No to the parking pay cut proposal, Board of Directors endorses OccupyWallStreet, CSEA Women's Conference is a success, new poster honors Dolores Huerta, and more!   

As this October 13 Sacramento Bee article explains, a new report from UC Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education and Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics finds that state budget woes around the country have come from imploding housing markets and the Great Recession -- not public employee costs.   

In this thought-provoking October 9 New York Times opinion piece, Princeton University Professor of Economics Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2008, analyzes some of the more extreme negative responses to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Titled "Panic of the Plutocrats," the article attributes much of that response to the super-rich protecting their wealth and defending tax laws that benefit them.     

There's room for compromise on pension reform, and public employees support some reform strategies--that's the premise of this opinion piece in the October 9 edition of the San Jose Mercury News written by Dave Low, chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, a coalition of unions representing 1.5 million public employees.   

As detailed in this October 8 Sacramento Bee article, Gov. Brown has signed a bill restricting ballot initiatives to November ballots, when a higher proportion of Democrats turn out to vote. That's good news for labor in general and particularly for the potential defeat of the Paycheck Deception initiative, which (if its backers end up having enough valid signatures) would have gone on the June 2012 ballot but will now go on the November ballot.   

October 7, 2011: CSUEU stands in solidarity with our sisters and brothers occupying Wall Street.   

Bargaining team concludes three days of intense negotiations, be sure to understand any ballot initiative petitions before signing, the Occupy Wall Street movement hits a nerve, Sacramento Bee publishes top CSU salaries, and more!   

Negotiations Continue; Union Rejects CSU’s Parking Pay Cut Proposal and Attacks on Employment Security; Union Demands Movement Through the Salary Ranges and Protections Against Out-Sourcing   

On Monday, October 3, 2011, the CSUEU bargaining team firmly rejected management’s take-back proposals on Article 24 (Layoffs). The union characterized management’s proposals as an attack on job security and a last-minute monkey wrench to negotiations. The CSU/CSUEU contract expired on June 30, 2011, yet CSU did not make their Article 24 proposals until nearly three months later, the last session in September.   

Pat Gantt and Russell Kilday-Hicks address the CSU Board of Trustees meeting this week, new report shows the federal government pays twice as much to contractors as it would cost staffers to perform the same work, and more!