UC-AFT Gears Up for Lecturer and Librarian Bargaining

By Mike Rotkin, UC-AFT Local 2199 President & UC-AFT V.P. for Organizing

We are now getting into bargaining season, and no doubt there is some stormy weather ahead. On March 30, we had our third Lecturer (Unit 18) bargaining session and Librarian bargaining is set to begin in May.

The Lecturer unit’s current contract expires on July 31^st. Of major concern to the Lecturers are issues related to job security, workload, upcoming changes to summer session, proposals for an increase in on-line instruction, and some benefit fixes for some more than half-time lecturers who are still denied benefit coverage. We are also seeking small pay increases to cover the recent decrease in take home pay that resulted from increased benefit contributions for our members. Both parties are also working to clear up some ambiguities in the existing contract that will, no doubt, benefit everyone.

The Librarian unit will be bargaining over salary issues. For years now the UC Administration has denied long-overdue pay increases for UC Librarians who now lag over 20-25% behind comparable positions in the CSU system and behind most comparable community college librarians. There is clear evidence that on almost every UC campus there are problems, even in this great recession, in hiring new Librarians at appropriate levels in the Librarian series and that workload problems are being exacerbated for the remaining Librarians and the faculty and students whom they serve.  UC research libraries have been falling in relative standing compared to other nationally recognized research libraries because not just Librarians, but libraries are being starved for resources.

With respect to both units, the indications are that the Administration’s initial approach is to hope that the current deep recession/depression will have disciplined our members to accept less compensation and weaker security provisions than we deserve and that the institution, itself, needs to provide if it wants to continue to offer quality education, research, and public service to the State of California and its residents. We continue to believe that UC has more than enough funding to meet the very modest demands of our members and that the problem is not essentially a lack of resources (despite the State budget cutback of a half-billion dollars) but bad priorities that expend limited funds on obscene compensation packages for top executives and on other misplaced priorities.

Both units will be making spirited presentations at the bargaining table, but we hope that our members understand that, ultimately, what we can win at the bargaining table depends less upon the power of our argument and the factual information that we will be presenting than it does upon the sense of solidarity and commitment evidenced by our members in actions on the campuses throughout the system.

Consequently, the UC-AFT and its leaders and staff will be working hard to help coordinate the work done by our two bargaining teams with a series of campus actions and new educational materials for the campuses and the general public about the crisis of priorities at UC. March appears to have come in like a lion, but we cannot afford to have it go out like a lamb. Get ready for rough weather.