Librarian Bargaining Update #1

Librarian Bargaining Update 

June 7, 2011

The first session of Librarian Bargaining opened on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at the Office of the President (UCOP) in Oakland. The UC-AFT was ably represented by a team composed of Jared Campbell (UCD), Lise Snyder (UCLA), Tony Lin (UCI), Gwido Zlatkes (UCR), Ken Lyons (UCSC), Miki Goral (Chief Negotiator Emerita), Maria Elena Cortez (UC-AFT Executive Director), and Mike Rotkin (UC-AFT Chief Negotiator). The University Administration was represented by a similar size team with a number of Assistant Library Directors (AULs) and Labor Relations reps from various campuses, a Labor Relations Manager from UCOP, and Peter Chester as Chief Negotiator. There were no University Librarians (ULs) on their team.

The only article that is open for discussion and modification in current bargaining is Salaries. We understand through informal channels that any decisions about changes to the salary scale will ultimately be controlled by the ULs rather than, as in some past years, by UCOP. But that is a rumor, not a certainty.

After agreeing to fairly standard ground rules for bargaining – essentially the same rules as those adopted in Unit 18 Lecturer bargaining – the Union presented its opening proposal. We provided the Administration with charts and tables demonstrating that UC Librarian pay lags behind CSU compensation by about 20%, with essentially each rank at UC paid at the level of the lower rank at CSU campuses. So, for example, UC Associate Librarians are paid comparable to CSU Assistant Librarians, and so on. We also presented charts that show that now each UC campus pays its Librarians less than Librarians make at the Community College District in their community.

We outlined our argument that these pay differentials are now leading to problems related to recruitment and retention of Librarians on most UC campuses and promised to bring back more concrete examples at our next bargaining session on June 21. While there is abundant evidence of such problems at most UC campus libraries, with failed searches and “work arounds” to facilitate hiring people into positions that are not consistent with their professional training or experience, at the bargaining table, the Administration continues to argue that there are no problems with recruitment or retention in the UC Libraries. We promised to come back on June 21, with more concrete examples from various campuses related to these issues.

We also presented a chart showing the decline in UC’s standing among American Research Libraries, and we made it clear that we believe it is not only Librarians who are being underpaid, but that the UC libraries as institutions are being starved within the UC budget. We then presented the Union’s opening demands, which include a new salary scale with increases at every step, an additional increase to offset new health and retirement costs that come out of take home pay for Librarians, the removal of the “Barrier Step” which ties increases to the upper steps in the Librarian Rank to Distinguished Librarian status, and a removal of the current provision in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU or Contract) that allows UC to withhold paying merit increases while the Salary Article is being bargained. This provision has no logic other than providing the UC Administration with a club to hold over the head of Librarians who have the temerity to exercise our right to bargain for wage increases.

The union made it clear that our proposal was an opener for discussion and that we remained flexible about what it might take to settle this contract. However, we clearly signaled that we need evidence that UC is prepared to move pay for Librarians towards comparability with CSU salaries – salaries to which UC Librarian pay used to compare favorably.

The tone of bargaining was professional and cordial, with the Administration reps consistently stating their belief that Librarians do essential work at UC and that their approach to bargaining is governed more by the issue of available resources than any belief that UC Librarians are adequately paid or overpaid. The Administration’s opener was one paragraph, saying, in effect, they will consider pay increases consistent with UC resources, which are dependent on the State budget and its contribution to UC. The Administration presented a chart demonstrating the declining support for UC in the State budget over the past several years.

Finally, we discussed the Information Request failed two weeks ago by the UC-AFT, which seeks detailed information about compensation increases received in recent years by Library Administrators. We included a list of several different types of “perks” that many of our members believe have been showered on top administrators despite the ostensible budget crisis being faced by UC. At first, the Administration argued that we could only obtain such information by paying for it by the page, through a public records request, but we argued strenuously that such information is necessary for us to represent our members in bargaining. The Administration promised to quickly get back with their response to our Request and our arguments.

We ended by confirming our June 21 bargaining date in Oakland and lining up one or two additional bargaining dates in early July.

We know that this is a difficult time to be bargaining with the UC Administration over salaries. Everyone is aware that the State is planning to cut its funding of UC somewhere between a half a billion and a billion dollars this coming year. On the other hand, UC appears to have sufficient resources to fund salary and other compensation increases during the current “budget crisis” for several other units, including obscene increases for many top administrators both inside and outside of the UC libraries. The number of professional Librarians at UC has dramatically declined over the past couple of years, which has resulted in both huge workload increases for those Librarians and others in the UC libraries. But this also means that UC has rather large salary savings from those who have separated from UC, particularly the large numbers of long-time Librarians, with relatively high pay, who have retired and not been replaced. We will be working to turn those salary savings into pay increases for current Librarians who are still working and taking up the workload left behind by those who have separated.

Any member of Unit 17 seeking additional information about Librarian bargaining can contact me, Mike Rotkin, at mrotkin@ucaft.org or on my cell phone at 831=345-8469.

Mike Rotkin

Chief Negotiator for Unit 17

UC-AFT