Collective Bargaining: Summary and Update

As you may have noted in the news, Governor Brown met behind closed doors with representatives of labor and management to try to iron out an acceptable collective bargaining bill for state employees. Although the UC Student Lobby felt it had assurances that student participatioin would not be written out of the bill, Governor Brown's meeting did not include a student representative and produced a bill which excluded students entirely from the collective bargaining process (partly at the insistence of John F. Henning, head of the California AFL-CIO). The Governor then presented this "compromise" to the Legislature, hoping that they would rapidly enact it.

The Student Lobby and the Student Body President's Council (SBPC) has never even taken the position that shtudents should be given a vote in collective bargaining. They have only requested full acess to discussions and all proposals exchanged between faculty and management, the inclusion of appropriate staff with whom to consult and the right to issue educational impact statements.

Although Jeff Hammerling, co-director of the UC Student Lobby offered to compromise on the previous stand of the SBPC, the Governor would have no part of it. However, when the Lobby and delegations of student officers from nearby UC campuses went back to the Legislature, they again secured the inclusion of students in the bill (as drafted by the Legislateve committees chaged with dealing with the issue).

Subsequently, Brown and Henning have suggested a compormise proposal that the Student Body Presidents Council in a meeting on June 27, 1975 did not feel was acceptable. (The versions of the BIll approed in the Legislative Committees are somewhat better than Brown's compromise).

The collective bargaining bills to date have permitted negotiations concerning all working conditions. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. However, students are not products or even merely consumers of education, they are co-producers. Consequently, students belong at the collective bargaining table if student interests are to be protected.

Governor Brown's "compromise" would exclude students from all negotiations concernin wages, fringe benefits, and other pecuniary terms, condtions, and benefits of employment of academic personnel. A student representative would be present for discussions concerned with "educational policy." However, as previous experience in issues cannot easily be discussed separatly. With no one else present in the negotiations, what is to prevent management from implicitly agreeing to changes in "educational policy" in exchange for lower wage-benefits package for faculty--at which time students would be called in to a tacit fait accompli? In collective bargaining negotiations without students in and Eastern state, one of the first things to happen was the abolition of student evaluation of teaching.

Some of the parties in the current discussion have urged students to trust them, i.e., that the student representative will be called in when non-pecuniary issues are being discussed. However, there seems to be little popensity on the part of others to trust students. Furthermore, in the case of California State College and University students, faculty wages and salaries may well ultimately be tied to the level of tuition.

One need not have a very long memory to recall how authorities in the late 60's complained mightily about student activism, all the while encouraging that students participate in the system. Ironically enough, now that students have begun to establish sturcutres to undertake such participation, there seems to be no concern whatever in faculty, administative, or gubernatorial quarters that at collective bargaining bill without full rights for student participation could make the past several years advances meaningless. Certainly the history of the University administartion and the Regents has shown that they do not, and would not, adequately represent student interests (these groups would represent management). Likely as not, the presence of students in active discussion at the collective bargaining table will allow students, faculty, and administration to find creative solutions ot longstanding problesm within the University. Students are urged to write Senator Nicholas Petris, who has been supportive but is also under pressure form labor, to thank him for his support, and Assemblyman John Miller, who has wavered considerably on the matter of student inclusion in collective bargaining.

In all of this, Labor is very concerned that student will be an initial opening for public or "consumer" representatives to be involved in collective bargaining for public employees.