Personal Outreach Builds UPTE’s Ranks.

If you are a university employee in California, not only do you have the right to work, you also have the right to union representation. Last year CWA made its voice heard when AFL-CIO unions lobbied for a law that would require union-represented state employees in higher education to pay representation fees. Now, with that law in place, UPTE/CWA Local 9119 is dramatically increasing its membership by inviting all who benefit from representation to sign up for a fair share in determining their union’s agenda.
Since November, 2,300 eligible employees have joined the University Professional and Technical Employees, and the local is now on a fast track to achieve its potential of 11,000 members across nine campuses, one in-state national laboratory and five medical centers operated by the University of California.
“When it’s properly explained to them, researchers, technicians and health care professionals want to belong to our union,” said Jelger Kalmijn, president of Local 9119. “They understand that membership will give them a voice in how their money is spent and that by building solidarity we as a union will be in a stronger position to represent their interests.”
CWA District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler commended the local’s effort: “By building its membership base, UPTE/CWA will greatly increase its ability to make a positive difference in the lives of thousands of workers and dramatically change the institution for the better.”
UPTE/CWA’s accomplishments are a strong argument for joining. Local 9119 has negotiated three contracts covering 11,000 employees, bringing improvements in personnel policy, protecting both step and cost-of-living increases for research associates and technicians, and bringing researchers their first across-the-board pay increases in a decade.
UPTE/CWA members have won court battles, granting overtime pay to 8,000 UC employees. UC now pays those workers time-and-half for overtime and has paid millions of dollars in back-pay awards.
The local has stopped privatization of the UC-San Diego and UC-Irvine medical centers, and was instrumental in reversing the privatization of the UC-San Francisco medical center, which was returned to the university this spring.
In addition, UPTE/CWA has organized pressure from legislators and grant-makers to preserve high-quality research.

Fair Labor Law

In a joint effort with other AFL-CIO unions, Bixler last year assigned CWA Representa-tive Marie Malliett to work for passage of “Fair Share,” an amendment to the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, introduced in the California State Senate by its President John Burton and in the Assembly by then-Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. Malliette testified in both houses.
“We needed to be on a level playing field,” Malliett said. “The bill provided strength for the unions and eased the way for equal and productive labor relations with the University of California. There was not one employee of the university who came and testified against it.”
Concurrently, Malliett worked for passage of the “Definition of Employee” amendment, introduced by state Sen. Richard Polanco and Assembly Budget Committee Chair Denise Moren Ducheney.
Gov. Gray Davis signed both bills into law before the end of the fall session.
Definition of Employee deletes from the state code the requirement that an “employee” or “higher education employee” work primarily within the state of California. While UPTE/CWA already represents workers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the new law paves the way for union organizing campaigns among 8,500 employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, located in New Mexico, and another 230 Los Alamos lab employees who work elsewhere in the nation. UPTE/CWA is helping those employees form their own bargaining unit.
Fair Share provides that unions already representing employees of UC or the California State University system can now offset the cost of that representation by collecting “fair share” representation fees from all employees in the bargaining unit.
Armed with this new source of income since January, Local 9119 has hired 11 full-time and two part-time organizers to supplement four full-time organizers and one part-time organizer already on board. Working with local officers, they have trained scores of member volunteers to challenge a culture where management has used the ideal of academic freedom as a wedge to oppose union solidarity.
UPTE/CWA members have formed organizing committees at each UC facility and begun to talk one-on-one with co-workers, extending a personal invitation to join the union. In April they conducted a statewide retreat in San Diego to report their progress, share experiences and train members as “union builders.”

New Mind Set
One CWA leader who offered encouragement to the approximately 40 members and staff who attended the retreat was Brooks Sunkett, CWA vice president for public and health care workers.
“People think we have to constantly prove ourselves,” Sunkett told organizers. “What they lose sight of is that we build the organization with their help.”
“It’s the first time in UPTE’s history that we’ve been able to concentrate on getting our members out there to ask their co-workers to join,” said Lisa Morowitz, UPTE/CWA lead organizer. “We’re focusing not just on running our union but on building it.”
Because eligible employees sometimes work in isolated settings as well as larger departments and laboratories, it is especially important that members who know them urge them to join, Morowitz explained.
Carolan Buckmaster, a research associate and UPTE/CWA’s San Diego president, said the organizing committee on her campus meets at lunch time once a week to track assessments of eligible employees. They discuss how many members signed up the previous week and plot their growth on a chart, and each person gives a five-minute report on problems and successes.
“This is so we can learn from each other, and the less experienced can learn from the more experienced,” Buckmaster said.
The team of Buckmaster, Kalmijn, three paid organizers and volunteers signed up 295 new members from November through March. Buckmaster singled out consistent efforts by members Richard Kacmar and Steve Carter, two of about 10 volunteers.
“Most people we talk to agree that to join is just common sense since majority membership will give us strength in bargaining,” Buckmaster said.
UPTE/CWA technicians are preparing to bargain a three-year contract; researchers and health care workers are on one-year wage re-openers.
Results have been equally impressive at other locations.
“Our membership on the Riverside Campus has more than doubled since January, from 70 to 170,” said Ruby Miller, a member of the campus organizing committee. Along with Organizing Chair Frances Holzer, UPTE/CWA Riverside President Paul Robinson and Organizer Connie Belisle, she had just finished pulling together a rally of about 40 employees to present the workers’ point of view as university President Richard Atkinson testified before a State Assembly hearing. Such activities raise UPTE/CWA’s visibility and generate solidarity among current and prospective members.
“Most of the people on this campus have never dealt with a union before,” said Robinson. “We show them we have a contract and make sure they get one. We talk about the wage increases, layoffs — the whole range of the contract. Most important, we ask them to join. If you don’t ask them, they’re not going to.”
In addition to fighting for higher wages and job security, university employees have had to confront problems such as racism, sexism and health and safety hazards, said District 9 Organizing Coordinator Libby Sayre.
“The university has operated in an atmosphere of union avoidance and union busting,” she continued. “They’re going to have to wake up and smell the coffee and realize that unions are here to stay.”