Unit 17 Bargaining Update #7 11-14-2012

Dear fellow librarians,

A small team (Mike Rotkin, Axel Borg, Miki Goral and Maria Elena Cortez) met with a team from UCOP on November 13 and 14 to work on language for a couple of key articles. The small team approach is designed to facilitate progress in negotiations. However, anything worked out in the small team meetings needs to be agreed to at the full bargaining table and ultimately ratified by the members. We made progress on Articles 4, 5, and 6, and are now much closer to tighter, cleaner, and clearer language on the procedures and criteria for merits and promotions. We hope that we can continue to move the negotiating process forward with all dispatch at our next session on December 7. 

We are now at a critical stage in negotiations and we need all of our members to show campus and library administrators how unfair we feel it is that they've withheld payment of merit increases. To that end, we are organizing two events between now and December 7th. 

During the last week of November we are asking that a small delegation of librarians from each campus meet with their University Librarian to express our dismay that the University has punished librarians by withholding payment of merits. And, for the first week of December, the 3rd through 7th, we are planning a 'sticker week'. Stickers are being prepared and we are asking that librarians wear these stickers each day of that week, which includes our next day of bargaining, Friday December 7.

Axel E. Borg