Unit 18 Bargaining Update #5 Jan 28, 2013

Colleagues:

Now that the winter quarter and spring semester are underway, I thought I should write to all of you to let you know the status of our reopener bargaining. I realize that this is long overdue, but it is not because it has not been on the bargaining team’s mind. Rather, the University has made our lives extremely difficult by inaction, and we were hoping that by now something would have happened.  It has not. So, by way of an introduction, please accept my apologies for the lengthy delay in sending this and for the lengthy email you are about to read.

You will recall that beginning in March of 2012, we began bargaining several articles (Layoff, Appointments, Merit Review, Salary, Arbitration) with the University.  You can check previous bargaining updates on the UC-AFT website. Both sides worked pretty regularly through August, at which point the University basically refused to bargain with us over anything economic.  UC claimed it could make no decision on money until after Proposition 30 passed. Rather than continue to attend poorly attended (by UC) bargaining sessions where nothing happened, we agreed to a hiatus. Meanwhile, the University’s Chief Negotiator was promoted to Director of Labor Relations. He appointed a new chief negotiator, who had no experience with our contract.

Though Proposition 30 passed, UC has continued to refuse to bargain with us over salary (or anything else) in the current 2012 reopener. The University’s stated position is that NO ONE will get a salary increase until the Union accepts the new tier of UCRP. Or, to put it another way, the Benefits article will not be open until mid February, so UC has basically stalled until the article it wants to discuss is open.  Despite our issuing several demands to bargain, the University has refused to do so, even turning a scheduled bargaining session into a brief presentation on online education. Moreover, the new chief negotiator for UC infrequently returns phone calls or emails. It has been an exercise in frustration, and I can tell you that labor relations are the worst that they have been in ten years.

We are trying to come to a determination about how to proceed. Our bargaining team does not want to bargain new articles until we have disposed of last year’s articles. Since this is a separate reopener, we must either come to an agreement to end the 2012 reopener (which began in March) OR declare impasse. I have raised this issue repeatedly with UCOP, in writing, verbally, and in person—but they simply refuse to offer anything other than “we have some ideas and will get back to you.” This has made our lives very difficult, as our bargaining team does not believe that it can choose new articles to reopen without knowing how we will resolve the currently opened articles. We do know that according to the reopener language in the contract, Salary, Benefits and the new Online article will automatically open in the 2013 reopeners.  The union must decide which two additional articles to reopen once we have resolved the 2012 reopener process. UC has promised us some ideas about how to treat the 2012 reopener by the end of this week, though they have done that before without providing us anything at all. We were, however, able to get UC to agree to delay the exchange of proposals for the 2013 reopener until the 14^th of February.

UCOP needs the changes to the UCRP system; it is not in our interest to give them those changes without significant salary increases and more. We believe that if the new benefits programs go into effect as planned, there are over 800 currently employed, non-benefits eligible members of the lecturer unit who will be forced into the new, reduced pension tier and health programs if they become benefits eligible in the future.  We must make every effort to protect these individuals, and in order to do so, we are going to be visiting all of the campuses. If you are reading this, and you think you might, at some point in your life, go into UCRP, please make every effort to attend the meetings we have on the campuses. It is only through hearing from our members that we can judge the strength we must apply to fight these changes.

In addition, it would be extremely helpful for us to have more union members attend bargaining sessions—assuming UC will return to the table. We also would like to establish a bargaining committee, with members on the campuses who will participate in conference calls as we move forward.  If you have any interest in these activities, and in helping other lecturers, please write to me (akarras@ucaft.org) so that we can begin to include you in our deliberations. I can’t say, at this time, what kind of a time commitment we would be asking, since I have no idea about what UC plans to do, but I would personally welcome any effort that any of you can provide in this regard.

You’ll hear from me again by the middle of February with, at least, a list of articles that each side has reopened and, at best, the status of those articles that are currently open.

My apologies, again, for the long delay in sending this out; I really hoped that UCOP would eventually find a way to return calls and have a productive conversation about our labor agreement. I continue to hope that UC will do so, but if not, we have other options at our disposal.

Alan Karras

Chief Negotiator, UC-AFT
Vice President-Grievances