Thursday, February 28, 2008
Bargaining Update #6-- February 22, 2008
Library Bargaining Update for February 22, 2008
The teams met in Oakland at the UCOP offices in the Kaiser Building. Both teams had most members present. We began with a long caucus to allow the UC-AFT team to discuss how to handle the impact of the State budget on our economic demands. The UC-AFT does not accept the University’s long-held position that funding for salaries and other economic needs of its employees can only come from the State budget. While clearly the State budget is in trouble, the University’s overall collection of unrestricted funds continues to grow exponentially. They simply choose not to spend all of those funds on their employees (with the exception of the executive class).
However, we may want to agree that at least until the State budget is settled, it will be difficult for the University to make significant proposals with respect to the salary increases and other economic changes necessary to close the gap between UC Librarian salaries and salaries at CSU and even community colleges in California. The two parties will soon be discussing how to handle bargaining our economic issues in the context of the State budget crisis.
Bargaining was cordial and we came to tentative agreement on two articles that commit the University to important duties and processes for dealing with medical disabilities. We also exchanged counter proposals on a number of non-economic and less critical articles. The parties are coming closer together in some of these areas.
There is not a great deal of progress to report, but so far things are slowly moving forward. Our next bargaining session will be on Monday, March 3, 2008 at UC Irvine.
Mike Rotkin
Chief Negotiator for Unit 17
UC-AFT
The teams met in Oakland at the UCOP offices in the Kaiser Building. Both teams had most members present. We began with a long caucus to allow the UC-AFT team to discuss how to handle the impact of the State budget on our economic demands. The UC-AFT does not accept the University’s long-held position that funding for salaries and other economic needs of its employees can only come from the State budget. While clearly the State budget is in trouble, the University’s overall collection of unrestricted funds continues to grow exponentially. They simply choose not to spend all of those funds on their employees (with the exception of the executive class).
However, we may want to agree that at least until the State budget is settled, it will be difficult for the University to make significant proposals with respect to the salary increases and other economic changes necessary to close the gap between UC Librarian salaries and salaries at CSU and even community colleges in California. The two parties will soon be discussing how to handle bargaining our economic issues in the context of the State budget crisis.
Bargaining was cordial and we came to tentative agreement on two articles that commit the University to important duties and processes for dealing with medical disabilities. We also exchanged counter proposals on a number of non-economic and less critical articles. The parties are coming closer together in some of these areas.
There is not a great deal of progress to report, but so far things are slowly moving forward. Our next bargaining session will be on Monday, March 3, 2008 at UC Irvine.
Mike Rotkin
Chief Negotiator for Unit 17
UC-AFT
# posted by Karen Sawislak : 6:41 PM
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