Thursday, November 7, 1996
SAGE:
Judge’s support secured; union ready to strike if rights
deniedBy the SAGE Executive Board
In a decision issued Sept. 13, a judge has affirmed what the
Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE/UAW) has been
saying all along: Teaching assistants (TAs), readers and tutors are
entitled to collective-bargaining rights under the Higher Education
Employer-Employee Relations Act.
For years, the refrain from administrators has been that they
had to await the legal decision  that the matters were in
"litigation," that their hands were effectively tied until a
decision was rendered. That was never really true because the
university was free to recognize the collective-bargaining rights
of Academic Student Employees (ASEs) voluntarily at any time. What
the legal case was about was whether the university was compelled
to recognize ASEs’ collective-bargaining rights. Public Employment
Relations Board (PERB) administrative law Judge James Tamm ruled
that, absent an appeal, the university does have to recognize the
collective bargaining rights of TAs, readers and tutors. To that
end, Tamm issued an order that "an election will be conducted by
the PERB regional director unless the university grants voluntary
recognition" to SAGE/UAW.
Tamm’s decision rejects a number of the key aspects of the
university’s argument that extension of collective bargaining
rights is not appropriate for ASEs and would substantially harm the
academic mission of the university. Repudiating university
arguments that collective bargaining would promote strife and
disruption on campus, Tamm writes that collective bargaining "will
not only help develop a more harmonious and cooperative labor
management relationship, but will encourage the pursuit of
excellence in teaching, research and learning through the free
exchange of ideas among the faculty, students and staff."
In addition, Tamm disposes of the university’s claims that the
services provided by these employees are only "incidental" and are
far outweighed by the educational benefits that they receive
through the experience of working in these jobs.
For example, Tamm writes, "The evidence is quite clear that
without the services currently provided by graduate student
instructors (GSIs: TAs, teaching associates and teaching fellows),
the university would not be able to accommodate undergraduate
programs. Professors would not be able to teach large lecture
courses. Undergraduates would receive very little personal
attention … In short, the university’s teaching mission would
suffer irreparable harm without the services currently provided by
GSIs." Tamm seems to recognize what SAGE members have long known:
The university works because we do.
The ruling also contained some disappointing news for SAGE/UAW.
Not included in the order for an election are graduate student
researchers (RAs). Tamm ruled that RAs were not employees with
bargaining rights under state law.
This follows a national trend on the issue  seven of eight
states which have certified ASE collective bargaining rights under
state law cover the teaching jobs but not the research jobs. Still,
SAGE/UAW has consistently advocated the collective bargaining
rights of all ASEs and thus the union leadership was disappointed
by this decision’s exclusion of RAs from the order for an election.
In the interests of promoting labor peace at UCLA, respecting the
legal decision of Tamm, and stemming the university’s excessive
spending on the legal case, however, the SAGE Executive Board has
decided not to appeal Tamm’s decision and is calling on the
university to do the same. SAGE is exploring alternative options
for meeting the employment needs of RAs rather than pursuing the
issue through litigation.
A resolution of litigation is what administrators have been
saying that they’ve been awaiting before they act. Tamm has now
provided that. Now, Chancellor Charles Young, Vice-Chancellor
Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and Associate Dean Robin Fisher need to
follow through on their commitments and stop wasting public funds,
potentially causing a disruption of undergraduate education.
A strike has been authorized already by the SAGE membership and
by the memberships of our sister unions at UC Berkeley and UC San
Diego if the university continues to refuse recognition for our
unions. A strike can be averted by the university’s decision to
abide by Tamm’s decision. More clearly than ever before, the ball
is in the university’s court and a strike has to be seen as the
direct and necessary result of the administration’s intransigence.
As Tamm writes in his decision, "The university’s denial of
bargaining rights to student employees has over the past decade
almost guaranteed the presence of strikes. As a policy to avoid the
disruption of work stoppages, denying collective-bargaining rights
to student employees has failed … It is well established in
California law that collective bargaining is seen as a method of
reducing the risk of strikes."
In the meantime, however, SAGE and its sister unions cannot and
will not sit idly by while the university mulls over its decision
and risks a strike. We will stand up and have an equal say about
the conditions of their employment  employment to which they
devote a considerable amount of themselves and which is fundamental
to the university’s educational mission.
At the same time, unions will be simultaneously applying as much
direct pressure as possible to encourage the university to accept
Tamm’s decision. These two endeavors must occur simultaneously so
that the university is made acutely aware of how dearly SAGE
members value their fundamental right to collective bargaining and
how painful and disruptive a strike would be for the entire
University of California system.
What that means for all SAGE members and supporters is that we
need to let Chancellor Young and his administrator colleagues know
that we want them to stop gambling with the university’s funds and
future and abide by Tamm’s ruling. In addition, we need to get
directly involved with SAGE’s strike preparations. We have a wide
variety of volunteer opportunities that only take an hour or so a
week. In addition to reinforcing solidarity across departments,
such involvement reaffirms what SAGE has always tried to be about:
empowering workers.