The Strike: Meet Mr. Mediator

The mayor of Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg, has been selected by both sides as the mediator for the student worker strike. Before you say, wait - he isn't a labor relations professional, note that he actually has a labor relations background. Moreover, as a politician, both at the municipal level and earlier at the level of the state legislature, you do lots of informal mediation to get compromises. From the Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg will mediate negotiations between the University of California and two United Auto Workers bargaining units that represent about 36,000 striking academic workers. The nearly month-long walkout came to a partial end when 12,000 senior-most researchers, also represented by the UAW, voted last week to ratify contracts that boosted their pay by at least 20%. They returned to work on Monday.

The two UAW units representing teaching assistants, tutors and graduate student researchers, among others, voted to move to private mediation on Friday. The decision followed the university’s announcement that it would not present any new proposals in bargaining. UC has asked for a private mediator since the beginning of the strike. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office proposed Steinberg as a candidate for mediator, according to the unions, and both parties agreed to his appointment. The mayor, a former staff attorney for CSEA/SEIU Local 1000, met with both parties over the weekend, his office confirmed.

In October, Steinberg facilitated an agreement between thousands of striking mental health workers and Kaiser Permanente after only a week of negotiations. The walkout had lasted 10 weeks. “We feel that in order to make progress, it is time for somebody else to step in,” said Tarini Hardikar, a bargaining team member from UC Berkeley, in a statement...  

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article269910107.html.

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