CFA's position on union representation for graduate teaching assistants

Colleagues:

As many of you know, the CSU administration reached an agreement with the United Auto Workers concerning Academic Student Employees pending a final PERB decision on a unit clarification petition filed by CFA and other CSU unions.

If this agreement goes into effect, temporary teaching employees in the CSU will be divided into two unions - one representing students and one representing all other temporary teaching employees.

There has been some contention over the nature and structure of the bargaining unit the UAW claims to represent. For a number of years, CFA has argued that graduate students who teach courses that are not part of their degree program belong in the instructional faculty unit - Bargaining Unit 3- which CFA represents.

We have held this position to avoid the negative effects for all temporary teaching employees that would result from splitting them into two different unions. Classifying these lecturers as Student Assistants and paying them a lower rate of pay without the benefits and protections provided in the CFA Collective Bargaining Agreement (contract) for lecturers is, we feel, obviously unfair to the working students.

Creating another class of cheaper teaching employees who have lower pay and no benefits also threatens the working conditions and security of all lecturers. As we have seen in thousands of other work places, employers will nearly always seek cheaper labor to cut costs and save money.

The winner in all this will be an administration that will enjoy greater flexibility to play around with the livelihood of both students and faculty. Because the administration will decide whether to give teaching work to students or to lecturers, they will be able to pit one group against the other and to reward or punish unions by moving teaching work from one unit to another. They could reward or punish individual employees in similar ways.

Lecturers who stand up for their rights could see their teaching assignments given to TAs the next semester or quarter. TAs who speak up over any issue could see their work moved to a lecturer.

These dangers are both real and serious.

We believe our differences with the UAW might have been avoided if their recruiters had consulted with CFA about their intentions before beginning their campaign. I was not notified of their efforts until after they submitted their petition for certification with signatures to the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB). Historically, when a union begins to organize where there are other labor organizations present, common courtesy dictates some communication of the organizing union's intentions. UAW failed to extend that courtesy to CFA, and the opportunity for early cooperation was missed.

Regretfully, once the UAW submitted its petition to the PERB, CFA had no option other than to request a unit clarification from the PERB, which froze its request for certification. That unit clarification request is on appeal to the full PERB Board.

In the meantime, the UAW is "campaigning" to pressure CFA to drop our appeal; and as in most political campaigns, they are using any political leverage they can muster to improve their chances of winning.

Unfortunately, a few UAW representatives have resorted to misrepresentation of the facts, the most distressing of which involves blatant falsehoods about CFA's position on this issue. Rather than acknowledge CFA's issue with the unit composition affecting student teaching employees (a small subset of student employees the UAW seeks to represent), some UAW staff have represented our action as a general opposition to the attempt to organize student employees.

The UAW leadership knows this to be untrue. In several conversations with UAW representatives I have personally assured them that we support their efforts. Furthermore, I have made every effort to settle our differences and to prevent the administration from encouraging the dispute; unfortunately, I have been informed by the UAW that "there is no room for compromise." We still believe that compromise between CFA and UAW is in the best interests of all CSU teaching employees. That belief and our concern for the effects the current agreement will have on students and faculty for generations to come strengthens our resolve.

We will continue to seek every opportunity to achieve an agreement with UAW that will serve all of us, and those who come after us as well.

In union,

John Travis

CFA President