Bargaining

Colleagues:

We had our second bargaining session today, at UC-Irvine. The tone was again very collegial, and the teams worked collaboratively on a number of important issues, including layoff, grievance, arbitration, and discipline and dismissal.  We approached these articles by setting aside any possibly contentious issues within each of them, and working towards an agreement on those changes that each side considers necessary. While we have not arrived at final contract language, we have identified areas where there is common ground, and identified how it is that the shared ideas can be translated into contract language. The UC team will bring many of these ideas back to their stakeholders on the campuses so that we can move forward in our discussion at the next session. The same could be said for some workload equity issues that we brought to the table.

28 February 2011

UC-AFT's team met earlier today with UC's team to discuss successor negotiations. After quickly agreeing to ground rules, each side presented its proposals, and answered questions that members of the other team had. It quickly became clear to everyone in the room that there were many shared areas of concern, which we hope can be addressed and solved relatively quickly. It also became clear to both sides that there were a few areas of more substantive disagreement (such as on layoff), which will take longer to resolve. Neither side presented its economic proposals and, given the current state of the state, we agreed to hold off on discussing these concerns until we made more progress on the non-economic issues. The mood was generally collaborative--and we have scheduled several additional bargaining sessions in March and April. Our goal will be to make progress in areas where we are in virtual agreement quickly, and then move on to thornier problems. The next bargaining session will be on 11 March 2011. We will send an additional bargaining update after that session. 

Alan Karras

Colleagues:

Bargaining is once again upon us; the current contract expires this summer.

UC-AFT and the University exchanged proposals last Friday, 28 January 2011. By mutual agreement, each side has agreed to participate in "interest based" bargaining. Put simply, this means that each side listed its desired contractual changes, by article, as well as the reasons for suggesting a change. We are hopeful that this will lead to an earlier consensus between UC-AFT and the University. Once consensus is reached on a particular article, the sides will jointly write contract language that captures their understandings.  We hope that by taking this approach neither side will become entrenched in particular language.

As you know, UC-AFT solicited feedback from the campuses before drafting its final proposals. If you are interested in seeing the proposals that have been exchanged, you can do so by following these links:

UC-AFT Proposals to UC (PDF)

For years, UC librarians' pay has lagged well behind that of librarians in the CSU and Community College systems. (See the graph posted previously.) In this round of bargaining over salaries and professional development funding, UC management has offered librarians nothing. Management's bargaining team's explanation is that "Librarians are not a priority at this time." Recently, UC librarians on the campuses have been circulating a petition to support equitable compensation. Now that same petition is available online at

Data collected in June 2008 clearly shows the salary disparity between librarians working in comparable positions in the UC and CSU systems.

In an ongoing effort to study undergraduate student writing, the College Writing Programs is undertaking a research project to collect written assignments from faculty teaching undergraduate courses throughout the campus. The purposes of this research are to gain an accurate sense of the range and types of writing demands that students face in their undergraduate careers at Berkeley and to develop a collection of assignments that can be used to guide faculty in their work with students.

In a report released this past Sunday, an independent fact finder recommends raises of almost 25% to bring salaries in line with those at comparable institutions. The CSU faculty, which includes librarians, are in the midst of bargaining and have already voted to strike if a settlement is not reached in the next ten days. The fact finder's report may be read at http://www.calstate.edu/bargaining-status.