CUE NEWSLETTER NO. 1
Winter 1995
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UC Clerical Workers Launch New Union: Cite Worsening Conditions, Need for Effective Representation
University of California clerical employees have formed a new, independent union--the Coalition of University Employees (CUE)--in response to the University's attacks on working conditions at UC. CUE is organizing for new members from among the University's 19,000 clerical workers, whose work places are spread between San Diego and Davis on 9 campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and Office of the President. AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, is currently the bargaining agent for clericals at UC."Things are getting worse daily at UC for those of us who work here," said Elinor Levine, newly-elected president of CUE. Levine cited the Regents' attacks on affirmative action, and management plans to replace salary increases with prizes and "incentive awards," subcontract jobs, and lay off employees. "We need an effective union to defend UC's workers' rights. We have fought for UC workers for years under the AFSCME banner, but organizing UC clerical workers has not been a priority for them. We can't afford such lack of support any more."
Levine, like most of CUE's initial members, is a former AFSCME member who worked for years within that union before joining with other UC employees to form CUE. She was president of UCB's AFSCME clerical local until September 28, when the local's members voted overwhelmingly-- one of their largest membership meetings in recent history--to leave AFSCME and begin organizing a new union. The vote followed several months of open discussion, and a statewide survey that showed support among clericals on every campus in the system for a more effective union.
CUE held its first statewide meeting on October 15. Attendees from both Northern and Southern California approved a provisional constitution and elected executive officers, and pledged to begin the task of dramatically expanding the new union on each UC campus.
According to Kevin Hayford, former UCSD AFSCME vice president and newly-elected CUE Southern California vice president, "In the current climate, UC clerical employees desperately need a responsive, democratic organization to represent them. We intend to build that organization."
"If we ever needed a strong and creative union, now is the time," adds Zoe Sodja, a CUE Northern California vice president and former president of AFSCME at UCSC. Among UC clerical employees, membership in AFSCME has fallen to its lowest level ever--only about 5% of UC s 19,000 clerical employees are members.
CUE's members are realistic about the hard work ahead of them. "I work on a campus that has 3700 clerical employees," said Claudia Horning, a CUE Southern California vice president, who resigned as vice president of AFSCME at UCLA in October. "We'll be contacting all of them about this organizing effort. Sure, it's a lot to do, but we've found that people are receptive. They want a union that will stand up to the University, and it's exciting to be part of the effort to build one."
Anyone who wants to be part of this process is urged to contact CUE at (510) 845-3447, email us at clericals@igc.org, or contact one of the local campus CUE representatives listed below.
What is Recertification?
Right now, AFSCME is the exclusive representative for all UC clericals statewide, and bargains the clerical contract. CUE seeks to replace AFSCME as exclusive representative by challenging AFSCME in an election. Under state labor law, the process for this is called recertification.- Recertification is the replacement of one union by another union through a secret ballot mail vote conducted by the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). Also called "challenge" elections.
- Valid signatures of 30% of all UC clericals statewide are required before there may be a recertification election.
- Employees would sign cards saying that they want a election to be held to determine who will represent them.
- Signatures must be collected during a one-year period prior to the expiration of the current AFSCME contract (between March 1996-March 1997), and must be submitted to PERB in March 1997.
- Ballot options would be CUE, AFSCME (unless AFSCME chooses to withdraw before the election), and "no representation."
- If no option receives 50% of the vote, a runoff is held between the top two vote-getters.
What does HRMI mean for us?
The UC administration has been engaged in an extensive promotional campaign for its Human Resource Management Initiative (HRMI) for over a year. UC is distributing slick brochures to employees depicting HRMI as a progressive redesign of "out dated" personnel policiesBut despite its seemingly innocuous name, HRMI is a dramatic shift in employee relations that would undermine job security, equitable pay and our rights at work. While UC claims HRMI does not apply to clericals, elements of the plan--for instance, the collapse of most clerical job titles into the "blank" Assistant series--have already been unilaterally implemented in the clerical unit. It's only a matter of time before UC tries to force the rest of the plan on clericals.
HRMI would eliminate cost-of-living increases and salary steps, replacing them with one-time bonuses and "incentive awards." All of these awards would be determined by supervisors who could grant or take away up to 30% of employees pay from year to year. There would be no mechanism to see that awards were distributed fairly, leaving a great potential for favoritism, discrimination, and other forms of abuse. Instead of equitable and fair increases for all, there would be a fixed amount of money set aside for "prizes." Since awards would not be incorporated into our base pay rates, our salaries would stagnate and our retirement and disability benefits would decrease.
Clericals already affected. Last year, the Legislature allocated 3% for UC staff raises, but clericals got only 2.2% of that as a cost-of-living raise, while UC used the other .8% for an "incentive" program modelled on HRMI.
HRMI would set overall wages by "market factors" at each campus location, ensuring that employees systemwide would no longer be paid at the same rate for the same work. Because UC defines what to include in its "market survey," it could easily use HRMI to drive wages down--for example, by including low-paid non-UC clericals or an economically depressed region in their market survey.
Another trend we've seen at UC is an increase in the use of casual employees, who already make up as much as 36% of the workforce at some campuses. HRMI continues this trend, and also expands UC's use of "per diem employees." These members of the "contingent" workforce receive fewer benefits, no retirement plan, and no layoff protections or preferential rehire rights.
What drives all this is management's desire to have UC function like a for-profit corporation. But the University is a non-profit public institution--the second largest employer in thestate--which has historically been a source of decent public sector jobs. It is these jobs that UC management is attacking with HRMI. When you look beyond UC's slick propaganda, HRMI is clearly an attempt to have us do more work for less pay. It is a recipe for staff demoralization. What can you do? Fighting HRMI is important, and it's one of the reasons we're building a more effective union. Join CUE. Only by working together we can improve the quality of our work at UC.