Fw: UC Strike Authorization (fwd)

[Frances Bolton (PHI)]

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> _
> Academic Student Employees Turn out in Massive Numbers to 
> Authorize System-wide Strike at UC
> 
> June 4, 1998 -- In balloting that ended Wednesday, members of 
> academic student employee unions throughout the University of 
> California voted by an 87% landslide to authorize a system-wide 
> strike next fall if the administration does not recognize the 
> unions and agree to begin collective bargaining with teaching 
> assistants, readers and tutors.
> 
> More than twice as many academic student employees (ASEs) took 
> part in the balloting as in any previous strike authorization. 
> Some 4,221 members of academic student employee unions affiliated 
> with the United Auto Workers (UAW) took part in the vote. There 
> are a total of about 7,500 academic student employees on the seven 
> UC campuses where balloting took place.
> 
> Votes were held at the Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los 
> Angeles, Riverside, Irvine and San Diego campuses of the UC. AGSE/ 
> UAW members at UC Davis expect to hold a strike authorization vote 
> in the coming months.
> 
> Union activists emphasized the strength demonstrated by the large 
> strike vote. "This strike will be much larger and significantly 
> more disruptive than any action we have taken before," said Ted 
> Levine, of the Coalition of Academic Student Employees (CASE/UAW - 
> Riverside). "But our demand is the same: recognition of our col- 
> lective bargaining rights."
> 
> The vote authorizes the leadership of each campus union to call a 
> strike next fall, if the university administration does not recog- 
> nize the unions, but it does not make a strike inevitable.
> "We have exercised great restraint," said Ricardo Ochoa, President 
> of the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW - Berkeley). 
> "We have tried to meet with campus chancellors; over 5000 of our mem- 
> bers sent letters to state and federal legislatures; we have employed 
> short rolling strikes in order to avoid a serious disruption of under- 
> graduate education. But the university has so far refused to budge."
> 
> The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has verified 
> that a majority of the 9,000 ASEs on all UC campuses have selected 
> UAW-affiliated unions to represent them in collective bargaining. 
> And PERB has said that the University administration may grant 
> recognition to the unions at any time. The UC's denial of collec- 
> tive bargaining rights led to 25 days of strikes on 5 UC campuses 
> during the 1996-97 school year. The University administration has 
> engaged in 14 years of litigation at PERB, costing millions of 
> taxpayer dollars.
> 
> The ASE unions have been winning on the legal front, despite the UC's 
> extravagant use of lawyers and public money. The PERB board, the final 
> level of appeal, on April 24 upheld an earlier ruling that teaching 
> associates, readers and tutors at UC San Diego are employees and are 
> 
> entitled to collective bargaining rights under the Higher Education 
> Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA).
> 
> As a result, PERB ordered an election to take place June 3 and 4 
> at UC San Diego to determine whether the Association of Student 
> Employees (ASE/UAW - San Diego) will be certified as the workers' 
> collective bargaining agent.
> 
> "The PERB decision was great news," said Anthony Navarette, spokes- 
> person for ASE/UAW - San Diego. "But we have never relied entirely 
> on the legal system to guarantee our rights. We have always concen- 
> trated on winning recognition by building on the power of our member- 
> ship with protests, letter-writing campaigns, and strikes."
> 
> The university administration vindicated the unions' strategy of 
> not relying on judicial avenues alone when it announced in a legal 
> filing last month that it would refuse to abide by the legally- 
> mandated election if ASE/UAW is certified. The UC San Diego admin- 
> istration said that even if academic student employees voted in favor 
> of representation by ASE/UAW, it would refuse to bargain collectively, 
> as it would be required to do under HEERA.
> 
> "The University administration has announced that they will break 
> the law in order to keep academic student employees from exercising 
> our rights," said David Kamper, an activist with the Student Associ- 
> ation of Graduate Employees (SAGE/UAW - Los Angeles). "But, the 
> University of California works because we do. If the administration 
> continues to refuse to recognize us, we'll have to show them what 
> that means."
>