CSUEU E-News: March 3, 2011
Biweekly news digest from the California State University Employees Union
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CONTRACT BARGAINING NEWS
JOINT LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE CONFIRMS CSU BUDGET CUTS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MAKES NOISE AT CAPITOL RALLY
WISCONSIN: IT'S THE BIG CHEESE
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETS IN SACRAMENTO
CESAR CHAVEZ DAY POSTER
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Contract Bargaining News
By Russell Kilday-Hicks, VP for Representation
CSUEU is continuing the comprehensive member survey to allow its represented employees to guide CSUEU decisions over the next six months as we bargain a new contract, face state budget deficits, and organize for the planned special election in June. Honest, complete answers to all questions will help CSUEU ensure that our members are represented accurately and effectively.
The survey covers:
• Bargaining – Feedback on bargaining priorities
• Legislation – Feedback on the union’s 2010 November state election campaign
• Organizing – Feedback on chapter involvement
More than 3,000 represented employees have already taken the survey (we are reading the hundreds of comments included with the survey). If you aren’t among them, we would greatly appreciate receiving your response. Take the survey and encourage all the represented employees at your chapter to do the same! Hard copy versions in both English and Spanish are available from your chapter leaders.
The bargaining team has started visiting all campuses for presentations on contract negotiations. At this point, most campuses have either hosted or scheduled “listening tour” bargaining presentations. Here are dates and locations for the remaining scheduled events:
• 316 San Luis Obispo March 7
• 307 San Jose March 8
• 310 Bakersfield March 10
• 322 Monterey March 14
• 313 Chancellor’s Office March 15
• 312 Northridge March 16
• 314 Dominguez Hills March 21
• 318 San Diego March 24
• 319 Pomona March 24
• 315 Long Beach March 25
• 324 Channel Islands March 30
• 321 San Marcos April 7
The Bargaining Team has just agreed on the following tentative bargaining dates and locations with CSU management:
• April 26–28 Fresno
• May 3–5 Los Angeles
• May 17–19 Sacramento
• June 7–9 San Diego
• June 13–16 San Jose
• June 28–30 Fullerton
• July 5–7 San Francisco
• July 13–15 Long Beach
The Bargaining Team/Representation Committee is keeping busy with mitigating layoffs and providing bargaining units 12 (Head Start workers administered through San Francisco State University) and 13 (ESL instructors at Cal State Los Angeles) with steward training and preparing for the full-contact sport of full-contract bargaining.
On the layoffs front, good news came from CSU Stanislaus last week, when two layoff notices were rescinded just days before mitigation discussions were set to begin. As these were the only notices at Stanislaus, this marks a 100 percent success rate for mitigating layoffs at the campus!
Joint Legislative Committee Confirms CSU Budget Cuts
On February 25, the Budget Conference Committee acted to confirm Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed higher education cuts, which include a $500 million reduction to the CSU’s 2011-12 budget.
The committee, made up of five members of each house, has been meeting to work out the differences between the Assembly and Senate versions of the budget bill. The meetings are part of the annual budget process, which has been expedited this year to meet the governor’s request for a completed budget by March 10.
The accelerated pace is based on the governor’s proposal for a special election in June for voters to approve an extension of the personal income tax and state sales tax, as well as the vehicle license fee, due to expire by June 30. The tax extensions and other tax changes will provide over $12 billion in revenue to help the state close an estimated $26 billion deficit.
If the governor cannot garner the two-thirds vote from the legislature needed for the special election, or if the election is held and voters reject the tax extensions, the CSU may face additional significant reductions.
The current proposed budget cut of $500 million would drop the CSU’s level of state support to just under $2.3 billion, the same level of support it received more than a decade ago, but the university is now serving nearly 70,000 more students.
Read the CSU’s complete March 1 announcement about this development.
Board of Directors Makes Noise at Capitol Rally
On Saturday, February 26, more than 1000 people gathered on short notice at the Sacramento Capitol to show strong support for unions in Wisconsin. Prominent among them were CSUEU Board of Directors members, who took a break from their BOD meeting a few blocks away to show their support.
And show they did! Bearing signs and banners—and led by fired-up, megaphone-armed chant leader and CSU San Marcos chapter President Mike Geck—they made sure everyone knew CSUEU was in the house.
At the mic, the speaker program ended with CSUEU President Pat Gantt, whose rousing speech got everyone in the crowd roaring with approval. You can see a video of the speech and 100-plus photos of the event at the CSUEU Facebook page. Photos are also available in the CSUEU web site’s Photo Gallery.
In his comments at the rally and in a presentation at the BOD earlier in the day, Gantt pointed out that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker created most of his state’s budget mess with large tax breaks when he first was elected.
Wisconsin unions, he said, have already agreed to cuts in health and pension benefits. Further, the dismantling of collective bargaining, as proposed in Walker’s state budget plan, would eliminate the role of unions in political races as well as employee representation.
“Threats like this are more about destroying the public sector and all social programs, including public education, than balancing the budget,” said Gantt. “Corporations don’t want a public or voters who are educated about workers’ rights.”
The rally was part of a wave of demonstrations supporting embattled state and local government workers across the country in late February. From Juneau to Boston and dozens more cities, activists and supporters took to their state capitals in a vibrant and unscripted surge of solidarity.
The spark: tens of thousands of Wisconsin state workers and their supporters were demonstrating around, and even occupying, the state capitol building in Madison in steadfast opposition to Gov. Walker’s effort to strip them of collective bargaining rights—rights they had enjoyed for 50 years.
Walker was stymied in his attempt to advance his union-busting bill when Wisconsin Senate Democrats left the state, denying the Senate the quorum necessary to vote on the measure. Walker claimed the law was necessary to help balance the state budget, but when unions said they would except the wage and benefit cuts he demanded, he still insisted on an end to collective bargaining.
A February 19-20 poll by Greenberg/Quinlan/Rosner shows that Walker’s standing is poor and that most Wisconsin voters agree with the unions and public employees:
- A majority (51 percent) of Wisconsin voters disapproves of Walker’s job performance
- A majority offers a favorable view of public employees (62 percent favorable; 11 percent unfavorable) and labor unions (53 percent favorable; 31 percent unfavorable)
- In this current dispute, voters side with the public employees (67 percent), the protesters (62 percent), and the unions (59 percent)
- In contrast, 53 percent disagree with Walker and 46 percent disagree with the Republicans in the legislature
A large majority (74 percent) opposes taking away collective bargaining rights from public workers after they have accepted wage and benefit cuts.
Solidarity from coast to coast includes ordinary Americans, famous Americans and athletes like the Green Bay Packers, who issued a statement of solidarity with Wisconsin workers early on in this fight. Read more about their statement in this article on the AFL-CIO web site.
The New York Times recently editorialized that “Republican talk of balancing budgets is cover for the real purpose of gutting the political force of middle-class state workers.” This CNN.com analysis concludes that Walker “overreached” in his move to ban collective bargaining as part of his budget bill.
Watch an in-depth MSNBC analysis of the attack on state workers. Starting around the three-minute mark of this 12-minute segment, which was broadcast last week, the moderator provides some fascinating and pertinent statistics.
Read CSUEU's new “Claims vs. the Facts on Public Workers” web page for suggested ways to discuss the false, misleading claims being made by those who want to end collective bargaining for state workers.
Read San Francisco State University member George Machun’s February 24 letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in defense of public sector unions.
“We need our elected leaders to work together to create jobs and strengthen our economy,” says Gantt, “not wage partisan attacks on middle class families to score political points with big donors.”
Wisconsin: It's the Big Cheese
by Ray Finnell, Chair, Communications Committee
Wisconsin law requires the presence of 20 senators to vote on expenditures. Republicans occupy 19 seats; Democrats hold the remaining 14. But guess how many Democrats haven’t attended a Senate session since the budget was scheduled to come up for vote? That’s right: 14.
Republican Governor Scott Walker accuses the opposition party senators of “hiding out” in another state to avoid doing their jobs. Northern Illinois is rumored to be the retreat of choice. In their absence, though, the opposition party has been working on legislation and passing their pet projects with a vengeance, since they hold the simple majority.
The state surely has budget problems, as do most. A $3.6 billion deficit seems like small change to Californians, but considering that only 5.7 million hardy souls live in that mostly frigid state, it’s significant. Their entire budget is about equal to California’s deficit.
So what’s the big deal? Northern Illinois must be a nice place, but why would 14 Democrats leave all those cows for...more cows? And why would tens of thousands of protesters brave freezing temperatures, snow and ice, and the risk of reprimand or worse to stand against the governor’s proposed budget?
For once in recent years, a handful of lawmakers seem to be doing right by union workers. Walker not only proposes severe cuts to programs, but he wants to take away most public employees’ rights to collective bargaining for health care and pensions, plus many other basic bargaining rights.
The combined impact on workers’ paychecks is estimated to be a net loss of about 8 percent.
Read Finnell’s entire essay about Wisconsin.
Board of Directors Meets in Sacramento
The Executive Officers and Board of Directors met over four days, February 24-27, to discuss current union issues on behalf of represented employees. The Executive Officers met on Thursday, February 24, committee meetings took place on Friday, and the Board of Directors met in closed session on Friday evening and in all-day public sessions on the weekend. Saturday included Bargaining Unit Council meetings, and a Chapter Presidents Caucus meeting took place on Sunday morning.
The next BOD meeting is set for June 24-26 in Oakland.
Cesar Chavez Day Poster
The Communications Committee has produced a striking poster in honor of Cesar Chavez, featuring a photo of the legendary farm worker organizer taken by CSUEU staffer John Watson back in 1985. Limited quantities have been sent to each chapter for distribution well in advance of Cesar Chavez Day on March 31.
The committee plans to produce at least two posters annually beginning this year, with a new poster themed to the women’s movement tentatively set for the fall.
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