CUE NEWSLETTER NO. 10

Summer 2000

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Are You Still Bargaining That Contract?

"Why is bargaining taking so long?" "Why doesn't the union hurry the process along?" These are questions that Chris Benoit, CUE's UC Riverside bargainer, hears from Riverside clericals. "I explain that we are trying to speed things up," Benoit says. "Members of the team have put our lives on hold for nearly two years while UC drags out bargaining. We want to bring back a package that is decent and that reflects the needs that clericals have expressed."

Benoit reports that one reason for the delay is that the university's bargainers are not consistent, moving forward on an issue, only to back away in the next session. The pattern peaked in April, when it appeared that significant progress was being made through an agreed-upon fast-track bargaining framework in which CUE had agreed that for most articles, the union would ask for no better and no worse than the best provisions and standards already agreed to by UC with other unions. But in April, UC broke the law by denying earlier agreements on several articles. As a result, CUE filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the state's Public Employment Relations Board.

Another problem, says Benoit, is that the UC team seems to lack authority to make decisions. Tired of the UC chief bargainer's often repeated statement that she was not "authorized" to accept CUE's proposals, the CUE team asked her if she had any authority at all, to which she responded: "I have the authority to say 'No'."

WAGES

Perhaps the most important of the issues on which UC has repeatedly said "no" is wages. CUE has proposed a combination of raises that would compensate for the cumulative loss in spending power that clericals have suffered since 1992. But UC still won't budge, won't bargain.

CUE's UC Santa Barbara bargainer Debbie Ceder explains, "UC wants us to accept a 2% cost of living increase, even though UC's own market studies show that systemwide, clerical salaries lag by an average of 21% behind the wages paid for equivalent positions in the surrounding communities. UC's bargainers adrnit that the money for significant raises is there, but they just don't want to give it to clericals. At the same time, UC gives top executives huge raises." In the period 1997-99, UC approved raises for this group that ranged from 25% to 30%, with resulting salaries topping $200,000 or, in one case, over $400,000

Another issue still facing bargainers is work rules. UC bargainers will not move off their insistence that UC should be allowed to discipline employees for things they do off the job and on their own time. In terms of on-the-job rules, "we cannot accept a situation where individual supervisors get to enforce their own arbitrary dress codes, or set attendance standards that allow discipline for legitimate use of sick leave," states Lyn Kelly, CUE's bargainer from UC Los Angeles.

HUNGER STRIKERS The bargaining team credits CUE members and other sympathetic clericals for the gains that have been made in certain articles, and that will be codified in a new contract when negotiations conclude. In spring of 2000, hundreds of clericals from every campus responded to CUE's call to send letters to their campus' Chancellor and to the

Governor's office. At most campuses, CUE has held demonstrations high- lighting the wage situation. At UC Berkeley, a rolling hunger strike has attracted dozens of clericals, each of whom fasts for 24 hours. One CUE member, Jane Fehlberg, started her hunger strike on June 14 and as of the end of June, she has had nothing to eat except for juices. Riverside's Chris Benoit explains, "It doesn't matter how clever we are at the bargaining table if UC believes that the people we represent don't care what happens. These expressions of how people feel are what will make the difference."

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Fair Share Era Begins: CUE MEMBERSHIP SOARS

With the advent of the new Fair Share era in labor relations at UC, clericals are joining CUE at an "unprecedented rate," reports CUE President Elinor Levine, a UC Berkeley clerical worker. According to Levine, "Fair Share gives CUE two important boosts. First, those who will be paying Fair Share fees will be making a financial contribution to the union's activities and efforts to represent us all. And just as important, the arithmetic of Fair Share encourages nonmembers to take the next step and become members."

CUE members voted on a new dues structure in spring 2000, setting all members' monthly dues at half of 1% of gross monthly salary. An employee with a gross monthly salary of $2,000 will pay dues of $10.00 per month. A non-member earning the same amount will pay $9.50 in Fair Share fees.

For that additional 50 cents a month, such a member gets to vote on all the issues that will determine the union's agenda and everyday priorities. At the top of this list will be a vote on whether or not to approve the contract and wage increases that come out of bargaining between UC and CUE. The new dues structure went into effect with the June payroll period. It was adopted by vote of members and replaced a dues structure in which members could pick their own dues rate.

"The overwhelming vote to approve the 0.5% of gross wages for dues gives CUE the clear indication that the members understand the cost and time involved with representation and want the level of information and protection currently afforded them to continue," said Judie Murray, President of CUE at UC San Diego.

CUE's decision to set Fair Share fees at 95% of member dues was based on an independent audit of the union's spending patterns for the first quarter of 2000. "The idea behind the state law that allows for Fair Share fees is that nonmembers benefit by some of the union's activities, but perhaps not by all of them," explained Claudia Horning, statewide Vice President of CUE and President of the UCLA local. After reviewing CUE's books, accountants concluded that 98.85% of the union's expenditures were for activities that meet the legal standards for activities that benefit nonmembers as well as members. "We decided to just round down to 95%," explained Horning.

In June, CUE mailed each of UC's 18,000 clericals a pamphlet about Fair Share fees and the basis for the deductions. Clericals who did not receive a copy can get one by asking their campus CUE rep or by email: clericals@cueunion.org.

Want to help build CUE into the strong union that UC clericals need and deserve?
Contact your local campus representative!

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LBNL Clericals Organizing Against Discrimination

At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), located in the hills above the Berkeley campus, CUE activists are taking a stand against discriminatory pay patterns at the lab. "This is unlike any fight that lab management has ever seen," observes Susan Lauer, one of the first of the lab staff to start building a CUE local there.

Historically, lab employees have not been covered by the pay policies, schedules or rates that cover other UC clericals, with the result that individual raises are set by individual supervisors without benefit of many of the guidelines and steps that (albeit inadequately) promote more equitable distribution of wage increases on UC's teaching campuses. The union argues that the lab's pay policy is "arbitrary" and that more consistency needs to be introduced to a system where individual supervisors' biases go nearly unchecked.

CUE activists point to additional problems with training and promotions to help explain a 62% turnover in the lab's clerical unit in the last 3 years.

According to Mark Covington, who represents LBNL staff as an alternate on CUE's statewide bargaining committee, "Management's own figures show that within the clerical unit at the lab, the higher the pay level, the lower the percentage of people of color in the workforce. Specifically, they show that at the AA I level, 75% of clericals are members of ethnic minorities; at the AA IH level, this figure drops to 28%."

"We are raising this issue in every forum we can," said Covington, who was one of two CUE members from the lab to visit U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee in her D.C. office on May 22 to discuss the problem. Herrera and Covington visited others in the nation's capital with responsibilities for labor practices at the lab, which is funded entirely by federal money. The two unionists met separately with Paul Igasaki (Vice Chair, EEOC), Gary King (Director, Office of Worker and Community Transition), and Jeremy Wu (Director, Office of Ombudsman), often described as the "eyes and ears" of US Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose office has oversight responsibilities for the lab.

LBNL and other national laboratories received much media attention in early spring because of lab management's public statements deploring discriminatory employment practices. "All three of the people we saw in D.C., besides Congresswoman Lee, were featured in the diversity training stand-down at the lab this spring. They shared their concerns and upcoming solutions regarding diversity issues within the Department of Energy," explained Herrera. "Mese people know what the problem is, and they have the clout to do something about it."

Lab employees have been raising the issue locally, as well. They have held early morning informational picket lines on the road leading to the lab gates, and have spread informational materials about their concerns and charges throughout the lab.

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A little opinion & a lot of history:

SOME THINGS THAT CUE HAS DONE FOR YOU

While UC's 18,000 clerical workers wait for a decent pay raise and other contract improvements, some express their impatience with the slow pace of bargaining by challenging CUE. "What has CUE ever done for us, anyway?" wrote one UCSF clerical recently.

The answer covers two-and-a-half years of activity on the part of CUE activists. Since the union was elected in late 1997, activists from each of UC's nine campuses, the LBNL, UCOP, and other smaller locations, have worked miracles to get the union up and running and to begin the long-term job of attending to clerical workers' needs.

Literally hundreds of individual employees have come to CUE for help dealing with work-site problems and have received it. "CUE stewards can't win every case for every person, but their record is impressive," according to Margy Wilkinson, veteran grievance handier and CUE's bargainer from UC Berkeley.

Wilkinson, who has been in touch with stewards from every campus, concludes that "some days it seems that there are as many kinds of bad management as there are managers. We know that there are good bosses, and we are grateful for them," she adds, "but all too often clericals are forced to pay the price for UC's failure to train supervisors." CUE has headed off unnecessary layoffs and unfair firings, and has even turned around some decisions to subcontract, saving literally hundreds of jobs. The union has helped with reclassifications, stopped improper transfers, and made supervisors back away from a hundred kinds of unfair disciplinary acts."

CUE's first all-campus campaign was to secure the right of clericals to donate vacation time to other employees with insufficient sick leave to cover absences required for their own health problems or those of family members. The campaign's eventual success required coordination between the campuses, on each of which clericals spoke up loudly for the union's leave proposal.

At UCLA's Santa Monica hospital, UC had failed to put employees on the step system, with the result that classifications and pay for many jobs were wrong. The incorrect and substandard pay system and classifications dated from the time that UC purchased the Santa Monica hospital, and the previous union ignored these problems. CUE's intervention on behalf of clericals there obliged UC to correct these glaring inequities.

At UCSD's Nutrition Department, CUE bargainers, given a boost by activists organized by CUE/UCSD President Judie Murray, member Jody Galluzzi, and staffer Scott Miller, won retroactive pay awards for a large group of clericals who had been forced to accept pay cuts while represented by the previous union.

At UC San Francisco, hundreds of employees are being shifted back to UC from a private company formed by the ill-advised UCSF/Stanford merger. CUE/UCSF President Paul Hessinger, who was active in the original fight to prevent the merger and the closing of UC's Mt. Zion hospital, has been working with a coalition of unions at UCSF to support employee rights and benefits. Current CUE bargaining is aimed at bringing these clericals back into the UC system without a loss of benefits and wages.

On June 16, Lyn Kelly, CUE's bargainer from UCLA, CUE/UCLA local President Claudia Horning, and a bargaining team of CUE members reached a very favorable agreement with UCLA involving special retirement, severance, and training provisions for Medical Records staff whose work will soon be subcontracted.

At most campuses, CUE has succeeded in delaying any parking increases until a contract is bargained. And at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, other improper parking rules were set aside by the quick action of CUE activists.

According to Leann Herigstad, the UC Davis bargainer for CUE, the statewide bargaining team has succeeded in obtaining UC's tentative agreement to many significant improvements in contract language over the AFSCME contract, which language still governs. "Once we come to agreement with UC on a total contract, we believe clericals will be very pleased with what we've accomplished on their behalf," said Herigstad.

CUE has found support for the union's bargaining positions in many forums, including Washington D.C. and Sacramento, where legislators who have budget control over UC have been pressured by activists from CUE and other UC unions to demand reform in UC's labor relations practices.

Your Friends in CUE are Looking for You

CUE regularly communicates with UC's vast and far-flung clerical workforce by email. But we might not have an email address for you. Please help us do our job by sending us your email address. If you are a new employee, it is almost certain that we haven't found you yet, so please get in touch! Contact us!

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Legislators "Stunned" at UC's Poor Labor Practices

At a hearing in Sacramento on June 8, members of the Califorma Assembly Higher Education Committee grilled UC President Atkinson about the poor state of labor relations at UC. Chaired by Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-Palo Alto, 21st district), the committee pressed Atkinson and UC Vice President of Human Resources, Judith Boyette, to explain UC's failure to respond to union information requests, its refusal to delegate decision-making authority to its bargainers, and its failure to bargain with reasonable speed.

A panel of UC union representatives including CUE President Elinor Levine (shown above), testified about a variety of UC's labor practices, in- cluding the university's lack of accountability concerning funding it receives from Sacramento, its deliberate protraction of bargaining, its subcontracting practices, and its abuse of casual employees. Levine brought a gasp of astonishment from the legislators and others in attendance when she pointed out that CUE has been in bargaining with UC for nearly two years for its first contract.

When Boyette and Atkinson blamed their failures on a lack of resources and poor com- puter systems, Senator Richard Alarcon (D-San Fernando Valley, 20th district) responded that he was "stunned" by their response. Other legislators joined Alarcon's criticism, and Assemblywoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley/Richmond, 14th district) called UC the "worst public employer in California." It was a heartening sessionfor the hundred or so unionists who filled the hearing room.

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