Tentative Agreement Signed on Furlough Program for Unit 17 Librarians, by Mike Rotkin

Tentative Agreement Signed on Furlough Program for Unit 17 Librarians

At 8:30 pm on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, the UC-AFT Librarian Negotiating Team, representing Unit 17 Librarians, and the UC Administration agreed to a furlough program for Unit 17 Librarians. Before describing the details of the program, it is important to emphasize that the decision to recommend a furlough program to our Librarian members was based upon important contextual information:

1) The Negotiating Team had received extremely clear and virtually unanimous support from the librarians on every campus in support of a furlough program if the only other choice was for the University to impose layoffs in order to save the same amount of money from the Librarian Unit as will be saved by the furlough program.

2) The University Administration made it very clear, earlier in writing, and at the bargaining session on Wednesday, that the failure to accept a one-year furlough program would result in layoffs for Unit 17 Librarians. The layoffs would have taken one of two forms and might have varied from campus to campus in the UC system:

a) 100% layoffs for an unspecified period of time, i.e. temporary layoffs, for an undisclosed number of Unit 17 employees. While these employees probably would have been able to pay their own premiums and stay on UC benefit plans, service credit for benefits and retirement would have been directly affected, i.e. reduced.

b) Across the Board reductions in time at 6% for all of the Unit 17 employees on a campus. Unlike the proposed furlough program, the reductions would have affected base pay and service credit for benefit programs and retirement.

3) The UC-AFT and its Negotiating Team and the larger and more representative Bargaining Committee do not believe that the University needs to make the kind of draconian budget cuts that it is currently imposing on all of the campuses; however, we do believe that however wrong-headed the cuts are, that the University does have the legal right to impose layoffs of the kind described above on our members. So, in the end, our decision to accept a furlough program was primarily based upon our understanding that our members preferred such a program to the layoffs the University would otherwise impose upon them.

We did, however, successfully fight for a number of special provisions in how the furloughs will be implemented that benefit the members of the professional Librarian unit:

a) An agreement that the furlough program will exist for one year from the date of its start. If we are able to ratify the agreement before the end of September, the program will begin October 1 and the related salary reductions would be reflected in paychecks including November 1, 2009 through October 1, 2010.

b) An agreement to extend the recall and re-employment provisions in the Unit 17 MOU for an additional year;

c) An agreement allow furlough days to be used for sick time;

d) A written agreement that workload expectations and performance reviews shall take into account the work time lost to furloughs; and

e) An agreement to allow flexibility in the use of furlough days during campus closures, if the librarian has work that must be completed during the closure period.

We also had table talk in which we clarified:

a) That we can use existing contract language to get clarification of work assignments (Article 6);

b) That librarians cannot be told to drop all but Criterion 1 duties (Article 3), and

c) That Librarians can apply for the one-time lifting of the vacation cap if they cannot use all their vacation time due to furlough days (Article 20).

The actual agreement to which we tentatively agreed (pending a ratification vote of our members) is attached.

The discussions over the furlough took place in the context of a mediation session related to our current bargaining over salary and professional development funding (PDF). Because both parties agreed that the next year or so is not a good time for serious discussions of Librarian salaries we came very close to an agreement to postpone bargaining over salary and professional development funding until the conclusion of the furlough program. Such an agreement would have pushed further into the future the existing MOU (contract) and dates for openers and the end of the current contract and maintained all of the current provisions for salary, PDF, and all other articles in the current MOU. The agreement would have specified that the parties would resume facilitated bargaining with each party’s current bargaining positions as opening proposals. Because we have come closer together during the mediation process, we do not want to slide backward because of the postponement under discussion.

However, we were unable to resolve some important issues about layoff impacts, particularly in smaller library units – primarily on the UCB and UCLA campuses, so we have agreed to come back to another mediation session in the near future to try and resolve those issues and perhaps agree to postpone additional bargaining while the furlough program is in place. We did have some indication that the University’s team would try to find ways to address our concerns about the layoff impacts in small independent libraries on the campuses.

Ratification Process for Tentative Agreement

The tentative agreement signed on Wednesday will not be implemented unless it is ratified by a majority of the members of Unit 17. While the ratification process is underway, the two parties have agreed to not discuss this matter in public except with our members. So please do not publish any information about this matter in public media – again, except media directed solely to our members.

We will be arranging for a vote to be completed and reported to the University Administration before September 30, 2009. We will be announcing the times and locations to cast your ballots shortly, and there also will be a mail ballot option for those unit members who are unable to vote in person.

Before the vote is completed, there will be meetings on each campus to answer any questions that members have about the agreement and its impact on librarians. We will be also be scheduling an evening call-in session for anyone who cannot make the campus meetings.

In the meantime, questions about the agreement, its impact, and the context that led to it can be directed to Mike Rotkin at:

matlin@cruzio.com cell: 831-345-8469

I want to thank the members of the Negotiating Team who made this agreement possible:

Mitchell Brown, UCI, mcbrown1@gmail.com
Ken Firestein, UCD, kenfirestein@yahoo.com
Harrison Decker, UCB, harrison.dekker@gmail.com
Chimene Tucker, UCSB, ladychimene@yahoo.com
Kenneth Lyons, UCSC, kbplyons@cruzio.com
Steve Mitchell, UCR, yellowfinkelp@gmail.com
Lise Snyder, UCLA, dlcsnyder@ca.rr.com
Miki Goral, Negotiator Emerita, miki@ucaft.org
Karen Sawislak, Executive Director, UC-AFT, ksawislak@ucaft.org

Mike Rotkin, Chief Negotiator for Unit 17, matlin@cruzio.com