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The third in the SPSE Noontime Speakers Series was held in the Building 123 Auditorium on April 27. SPSE President Sue Koopman introduced Jelger Kalmijn, the system-wide president of the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) union and a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego. UPTE, about 11,000 members strong, is present on all nine campuses of the University of California (UC), as well as at our sister UC/DOE labs in Berkeley and Los Alamos. UPTE members include research scientists, technicians, health care professionals, and administrative professionals. Jelger began his presentation by giving a brief history of UPTE. He said that UPTE began ten years ago with 100 members in an independent organization. UC was then implementing negative changes, including an open merit pay system. After three or four years, the 700 UPTE members decided that they needed to affiliate with a national union. The Communication Workers of America (CWA) offered full-time staff and resources, including financial resources and advice on how to organize. UPTE-CWA then won three out of four collective bargaining agreements for UC technical, research, and health care professionals. UPTE-CWA now represents 11,000 employees, and is still organizing. Jelger explained that while they represent 11,000 employees, 4,600 are UPTE members, while the others are "fair share" members (which means they are required by state law to pay a "fair share" of the union dues since the union represents them in collective bargaining agreements).
Jelger focused his approximately 20-minute presentation on two issues: merit pay and the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Act.
As for the first issue, he said that in UC's merit pay system there is a wide range of salaries for each employment category, with the average employee at the mid-range. The few employees who "walk on water" get a high-range salary, while most of the rest move with time toward the middle of the range after starting out near the bottom of the range when first hired. Salaries tend to stagnate after an employee reaches mid-range, and since there are no cost-of-living increases built into the system, long-term employees are penalized. Jelger explained that there is also a budget penalty. If a department's budget is cut, or if a new project is started, the money comes out of the merit pay increases. In addition, performance evaluations are written based on the raise UC wants to give, a system that leads to a dependence on subjective decisions rather than objective criteria (sounds a lot like the ranking system at our Lab!). Jelger explained that UPTE was able to negotiate a cost-of-living increase of 4.49%, plus a 4.6% step increase for a total 9% raise for the employees it represents. Employees under the open merit plan received only a 3.5% raise, so UPTE members gained much more from their membership than just the money to pay their dues . Employees under the open merit system could take eight years to catch up to the step-paid employees in the absence of job reclassification. He said that UPTE's goal is to get UC to develop a more rational pay plan that doesn't set employees against each other.
Jelger also discussed the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. He explained that this is a new entitlement, the biggest since the federal program to compensate coal miners for black lung disease. The new program covers any employee who may have been exposed to beryllium or silicosis. A sick employee may receive $150,000 and health benefits. The employee does not have to prove exposure - the presumption is in favor of the employees. The Act is to be implemented by the Department of Labor (DOL). The DOL is to appoint panels of doctors to review cases and determine criteria. The DOL is being very slow to implement the program. It is supposed to be in place by July 31, 2001, but eligibility criteria are still being considered. UPTE is working with a coalition of unions trying to force the DOL to set up an advisory committee that includes labor unions. Jelger recommended that employees contact their legislators about implementing this program.
In the Question-and-Answer session following Jelger's prepared remarks, there were a number of questions concerning union organizing among professionals (it was pointed out that about 35% of teaching faculty are unionized, as well as some local units of the American Medical Association); the employment of casual or part-time employees (UPTE succeeded recently in getting a new UC policy to convert casuals to regular employees, and stopped the introduction of "term" employment); and the women's and Asian Pacific Americans' discrimination lawsuits against the Lab (Jelger's view is that union organizing is a more effective and less divisive way than lawsuits for employees to effect change in the workplace).
Finally, at a lunch with SPSE Board members after the Program, we discussed with Jelger and two of his associates from UPTE and CWA how UPTE and SPSE might work together in the future to help make our union here, SPSE, a more effective advocate for employees of LLNL. We are all looking forward to further discussions on this topic at a future meeting.
--- Jeff Colvin
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