Public Sector Unions Fight Budget Woes in California

The strains on public budgets in California are emboldening officials to come after union workers, producing rumblings of dissent throughout the state. Teachers in Los Angeles voted for an illegal one-day walkout May 15 to protest thousands of threatened layoffs, but after a court issued an injunction they chose to picket instead. University workers in Berkeley held their own one-day strike a week earlier.

Meanwhile, five of six budget proposals failed to pass on California's May 19 statewide ballot. The proposals were Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed solution to a budget shortfall now projected to reach $21 billion.

California unions looked to sway voters by spending millions of dollars and sending members to knock on doors before the vote. The California Teachers Association (NEA) launched ads in favor, hoping to stem threats to lay off thousands of teachers. But many other public worker unions said they would hook the state into long-term austerity measures.

Almost 75 percent of teachers in LA approved the walkout after school officials decided to spread federal stimulus money over two years, which could necessitate 4,000 teacher lay offs and bulked-up class sizes.

Teachers denounced the school district’s spending on office redecoration and meetings at pricey hotels, noting that layoffs would hit hardest among young teachers of color in the district’s poorest schools.

STRIKE AT BERKELEY

While the state’s budget is in dire straits, the budget of the University of California is not. The university system has more than enough in reserves to weather current shortages in state funding, but instead has tried to balance the UC budget by attacking the livelihoods of UC workers and increasing the fees of students. UC regents approved another undergraduate fee hike of 9.3 percent on May 7—and at the same meeting handed a 27 percent pay increase to a new chancellor.

More than 400 top UC executives make more than $200,000 annually, a group that has tripled in recent years.

Protesting the regents’ decision to stall negotiations, members of Local 1 of the University Professional and Technical Employees, UPTE-CWA 9119, conducted a one-day strike at the Berkeley campus and at the president’s office in Oakland.

UPTE represents 11,000 technicians, researchers, and health care professionals statewide. The Coalition of University Employees, representing about 20,000 clerical workers, is in negotiations now, too.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

The unions note that the regents used similar stalling tactics with AFSCME service workers and CNA nurses, and continue to treat UC-AFT librarians this way in their negotiations.

Moving people to take concerted actions like a strike during these hard times takes a lot. So when AFSCME workers led a similar week-long strike last July, ultimately winning a contract in January, UPTE members—who participated in solidarity efforts with AFSCME workers—realized what kind of fight was needed to beat UC’s stalling.

UPTE's one-day strike at Berkeley kept about three-quarters of technical and professional workers off the job. Photo: Travis Pynn.

Of the 500 research and technical members in Local 1, more than 180 joined the picket lines and an estimated 150 to 200 stayed home that day. This means 70-80 percent of members did not show up to work.

Strong support from the community further bolstered the picket lines. More than 100 students, faculty, other union members, and community allies joined the lines in solidarity.

The message spread by AFSCME’s strike last July didn’t reach all UC campus locals, though. Others were not as involved in the weeklong strike, partly due to concerns by the union’s statewide leadership over a court’s injunction. The court order led UPTE’s systemwide board members to withdraw their offer of solidarity “gift” checks to members who walked the picket lines. Instead, they encouraged members to join the lines before work or at lunch.

Many Local 1 members honored the picket lines anyway.

In UPTE’s current negotiations, UC management has cancelled bargaining sessions, harassed elected union bargainers (in two cases threatening layoff and dismissal), and implemented workplace changes without bargaining.

One of the goals of the strike was to get Victor Dorsett, an elected bargainer from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, reinstated. He was.

The strike also generated interest from UPTE members at other UC campuses. Two large campuses, San Diego and San Francisco, have reported healthy increases in the numbers of strike pledges being signed by their members.

While good-faith bargaining by UC remains out of sight, the strike built ties to other unions, student groups, political leaders, and community groups, enhancing the solidarity needed to take all California’s university workers to our destination—fair contracts.

Tanya Smith is president of UPTE Local 1 at the University of California Berkeley.