Student Activists Win Partial LTE Solution Jobs
- Sue Vilbrandt
Union
Labor News
September 2001
A
breakthrough victory was won recently in the battle to win permanent jobs
with benefits for Limited Term Employees, or LTEs, on the UW campus. A
provision in the proposed state budget creates a two-year pilot program
at UW-Madison to create permanent jobs for at least fifty workers based
on how long they have been on the UW's payroll as LTEs.
At this
writing, it is still unknown whether the provision will survive Gov.
McCallum's veto pen. "We've come this far and we're not going back.
We're going to hold McCallum personally responsible if this gets cut out
of the budget," said David Garza, a member of the Student Labor
Action Coalition (SLAC).
SLAC has
been agitating around the question of LTEs on campus over the last year,
arranging meetings with the Chancellor and/or his representatives,
holding teach-ins on the issue, and leafletting students about the plight
of LTEs.
Like the
campus unions, students were becoming increasingly frustrated with
administration stonewalling and their flat-out refusal to acknowledge the
problem. Administrators claimed that even if there were problems, they
were powerless; only the Legislature had the authority to create new
permanent positions that could reduce the school's reliance on
LTEs.
Following
one such meeting with the administration, SLAC member Sarah Turner, a UW
Junior, crossed paths with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala in the
Memorial Union. Turner said that, after explaining her concerns, Chvala
agreed that the LTE question was a big problem that had been going on for
far too long. Further, Chvala said it wouldn't cost that much to fund the
permanent positions and that he would pursue the issue.
"I
half-believed it when Chvala said he was willing to do something,"
Turner reflected, "I thought he was SAYING he would just so I would
go away."
Nonetheless,
Turner persevered, knowing that the state budget was under discussion and
that any solution would have to be part of that process. Chvala was
willing, Turner reported back to administrators, to introduce a remedy to
get the UW on track to begin correcting its long-standing LTE
problem.
The time was ripe.
Unaware
that she was having any effect, in the weeks that followed, Turner
continued to knock on doors in the State Capitol, pursuing any and all
channels to air the LTE issue. A freelance journalist, Turner also
succeeded in having several articles on the exploitation of LTEs
published in campus papers and in Isthmus, a Madison weekly.
Over the
summer, as budget deliberations were coming to a head, Turner and other
SLAC members kept up the pressure by handing out flyers during new
student orientation sessions. SLAC's flyer, "The Shocking Truth
Revealed!", explained how the UW routinely denies LTEs benefits and
union representation, and how racial profiling of Latino workers led to
the firing of more than two dozen Latino workers last spring. The later
issue in particular, was a sore point for the administration that caused
much embarrassment for the school. Several other issues such as the UW's
connection with sweatshop labor and the need for more diversity on campus
were also highlighted in SLAC's flyer.
Breakthrough!
UW
Vice Chancellor John Torphy acknowledged that increasing student pressure
led to discussions between UW officials and Sen. Chvala, and the
resulting pilot project to convert LTE positions in the budget.
Torphy
remarked that, "I think that language is consistent with what the
unions and student groups were interested in." Torphy added that he
would have preferred the 100 positions originally proposed by Chvala.
Before the budget was sent to the Governor, a compromise in the
Legislature's conference committee cut the number of new positions to 50.
Torphy
says he's in favor of expanding the program in future years if the
analysis of the pilot is favorable. The newly created positions may
ultimately number more than 50 as some are likely to be less than
full-time. The administration and the unions agree that creating some
part-time positions would meet the needs of both the workers and the
hiring departments.
Will They Stay?
According
to Torphy, the goal of the pilot is to improve job retention in addition
to helping those who have been long-term LTEs in mainly food service,
clerical and custodial occupations. "Retention is still going to be
a problem--whether the individual is an LTE or a permanent
employee--unless higher wages are negotiated for those
classifications," said Torphy.
"We
are hiring LTEs into permanent positions on a regular basis, but there is
still substantial turnover," explains Torphy. Approximately 30
percent of newly-hired permanent employees formerly worked as LTEs, he
says.
AFSCME
Local 2412 President Gary Mitchell agrees. "They aren't going to be
able to hold people in these jobs if the starting wage is only
$8-something an hour." Mitchell hopes to see some progress at the
bargaining table where state employee contracts are currently under
negotiation. "I think it's clear that custodians, food service
workers and program assistants need all, or at least the bulk of, any
'market adjustment' money that the state has made available," he
said.
Poverty
wages for the lowest-paid workers has been a theme in recent protest
rallies in Madison calling for fair wages for state employees. In
negotiations, the state has proposed wage increases of only three percent
over the two-year contract. The unions say that amounts to a pay cut.
Mitchell,
whose local represents administrative support workers, and AFSCME Local
171 which represents blue collar, technical, security and public safety
workers on campus, have already met with Torphy to discuss how the LTE
conversion project might work.
"While
there's still some disagreement on whether or not there is, in fact, a
problem, they have at least said that this is a place where we can start
to address it," says Mitchell. "The Madison labor community and
the UW administration are on the same page, at least enough to say let's
try something and evaluate how it works. We both come from different
positions, but let's see where this takes us."
The AFSCME
locals are taking the position that the problem has been identified and
needs to be fixed, "and we're going to watch how it gets
fixed," says Mitchell. "Every time you try to fix a problem
like this, somebody finds a way to get around it," he complained.
"So we don't want to get wedded to any particular fix which could
turn out to be another problem down the road."
Guarded Optimism
Mitchell
says such 'fixes' in the past have led campus departments to find more
creative ways to skirt the LTE law, such as creating half-way measures
like 'project' positions which the unions also see as problematic.
Turner expresses similar skepticism of the administration. "They've
become part of the problem they should be trying to fix. Their job is to
serve the people of the state of Wisconsin," she says, "but all
they seem to care about are their big corporate donors and building more
Biotech buildings."
She feels
the administration and the departments routinely engage in what Turner
describes as "a sleight-of-hand, making everything look good on
paper."
The vast
majority of these jobs should legitimately be permanent jobs, Turner
feels. "You can go into any department on campus, any office, and
there will be an LTE who will tell you they've worked there for years
with no benefits," she contends. "A lot of them don't even
realize they're getting screwed because the system of abuse has been
institutionalized. They just think, 'well, that's the way it
is.'"
According
to Mitchell, LTEs on campus number between 1200 and 1900 at any given
time. "We're going to have to see how they implement this
language--if it survives the veto--and see if they're doing what we want
them to do."
Like Turner, Mitchell expects the reporting requirements of the pilot
project will bring more light to the problem and will likely demonstrate
that the fix is inadequate. "Then we'll be in a position to say,
what about the other 1200 people?"