equity adjustments in the 04-05 year, which is not the case with UC's proposal. We'll be posting our position on our web page in the next few days.
Does this mean that people will see an increase right away? No, but it means that bargaining continues and CUE continues the fight for fair wages and other contract improvements. And it means that UC simply lies.
WHAT ARE THE FACTS?
UC Labor Relations offices are circulating this distortion
to managers. It is important that every UC clerical know
what the facts are, and what they are not!
As you know, CUE and UC are engaged in 2 parallel bargaining cycles. In 03-04 bargaining, we never agreed that 0% was an OK raise and so the issue went unresolved. As recently as this spring, that bargaining process came to an end with the fact-finder's report, which showed that UC had the money to give us wage increases. Then UC again refused to grant us raises. Our timely and legal response to that was to call a strike, after 94% YES vote by CUE members.
At the same time, in July 2004 bargaining began for a new contract. UC has dragged its feet, as it always does when bargaining with staff unions. UC's last delay tactic has been to fail to provide CUE with information vital to our ability to weigh various salary possibilities.
UC'S "TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT" OFFER
What did happen: In a transparent effort to turn clericals
against their own union, UC made a last-minute offer last
Friday with a take-it-or-leave-it deadline of this Friday,
a deadline they believed we could not meet.
The UC offer consists of language and economic features that include a pay raise of 12% over 3 years. It also includes unlimited cost increases for benefits and parking which could eat up the wage increase. It deletes important improvements that CUE won in the last two bargaining cycles. It also requires the union to pledge to not honor other unions' strikes! Finally, the increases mentioned are not guaranteed, but are tied to UC later agreeing that it can afford to make these awards.
It is interesting that UC didn't even wait for their own deadline (June 10) before telling people that CUE had turned down an offer. This isn't real bargaining, it is a purposeful lie.
If this were a real offer, UC would be making an actual wage commitment now, not telling us that they might do so later.
If this were part of real bargaining, this offer/deadline would not come now, just days before our strike on 03-04 issues.
WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH?
While you evaluate UC's statements, we urge you to consider
how honest they have been with us through this process.
In the meantime, you can believe that if UC makes a fair wage offer and one that we can rely on without a lot of expensive take aways, an offer that we think CUE members will want to consider and vote on, you can be sure that every CUE member will hear about it from us -- along with a ballot!