The union seeks a 5 percent raise across the board for its members, which include teachers, librarians and counselors.

The university system is offering a 2 percent increase and says it has already boosted faculty pay by $65.5 million over the past two years.

The system’s senior faculty members were paid an average of $96,000 per academic year as of April, according to the last figures available from Cal State.

Divided on Contracting

While the issue is money, lobbying records show a divide on several other issues, most recently the use of contract employees.

Senate Bill 669 introduced earlier this year by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, aimed at refining the parameters of contract hiring. The university opposed the measure while the union backed it and spent money lobbying for it, records show.

The legislation would have placed stricter oversight on the use of contracted employees, which is already part of the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the university.

The agreement allows contracting as long as it does not displace union members or require them to move to another campus that would require relocation, among other conditions.

The agreement also requires the university system to consider union employees for any contracting chores, provided the employees have the required skills.  

The bill was scrapped, but a similar measure restricting the University of California system, Senate Bill 376, was supported in testimony by Pat Gantt, president of California State University Employees Union.

That bill passed but was vetoed by Gov. Brown.

Both bills are similar to a measure introduced last session seeking to do the same thing. That bill failed in committee.

RELATED – How California State University beats the tuition hike freeze

Additional Legislation Causes Clashes

Last year, the two parties clashed on several other measures. Among them was Assembly Bill 2721, which would have required the university system to add another member to the board of trustees.

The measure was crafted by the union and carried by Sen. Pan in hopes of putting someone on the board to exclusively represent union interests.

The measure sailed through both chambers, 78-0 in the House and 33-1 in the Senate.

Brown vetoed the legislation, though, writing, “Since the Board of Trustees was established in 1960, there have only been four additions to the Board. The last of these was the addition of the non-voting student member in 1999.  I am not persuaded that increasing the membership of the Board beyond 25 is necessary.”

The union accused the university of “fear-mongering” regarding a measure that would have better defined extended education classes and how they applied to undergraduates.

It claimed the system was telling union members that the bill would result in layoffs. The union, which along with several other organized labor groups who backed the measure, advised its membership to ignore the threats.

The bill, carried by Assemblyman Adam C. Gray, D-Merced, died in committee.

Lobbying for Favor

Cal State’s administration and the union have both spent generously on lobbying over the past several years, often at odds.

California State this year has spent $92,000 on lobbying through June while the union has spent $83,760, records show.

Last year, the university spent $396,545 on lobby-related activities while the union spent $248,446.

The union’s political action committee spends heavily on the annual lobby days in April, bringing in members and running up bills for hotels and airfare. This year, the union spent $15,000 on promotional materials with a Massachusetts-based company. 

The California State University system has increased student activity fees to offset a tuition freeze, making parking and health services more expensive.

The union insists that the average CSU salary for union members has increased 8 percent since 2004, rising from $46,362 to $50,179 in 2014, while the average pay for a campus president has risen 44 percent, from $218,871 in 2004 to $314,357 in 2014.

CSU contends the proposed 2 percent raise is fair. In a statement from earlier this month, it says “the 2 percent compensation increase costs $32.8 million. The 6.2 percent total salary increase the CFA is proposing costs $101.7 million. The CSU will continue to work to improve compensation for all employees but must balance all critical priorities that support student success.”

By Katy Grimes

Only two full days into the BART worker strike, it appears the 400,000 people who usually rely on the train system to get around the San Francisco Bay Area are resourceful. And, they’ve turned to a free market solution.

While Bay Area Rapid Transit employees strike for higher pay and “safer” working conditions, their unions, the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, duke it out with government officials.

But not everyone in the Bay Area is stranded.

Avego, one of the clever  startup rideshare companies, jumped into action just in time for the strike Monday morning.

Avego marketed their services “with gusto” to commuters coming from the East Bay to San Francisco. “Avego was going beyond offering an easy way to share a ride with a stranger. The company was giving a few lucky commuters who downloaded its smartphone app a free helicopter ride to bypass the traffic,” CNBC reported.

“Sign-ups jumped from hundreds before the strike to thousands over the weekend, said Paul Steinberg, Avego’s director of operations for the Americas. ‘We’re getting creamed,’ he said.”

Rideshare under attack

The online rideshares, peer-to-peer taxis and carpool apps have come under attack by local politicians and regulating state agencies. There have been calls for bans because they compete with public transportation and taxis.

But these rideshare companies are the ultimate free market solution. Even with mass-transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area, the roads are horrifically congested. Commuters are always looking for creative ways to get around the problem.

“Some offer prescreened cars owned by professional drivers with black sedans or SUVs, while others provide ways to find commute partners and share the travel costs,” CNBC reported. “Some of the services get around safety regulations and government fees by offering a donation-based system.

The market has surged in the past year, with several leading firms saying this week that their business has been soaring.”

Most of the San Francisco rideshare companies have been running promoted Tweets that ensured tens of thousands of people who searched Twitter for “BART strike” would see ads and contact the companies.

Need a Lyft?

“John Zimmer started Zimride, a service that matches drivers and riders for long trips, such as from San Francisco to Los Angeles,” KQED reported. “He launched Lyft and describes it as a safer way to ride-share.”

Lyft is an on-demand rideshare service that bills itself as your friend with a car. You contact your “friend” with a phone app, and a car shows up with fuzzy pink mustache strapped to the car’s front grille.

Lyft drivers avoid taxi regulations because they take only prearranged rides, and never pick up fares curbside.

Uber, an on-demand town car service, also avoids the city’s taxi regulations by never picking up fares on the street.

Lyft lists their ride payments as “voluntary donations,” unlike Uber, which charges a minimum of $15 per ride.

SideCar, whose theme is “My ride is your ride,” is another online rideshare car service in San Francisco, and also uses a donation-based payment.

When users finish their Lyft or SideCar ride, they are provided a suggested price on their phone, based on the distance traveled and time in the car.

Riders can tap to accept and have money taken from their credit card or adjust the price and pay what they want.

But any time a new industry pops up,and usually out of need, another feels displaced.

“San Francisco’s taxi industry considers them unfair competition. And the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates limo services, says they’re breaking the law,” KQED reported. “Over the past few months, the agency has sent cease-and-desist letters to Lyft and at least two similar services, SideCar and Uber.”

Hopefully, the free market will prevail. These rideshare car companies are brilliant and a very creative way to get around the congested Bay Area… as long as California doesn’t regulate them into oblivion.

BART pay vs. rideshare

BART employees’ average base salary for both station agents and full time train operators is around $56,000 a year, according to Mother Jones. And, the average overtime pay is around $10,000 for station agents and $17,000 for full time train operators.

A one-way BART ride from the city of Richmond to Embarcadero Square in downtown San Francisco is $4.60.

When I entered the same route on Avego, 23 different drivers popped up ready to give me a ride.

For just a few bucks, you can hitch a ride into the City with a “friend,” from the comfortable back seat of a car — and avoid the striking employees.

By Katy Grimes

In an bizarre twist on reality, the United Auto Workers union found itself bargaining as an employer, but got a taste of their own medicine when 74 of the union’s own workers at the UAW-General Motors Center for Human Resources rejected the union’s latest contract proposal.

Pot, meet kettle.

But this rejection isn’t the first. Workers rejected the last contract, and have been working since 2012 without benefit of a contract, the Detroit Free Press reported.

The workers have filed three different Unfair Labor Practice complaints with the Federal Labor Relations Board, alleging UAW-GM leaders failed to pay the OPEIU bargaining team, proposed to change workers’ health care plan and stopped bargaining at one point.

The primary sticking point to current negotiations is over health coverage: OPEIU workers want guaranteed health care and retirement coverage through 2016.

I can’t imagine why any employer might find making such health care guarantees to be problematic with Obamacare on the horizon — especially given the current frightful economic and political climate.

“Will the picket signs say ‘UAW striking against the evil UAW’? one reader comment asked?

Read the story here. You can’t make this up.

California’s out-of-control government unions just can’t help themselves. The La Habra Education Association struck last week, but is going back on the job as Christmas Vacation approaches. Might as well get paid for not working.

The school district is calling for 2% pay cuts. Given the imminent cuts in the state budget, which will hit schools hard, that’s reasonable. It’s more than reasonable. Compare that to the 100% pay cuts millions of Californian taxpayers have suffered as they have been laid off or fired during the Depression.

Thousands of teachers have been laid off across the state. So there’s no shortage of substitute teachers to fill in for the strikers. Unions call strike-breakers “scabs.” But if your family is starving, any job looks good.

And union members themselves should bear much of the blame. Their unions backed the record wild government spending at the national and state levels that is a major (but not the only) cause of this Depression. (Other national causes: Bankrupting wars that have lasted almost a decade; inflation and artificially low interest rates by the Federal Reserve Board; unpredictable tax policies; over-regulation; general anti-business attitude under Democrats and Republicans.)

The teachers in La Habra seem to think this is 2006, when property values were skyrocketing, state revenues were pouring in record amounts, Arnold had “terminated” every single state trouble and Nirvana had arrived so why not overspend? It was a delusion, of course, as unreal as the plot of one of his ridiculous movies.

Now things are different. Treasuries are empty. Taxpayers are broke. Tens of millions stand in unemployment lines. All government workers are going to have to take even heftier cuts in pay, perks and pensions — or lose their jobs.

Welcome to the real world, Neo.

Dec. 15, 2010