UNDER PRESSURE

Amid contract negotiations, the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), representing library assistants and other clerical workers, will file unfair-labor-practices charges against the University of California in an attempt to stop what the union sees as attempts at union busting, say CUE officials.

The complaint is based on what union leaders say are multiple instances of university officials threatening workers with disciplinary action if they missed work the day of a strike, which CUE says amounts to retaliation and intimidation. It will be filed within the next couple of days.

One such instance arose out of a situation at the Early Childhood Education Center (ECEC) at UCSD. On April 14, the union representing the university's service workers went on strike hoping for a wage increase. Sympathetic to the cause, CUE members, including 15 teachers at the center, stayed home or joined the picket line.

On May 24, more than a month later, the university sent letters to the teachers notifying them that they would be docked five days pay for their one-day absence. The timing of the discipline was suspect because it came just two days before another strike was scheduled to take place on campus, said Christian Hertzog, a steward for CUE's San Diego chapter.

“It seems completely like intimidation and retaliation to us because if they wanted to discipline those people, why did it take them a month to do?” he said.

CityBeat obtained a copy of one of the letters, signed by ECEC program director Kathryn Owen, which informed its recipients that their absence was unauthorized and resulted in serious disruption to the ECEC's childcare services. “Please be advised that if you engage in similar conduct in the future, you are subject to additional discipline, up to and including dismissal,” Owen wrote.

Molly Brasted, one of the ECEC teachers who went on strike that day, said she was warned that there would be consequences for missing work on April 14 but did not expect the discipline to be so strong.

Hertzog filed 14 grievances related to the threatened discipline, one for each teacher still on the job. One teacher who went out on strike on April 14 retired shortly after receiving the letter.

University of California spokesperson Noel Van Nyhuis said any discipline the teachers incurred was not an attempt to retaliate against their union activities but a normal and justified reaction to an employee who inexcusably did not show up to work.

“Any employee is free to support any cause that they wish,” he said. “However we do have attendance policies and whatever their reason for missing work, if it is an unexplained absence and an unplanned absence, then they are subject to discipline.”

Because of state regulations requiring teachers to have certain credentials and health exams, the center could not be staffed adequately in time and children had to be turned away because of the lack of qualified supervision.

CUE and university officials were closer to coming to an labor agreement after the last bargaining session, which ended June 23, said Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie, CUE's chief negotiator, but she said the university's actions could have an effect on negotiations. “It is important to realize that the actions that the university takes away from the table do affect what happens at the table because quite often these acts of retaliation just continue a climate of labor unrest and, quite frankly, our constituents are not happy with what they see,” she said.

CUE held its own strike on June 13, making it the third union to do so in two months.

A major source of disagreement between the union and the university lies in the legitimacy of the strikes themselves. Van Nyhuis said all three strikes were unlawful because they took place during negotiations. CUE leaders counter that the union's strike was related the 2003-2004 contract and not the pact currently being negotiated.

The university's clerical workers have not had a pay increase since Oct. 1, 2002.

In the latest proposal, the university offered a 12-percent increase over a three-year period beginning this fiscal year, pending the availability of state funding. ECEC teacher Brasted and others at the union say the latest offer is unacceptable because it still means they went three years without a pay hike.

“I love working there,” she said, noting the good benefits she receives. “But I can't buy food with my insurance money.”

Van Nyhuis said the university agrees that its workers need more compensation, but it has not been able to afford the raises thanks to state financial woes. One-third of the money needed to offer a wage increase to workers would come from the state while the university would cover the other two-thirds.

“[The union] is trying to imply that UC has $20 million sitting in a pot, and that just simply isn't true,” Van Nyhuis said, responding to union statements that the university's share should still go to workers. “We rely on state funding to govern our ability to offer system-wide wage increases because it's our single largest source of guaranteed revenue.”

The university's contribution would have come from its departmental budgets, and those departments would have had to adjust their budgets through fee increases or other means to meet the level of increase. But when state funding was not received, the university could not require its departments to adjust their budgets accordingly, Van Nyhuis said.

Meanwhile, UC workers are paid much less than those in the same positions at California State University schools, which are 72 percent state-funded. According to a February 2005 fact-finding report done by a neutral arbitrator, some classifications of UC administrative assistants earn approximately 22.7 percent less than those at comparable CSU positions. Library assistants make 33 percent less than their CSU counterparts.