Monday, June 23, 2008

BUC 9 Report for June 21, 2008 Meeting

The Bargaining Unit Council 9 (BUC 9) met on June 21, 2008 at the Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach and Marina Hotel in Redondo Beach. Here is the Chair's report, with supplemental links at the end:

Library Services Specialist (LSS) Series

Some campuses are using LSS as job title already. LSS bargaining resumes August 19-21. The LSS bargaining report from May is online.

In-Range Progression (IRP) Update

Please advise employees who receive IRPs to check the amount in their paychecks. We're aware of a case where the employee was told she would receive a 3% IRP, and when she did the math the increase in her paycheck was actually only 2%. Human Resources at first insisted this was correct, and that she was only supposed to get a 2% increase because of the 1% SSI increase the employee received In February. This was corrected by a conversation with HR.

The funding for system-wide IRP's was enough for about 1,000 IRP's, at 3% each. We're just starting to get information back on IRP's, and who received them. Teven Laxer, the Senior Labor Relations Representative assigned to Unit 9, has been promised the data from the Chancellor's Office sometime in August. He will then prepare a report detailing the campus IRP awards, amounts and distribution.

Campus Cell Phone Policies

If your campus tries to impose a cell phone policy without bargaining, please notify your assigned LRR as well as the Chair.

Legislation is now before Congress (H.R. 5450 and S. 2668) which may make this irrelevant, by removing cell phones from the list of taxable benefits (the source of the problem). H.R. 5450 has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. S. 2668 has been referred to the Senate Committee on Finance.

Please remind employees who carry CSU-provided cell phones not to use them for commercial transactions. Personal use as allowed by the campus is one thing; commercial use of state equipment is quite another. One state employee recently included his state-issued cell phone number in a classified ad for something he was selling, and was reprimanded for misuse of state equipment.

Exempt, Workload, and On-Call Issues

The Representation Committee discussed hiring outside legal expertise to give us some clear, consistent answers we can act on regarding exempt status. We need specific examples of exempt issues from all chapters. There is no need to be quiet about collecting this data.

As a reminder, call-back is by an administrator only. Employees who get call-backs in any form need to keep a log. If they're having trouble receiving and using informal CTO (adjusted time in their schedule), talk to a rep.

Outsourcing

Several campuses have outsourced student email, or are in the process of doing so. Northridge is currently outsourcing identity management. CSUEU will be doing an information request to the Chancellor’s Office about outsourcing, and chapter Labor Relations Representatives should be checking all external campus contracts as discussed last fall.

As an aside, I recommend you not install the Google toolbar on a state machine. One of its features is arguably spyware which is on by default, and could compromise CSU data.

By popular demand of the BUC 9 attendees, we're posting information on disabling the "awesome bar" in Firefox 3.

Information distribution

Unit 9 News is now at www.unit9news.org. The old URL that you've been using will continue to work; there will be no broken links.

Unit 9 News is how I get information out to the chapters. It's self-serve union information, with a regular web site, RSS feed, and email subscriptions. Read it on your own schedule, and no one imagines you'll read every detail of every story – but I do expect that Unit 9 Reps and anyone interested in Unit 9 has seen the headline and read it if you're interested.

If you have a chapter mailing list or newsletter, I'd appreciate a note about Unit 9 News, so your members know it's available to them.

Classification Misuse

The Associate, Academic, and Institutional Studies (AAIS) classification is being misused; we don't know how widely. Teven Laxer ran across a case of an X-Ray Technician classified as an AAIS. That's a clear abuse of the classification standard. Coincidentally, the AAIS classification is exempt, while X-Ray Technician is not.

Please check:

  1. Whether you have any employees classified as AAIS on your campus
  2. What jobs they actually are doing

Please report anything questionable.

Environmental Health and Safety Officer Classification

We've formally requested that CSU study the creation of an Environmental Health and Safety Officer classification. Employees performing EH&S duties are in a variety of classifications right now, and need an appropriate classification.

Legislation Information Items

Thanks to Vicky McLeod, the Legislative Committee, and Sherrie Golden for assisting Unit 9 with investigating the following proposed legislation:

SB 1696 (Yee) - Disclosure
This is now before the Assembly. Basically, it would keep state agencies from evading disclosure laws by writing a secrecy clause into a contract with an outside firm. It amends the Government Code, and covers state agencies and the University of California. It's not clear that the CSU is covered, though that's certainly the author's intent. We're working with the author's office to ensure the CSU is covered by this.

AB 2603 (Eng) - Reporting of Contracting Out
This applies to state agencies. CSU is not currently included, and we should be. It's currently in the Senate Committee on Governmental Organization and has been read 2 times, with the next hearing June 24 (Tuesday). Local 1000 is supporting this, and Teven distributed some good literature from them about the costs of contracting out and the need for this legislation.

If you have questions or comments about anything in this report, please contact the Chair at csueu.unit9TakeThisPartOut+report@gmail.com. (You will need to remove the TakeThisPartOut part for your email to reach him.)

Additional information

Posted by Editor at 5:18 PM
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