| Coalition of University Employees (CUE) | 2855 Telegraph Ave., Suite #302, Berkeley, CA 94705 Contact CUE (510) 845-2221 (phone), (510) 845-7444 (FAX) |
SF, CA Thursday, July 18, 2002. Earlier today, the union representing UC's temporary clerical workers charged The Regents with deliberately breaking their promise to the state legislature by continuing to deny long-term temporary workers the opportunity to become career employees with full benefits.
At The Regents’ July meeting, a member of the Coalition of University Employees (CUE) said, "Some of UC's supposedly temporary workers have been working as long as four years, yet they are denied the health insurance and retirement benefits that their career co-workers receive." According to CUE, UC promised the legislature and the union that they would stop its abusive practices with long term "temporary" employees, and allow temporaries who worked more than 18 months to convert to career status. Now UC claims it never agreed to this.
In response to a 2001 report by the state auditor (www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa/pdfs/2000130.pdf), UC's President Atkinson said " ... these changes are intended to ensure that temporary appointments are used only for temporary staffing needs and that employees whose appointments have been extended beyond what would be considered a temporary duration have an opportunity for career status and full benefits.” According to the state auditor's 1999 report, UC employed some 13,000 temporary employees. At UCLA, the largest campus, 24 percent of the employees were on temp status. The auditor's report charged that UC terminated temps for the sole purpose of preventing workers from becoming career employees eligible for health and retirement benefits.
In February 2001, UC finalized an agreement with the union that provided for temporary employees on the payroll for more than 18 months to achieve career status. Despite these promises, in June 2002, UC intentionally terminated some temporary employees to prevent them from becoming career employees. In many cases, UC suggested to the employees that they contact an outside temporary employment agency so they could continue to do the work, but would not convert to career status or receive benefits.
When confronted by CUE with this blatant violation of UC's new policy, UC's Chief Negotiator, Sharon Hayden, stated at a meeting on Monday July 8 that, "UC never intended to allow these employees to convert career status -- except by mistake."
CUE is the independent union representing 18,000 clerical workers at UC's nine campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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