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Regents keep quiet as walk-out continues

By Daily Bruin Staff

Nov. 19, 1996 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday, November 20, 1996

SAGE:

UCSD, Berkeley groups join UCLA union as picket enters third
dayBy John Digrado

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

While hundreds of student academic employees walked off the job
on two separate campuses Tuesday in protest of the administration’s
continued reticence toward their collective bargaining efforts, UC
leaders were largely in the dark about the most recent
developments.

Supporting the efforts of the Student Association of Graduate
Employees’ ongoing strike, members of the Association of Student
Employees at UC San Diego left hundreds of classrooms empty Tuesday
after the UCLA administration let pass a 5 p.m. deadline to
recognize SAGE.

Members of UC Berkeley’s Association of Graduate Student
Employees will begin picketing this morning if UCLA has allowed a
second 5 p.m. deadline to pass Tuesday.

Despite the cancellation or relocation of classes on at least
three UC campuses, most regents were surprisingly unaware of the
strike and refused to comment on the issue, calling it a "labor
matter" that is generally not dealt with at the regents’ level.

"Collective bargaining and personnel labor matters are matters
that regents don’t talk about," said Regent Stephen Nakashima.
"They are usually discussed in closed sessions, so I have no
comments to make on it."

According to California law, labor issues can be discussed in
closed session because they are exempted by the Labor Relations
Act, allowing employers to come up with their own strategy out of
public scrutiny, officials said.

In trying to garner comments from the regents, The Bruin called
20 of the 28 board members. Only two members of the board were
available, both of whom expressed no desire to comment on the
issue, citing that they were unfamiliar with the situation.

"All I know is what took place several years back" in regards to
the actions taken by UC Berkeley and UCLA academic student
employees, Nakashima said. "(They are) matters that we don’t
discuss in the open because it’s matters involving personnel."

At the UC Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco last week,
Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, an ex officio member of the board, said that
he believes the right to organize for a common cause is a basic
tenet of American society.

Referring to UCLA’s recent appeal of a Public Employee Relations
Board judge’s order for the university to recognize academic
student employees’ right to unionize, Davis said that SAGE’s right
to form a union is an issue that should be brought to the regents’
table instead of the courts.

"University officials are not known for having a warm and fuzzy
relationship with their employees," he said. Davis noted that while
he agrees with what they want to accomplish, it is unlikely that
the university will recognize SAGE in the near future.

The administration’s reaction to the strike could also be an
example of the regents’ changing attitude toward labor, Student
Regent Jess Bravin said.

"Frankly, the UC is acting in a number of ways that is very
hostile to labor," he said. "Labor issues are one of the major
reasons of the privatization of the UCSF/Stanford hospitals, and
the almost pathetic, knee-jerk, union-busting attitude of the
administration toward employees who are also degree candidates is
really a black mark on our reputation."

The administration has been out of line in its threats to dock
strikers’ pay or to fire them from the university in response to
the strike, Bravin said, adding that it is "remarkably patronizing
for the university bureaucracy to tell students who are also
employees that they don’t know what’s good for them."

Nearing the end of the second day on the picket lines, academic
student employees began to miss their classrooms, but resolved to
stay on strike despite rumors from the administration that striking
students could be dismissed from their positions.

"There’s nothing more that I’d like now than to go back to a
warm classroom and grade papers (and) teach intellectually
stimulating students (rather) than standing on a cold street corner
yelling at them," said Jeff Raymond, a teaching assistant with the
sociology department.

"But it’s (the administration’s) own intransigence that’s
preventing us from teaching," he added.

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