2006 UC-AFT
Election
CANDIDATE STATEMENTS
Bob Samuels, President
As President of UC-AFT, I will continue to
work to help defend the rights and professional
status of all members in Units17 and 18. In
the last two years, I have been involved in
the negotiations of the Unit 17and Unit 18
contracts, and I also negotiated the first
staff union contract. During this same
period, I worked closely with the CFT to fight
the Special Election initiatives and to increase
our political clout. Moreover, these political
efforts and the augmented dues our union has
to pay to AFT and CFT has required me to spend
a lot of time on cutting our costs and changing
our own dues structure.
While I realize that it is never popular
to raise dues, I also know that our union
needs to remain a financially viable institution. In
the future, this may require other changes
to our dues structure and a renegotiation
of our financial relations with AFT and CFT. Since
I have already started this process of fiscal
reorganization, I would like to stay on as
President and finish the job.
It is important to point out that during
my term in office, we have seen substantial
improvement in the salaries and security of
people in both units. We also have witnessed
a better working relationship with the Office
of the President, and this improved relationship
has meant that many potential problems have
been dealt with before they have become grievances.
On the grievance and enforcement side, we
have won several recent cases, and we have
also won important arbitration and Public
Employment Relations Board cases. These
legal efforts have been coupled with the work
of Alan Karras, Ben Harder, Karen Sawislak,
and myself on the Unit 18 contract implementation
manual, which will help us to resolve many
potential issues for our members. I
have also worked with the Office of the President
to prevent a major downsizing of the writing
program at UCR.
I want to thank Miki Goral for her continued
leadership in helping to protect the status
of librarians. Our recent negotiations
over the Unit 17 contract re-openers were
not easy, and we were shown that we must improve
the organized strength of this unit. Miki
has also been instrumental in our effort to
improve the financial stability of UC-AFT.
Finally, I would like to continue to professionalize
our union and work with our Executive Director
to help support and coordinate our staff.
I am proud of the contract we have negotiated
with the staff, and I look forward to increasing
the activism of all members in our union.
Bob
Samuels
Alan Karras, Vice-President for Grievances
For
the vast majority of the people who are represented
in both the lecturers’ and
librarians’ units, the contracts are
the most important point of contact with the
Union. Having a strong contract is important,
of course; having a strongly enforced contract
is quite another thing. Over the last two
years, I have worked diligently to make sure
that the contracts are clearly and consistently
enforced. In some cases that has meant using
the grievance process—we have been able
to resolve most of the issues that have come
before us, whether at an individual or at
a group level. In other cases that has meant
working with the UCOP Offices of Labor Relations
and Academic Advancement to fix problems that
have seemed intractable. I expect to continue
these practices.
Perhaps as importantly, I intend to continue
the Union’s path of staff and steward
development, so that much of the grievance
work can continue to be handled by those on
local campuses. We have done grievance training
and will continue to do grievance training.
My goal, in all of this, is to have the local
staff be as consistent as possible from one
campus to the next and to act quickly when
violations are brought to their attention.
In some cases this has actually avoided the
filing of grievances. Working with staff to
serve our members’ needs in the workplace
really ought to be our first priority as a
Union.
There can be no doubt that our Union is far
more effective than it was before 2003. There
can also be no doubt that much of this is
because of our consistent and, so it often
feels, relentless pursuit of forcing the University
to live with that which it has bargained.
I bring to the job renewed energy to insure
that all of our members know their rights
and are willing to fight for them using the
tools that we have available.
Finally, I continue my commitment to work
with the other officers and members of the
council. All of them have worked diligently
to improve the working conditions for our
members. I am proud to have played a part
in those efforts and look forward to continuing
to do so over the next year.
Alan
Karras
Mike
Rotkin, Vice-President for Organizing
I am running for re-election to the position
of Vice President for Organizing of the
UC-AFT. I have served as Vice President
for Organizing for the past three years.
Previous to holding this position, I have
served as Vice President for Legislation
for a three-year period and as Chief Negotiator
for Unit 18 on and off for most of the past
twenty-five years. I am currently the President
of local 2199 at UC Santa Cruz, a post I
have held for about two decades now. I have
been responsible for filing about two dozen
grievances over the past two decades.
The UC-AFT is facing a number of serious
challenges. Although we have made some good
progress with respect to increasing the percentage
of members within the units we represent,
we still have significant work to do in this
area. On most campuses, our membership among
lectures is still less than 50% of those we
represent. Our ability to effectively represent
the interest of our members depends upon increasing
this percentage on every campus.
More importantly, we need to increase the
level of activism among members. This is true
for both the librarian and lecturer units
and on every UC campus. Although some campuses
have more active memberships than others,
none of the campuses demonstrate anything
close to an adequate depth of leadership and
activism. The majority of our campuses depend
upon what is essentially over-commitment on
the part of a few very dedicated activists.
We need particularly to focus on the development
of new leadership and activism within the
librarian unit where we relatively weak on
every campus at the current time.
In addition, the financial well-being of
the organization require that we recruit and
fight to represent additional new units outside
of the lecturer and librarian units. Senate
organizing and strategies to recruit among
other employees at UC has become increasingly
important with the necessity of paying increased
per caps to our affiliate organizations, the
CFT and AFT. To be successful in these external
organizing goals, we need to press our affiliates
more forcefully for their support -- support
which has been promised, but which has not
been forthcoming as expected.
In all of this organizing work, the VP for
Organizing will need to work closely with
other statewide and local officers, as well
as the Executive Director and the Field Representatives,
to develop concrete recruitment and activation
goals and strategies to accomplish them. If
elected to this position, I intend to increase
the level of communication among staff and
union officers concerning these organizing
goals and strategies.
My intention is to propose general statewide
strategies that can be adapted to the particular
needs of each campus and then work with the
local leaders and organizers to help implement
organizing activity related to our goals on
every campus. I am prepared to help produce
organizing materials such as brochures, new
member packets, guidelines for activists interested
in taking on particular local roles as well
as strategy papers which will help place all
of our organizing work in wider statewide
and national contexts.
Success in increasing our membership and
activist base will depend significantly on
being able to demonstrate the connection between
union activism and the wider social and political
goals of our members. Although we, of course,
need to focus on the "bread and butter" issues
of pay, benefits, job security, and working
conditions, we also need to demonstrate to
our members that the UC-AFT can be an effective
vehicle for addressing broader concerns about
professions at UC, the direction of higher
education at UC and beyond, and social justice
in all of its dimensions. Effective and active
locals will be based on the mutually reinforcing
impact of members who work through the UC-AFT
to effect change across the full range of
these concerns.
I would appreciate your support
in my election and, more importantly, in
working with me to carry out this critically
important work.
Thank you,
Mike
Rotkin
Kevin Roddy, Vice-President, Legislation
I wish to continue in my office as Vice President, Legislation, for the University Council, American Federation of Teachers; over the past two years, I have used the legislative and staff contacts that I had already formed with the legislature in Sacramento and with the California Federation of Teachers' political lobbyists to press for more recognition of all UC employees, librarians and lecturers in particular.
The CFT and UC-AFT have shown tremendous leverage in Sacramento: the failure of the Governor's ballot initiatives demonstrates the power of concerted union action, and many of our candidates and representatives are now positioning themselves for leadership in the legislature and state; for that reason the government of California is as pro-education as ever. Moreover, the current scandals plaguing the administration at the University have dramatized many of the issues of inequity that we and the other UC unions have been uncovering for years.
I will continue in my effort to extend Political Action Committees to all campuses, so that each local will have a political committee or individual who will be empowered (and sufficiently informed) to meet with state representatives, especially from that district. This has already occurred at UCLA, and an incipient organization is forming at UC Merced.
Kevin Roddy
Miki Goral, Secretary-Treasurer
I am running for re-election as UC-AFT Secretary Treasurer. I have had the honor of serving UC-AFT in various capacities since 1983, when I first joined the Unit 17 (Librarians) bargaining team as the record-keeper, later becoming the chief negotiator. In 1984, I was elected Secretary of UC-AFT, an office I held until 1986, when I became Treasurer. In 1999, a re-structuring of the Council combined the duties of Secretary and Treasurer into one position, which I have held since then.
The Secretary-Treasurer's duties are set out in the By-Laws: namely to record and disseminate minutes of Council meetings and to be responsible for all monies received and paid out by UC-AFT. While this sounds simple, it entails a wide range of specific duties, including the following:
- Maintain records of five bank accounts (checking, savings, COPE)
- Pay bills, invoices, expense reimbursements
- Assign expenses to proper budget categories
- Prepare monthly payroll
- Coordinate 401(k) plan for Council employees
- Prepare reports for accountant to use in Hudson audit for agency fee payers
- Prepare 1099 forms for independent contractors
- Prepare 990 tax forms for IRS and 590 forms for California
- Maintain membership database
- Prepare monthly percapita reports for CFT, AFT, and eight Central Labor Councils
- Calculate payment amounts and generate checks for fairshare rebate requestors
- Communicate with the University about changes in dues amounts
- Work with President and Executive Director to prepare and monitor the Council's budget
- Maintain and update UC-AFT Directory
I have developed and streamlined procedures to fulfill the duties of the job efficiently and accurately.
During my tenure as a Council officer, I have worked with a number of officeholders and Executive Directors and can provide a context of continuity for the work of the organization. The current Executive Board has improved the internal structure of UC-AFT, with regular meetings and consultation on issues arising between Council meetings. We have begun a program of bringing new members into the governance structure, with the goal of developing new leadership to continue the work of the union in the future. The opening of UC Merced offers a rare opportunity to expand the organization, with the chartering of the first new local in more than three decades.
I believe the contracts we have negotiated have provided protections for members of the bargaining units. It is now a challenge of UC-AFT to educate our members about their contracts (whether Unit 17 or Unit 18) and the rights that are enumerated. We must be sure that the University abides by the contracts that have been negotiated. This will take more involvement on the part of members, a goal I will work towards.
While most of the union's work is focused on representing our members and enforcing the contracts we have negotiated, we must not forget that UC-AFT is part of the larger union movement in the United States. I serve as a vice-president of the California Federation of Teachers, representing the interests of UC-AFT, along with UC-AFT President Bob Samuels, in that body.
I look forward to continue representing our members and strengthening the organization of the union. I believe I am the best qualified candidate for the position of Secretary-Treasurer and ask for your support.
Miki Goral
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