Laboratory Reaches Local Wage Accord with AFSCME
A tentative agreement was reached last Friday night in Oakland on a new wage agreement for FY 2004 for Laboratory employees represented by AFSCME, Local 3299. This group includes bus drivers, truck drivers, custodians and technical assistants who provide service support to the Laboratory.
The one-year
agreement provides for a 2.0% wage adjustment retroactive
to Oct. 1, 2003 for all eligible Laboratory employees
in the SX unit, along with 1.35% for posted promotions, reclassifications
and individual equity adjustments.
The Agreement is expected to be ratified within a couple of weeks.
Typically, the University of California Office of the President Labor Relations staff negotiates such agreements on a system-wide basis. But the Laboratory has recently received approval to negotiate with CUE and now AFSCME unions on a local basis, because DOE funding offers the Laboratory flexibility for wage increases that the state-funded UC system can't.
"The discussions were intense but productive," notes Bill Elkins, manager for Labor and Employee Relations (LER) who chaired the negotiations for the Lab. "The Laboratory made every effort to negotiate a performance-based wage system, but the union clearly has a philosophy against merit pay and ultimately settled for a bit less to secure an agreement that did not have a pay-for-performance element to it."
The Laboratory
management negotiating team included Guy Bear, Facilities
Deputy Director; Shada Kuba, LER; and Matthew Mleczko
and David Wiedrick, from Human Resources' Compensation Section.
"This agreement enables us to fund and to implement a management decision to reclassify all light truck drivers to truck drivers, and to recognize them for their efforts in completing the requisite training and certification required for such an upgrade," says Bear.
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