CSUEU E-News: June 11, 2009
Biweekly news digest from the California State University Employees Union
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INFORMATION-GATHERING SESSION WITH CSU
POLLS SHOW VOTERS SUPPORT NEW REVENUES
SEIU TV AD CALLS FOR COMMON SENSE BUDGET
CSUEU REPRESENTS FOOD SERVICE WORKERS AT CSU SACRAMENTO
CSU CHICO CUSTODIANS PROTEST END OF NIGHT SHIFTS
CALPERS RESPONDS TO PENSION CLAIMS
WEB UPDATES
UPCOMING EVENTS
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Information-Gathering Session with CSU
On Tuesday, CSUEU President Pat Gantt, VP for Representation Dennis Dillon and SLRR Teven Laxer met with representatives of CSU management at the Office of the Chancellor on an information-gathering basis.
The context was a projected cut to the CSU budget of $583,816,000, the amount proposed by the governor in the May Revise and expected to be recommended by the Budget Conference Committee within the next week. This represents a staggering 13.5 percent cut to the budget.
The meeting made clear that the Chancellor is abiding by two key principles in dealing with this crisis: maintaining the best quality of education possible and saving as many jobs as possible. The conversation focused on different ways to deal with the budget shortfall, including the possibility of furloughs as a potential alternative to layoffs (the topic of furloughs is covered in the furloughs FAQ and is broached in the budget FAQ on the Budget Central page).
The CSUEU Board of Directors met by teleconference yesterday and voted to commission a scientific telephone poll of a representative number of members and fee payers for feedback on furloughs and related topics, scheduled to be completed within the next 10 days.
Polls Show Voters Support New Revenues
Proposition 1A failed in the May 19 special election because voters want real solutions and an end to political gimmicks, not because the measure extended tax increases, surveys conducted by two leading California research firms demonstrate.
The results of a David Binder Research poll, sponsored by SEIU, contradict the governor’s assertion that the defeat of Proposition 1A was a message that services provided to the people of California must be cut back yet further. The data clearly show that Californians are willing to pay the shared cost of supporting public universities and schools. In fact, fully 73 percent were opposed to higher education budget cuts.
The survey of 1000 California voters, conducted May 16 to May 20, reveals that voters are deeply distrustful of Sacramento’s elected leaders, with 74 percent of voters believing the special election is another example of the governor and legislature’s failure to do the job they were elected to do.
A second survey, conducted by the GarinHartYang Research Group and commissioned by the Fair Budget Coalition, reveals sentiments much like those in the Binder poll: California voters find cuts to education unacceptable and believe that voters haven’t been asked to carry their fair share of the burden during these difficult times. Results showed that voters are willing to support revenue increases and that they think further CSU and UC cuts are unacceptable.
“The record low turnout for a statewide special election clearly demonstrates that voters were not coming out with a message that they want to see all-out cuts,” said pollster David Binder. “The extension of tax increases was not cited by voters as a main reason they overwhelmingly rejected Prop 1A.”
The vast majority of surveyed voters said the state should balance both spending cuts and tax increases to address the state budget shortfall. Revenue options supported by a strong majority of voters include:
- Increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (75 percent support)
- Increasing taxes on tobacco (74 percent support)
- Imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil-producing state (73 percent support)
- Closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase (63 percent support)
- Increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from 9.3 percent to 10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to 11 percent for families with taxable incomes over $544,000 per year (63 percent support)
“The lesson is that Californians want to protect services the state provides and that they’re willing to explore revenue options to pay for those services,” Binder said. “They’re looking for a balanced approach that shares the burden and moves the state forward.”
Slides illustrating data from the Dave Binder survey: Reasons Prop. 1A Lost
Summary of the Dave Binder survey
Summary of the GarinHartYang survey
SEIU TV Ad Calls for Common Sense Budget
SEIU California Central Council began airing an ad across the state yesterday urging legislators and the governor to solve the $24 billion deficit with “balance, co-operation, and common sense.” The Council simultaneously launched a web site devoted to the state budget crisis, featuring the ad: www.commonsense4ca.org.
CSUEU Reps Food Service Workers at CSU Sacramento
In the late spring, CSUEU completed negotiations on behalf of nearly 20 food service workers who are not state employees but are instead employed by University Enterprises, Inc. (UEI), at CSU Sacramento. The workers voted to be represented by CSUEU last October after the reorganization of their former SEIU local. They signed the CSUEU-negotiated agreement with UEI in late April, and UEI in turn signed off on May 1.
“Even though these workers had rights to comparable pay under the Education Code, they’d fallen far behind pay scales for CSU workers in food service classifications,” explains Senior Labor Relations Rep Lois Kugelmass, who served as chief negotiator, “so the negotiations involved moving them back up to the scale.” The three-year agreement thus features across-the-board general salary increases of eight percent the first year, two percent the second year and four percent the third year. It also restores step increases retroactively to July 2007.
“The workers were extremely excited about joining CSUEU, and they unanimously ratified the contract,” says Kugelmass. “Kudos to the bargaining team: steward Roberta ‘Bobbie' Van Hill, member Nick Grant, and then-president of CSUS Chapter 303 Joseph Small.”
Standing in back (l-r): SLRR Lois Kugelmass, CSUS Chapter 303 President Kim Harrington, steward Bobbie Van Hill, and former chapter president Joseph Small. Photo by LRR Roni Jennings.
CSU Chico Custodians Protest End of Night Shifts
Custodians at CSU Chico mounted a picket line last month to protest the elimination of night shifts, which will inevitably lead to salary cuts. The tactic garnered a large feature article in the campus paper, The Orion, quoting steward Steven Stull and LRR Bill Patton extensively.
“Bill did a great job in organizing and representing the custodians. Their combined efforts resulted in the campus president meeting with them at 10:45 at night for over one hour,” says CSUEU President Pat Gantt. “Unfortunately, most other campuses have already eliminated custodial night shifts as a cost-saving measure, and this may be a harbinger of things to come as CSU budget cuts increase.”
CalPERS Responds to Pension Claims
CalPERS has added a new CalPERS Responds section to its web site, designed to provide answers to misinformation in the media and elsewhere about current topics related to the economic downturn, such as the claim that state workers receive unusually high pensions. The first posting, “Average Monthly Pensions,” explains that more than three quarters of CalPERS retirees receive annual pension benefits of $36,000 or less and that average pensions are actually about $23,808 a year.
To access the CalPERS Responds section at www.calpers.ca.gov, follow the links to the Press Room and then to the News Center.
Web Updates
The latest news about the CSU and state budget crises are now available at the just-launched Budget Central site, which includes links to a newly developed Furloughs FAQ and Budget FAQ and to English- and Spanish-language versions of the Know Your Rights flyer #10, dealing with layoffs.
Check out the 100+ photos of Lobby Day 2009 just posted to the Photo Gallery. Thanks to photographers Jacqueline Otis, Eduard Rosales and Steve Sloan for the great pix and to CSEA webmaster Steve Aunan for setting up the galleries.
Blue and yellow JPEGs of the CSUEU swoosh logo, augmenting the earlier all-black version, are now available for download from the Communications folder in the online Library (click on the plus sign to reveal the Branding/Logos subfolder).
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Monday, June 15, Noon
CSUEU Board of Directors Meeting via teleconference
Closed session
Friday-Sun, June 26-28
CSUEU Board of Directors Meeting
Millbrae (near SFO)
Tuesday July 7
Special Meeting of the CSU Board of Trustees to consider the budget crisis
Tuesday, July 21
CSU Board of Trustees Meeting
Long Beach
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See back issues of CSUEU E-News, distributed every other Thursday.
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