There STILL is a way

As blog readers will know, yours truly has suggested ways of settling the now-suspended student-worker strike that avoid the legalism/Grand Principles approach which ends up leaving it to PERB and the courts.* No one really knows what the outcome of the legalism approach will be. It is noteworthy that the UAW, while protesting that the decision was illegitimate, has not appealed the court decision that put a temporary restraining order in place. 

Letting PERB decide may seem attractive at the moment, but as we have noted, PERB could easily muddy the waters from the viewpoint of other side in the dispute. And there could be appeals within the PERB process and beyond. 

From the viewpoint of the UAW, there are risks entailed in just leaving the legal process to roll along. Should PERB decide in favor of UC's administration, i.e., that the strike violated the no-strike clauses, there could be monetary damages. The LA Times yesterday reported on a situation in which a nurses' union was ordered to pay damages of over $6 million to a Riverside hospital for a strike ruled to violate a no-strike agreement.** While it is unlikely that damages of that magnitude could result from a ruling adverse to the union in the UC case, the nurses' outcome is at least a warning signal.

Yours truly has no inside knowledge about what UC administration is thinking. But he suspects that UC mainly wants assurances that the grievance and arbitration system will be the route for dispute settlement while contracts are in place, and that political issues won't become interwined with labor relations in the future. That's the kind of deal that might be hard to enforce in a legalistic way, but that good faith discussions and relationships can handle. Mediation can be helpful in getting to such a situation. But it works only if there is willingness on both sides to change the way they are doing business. Is there?

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/06/there-is-way-to-settle-current-strike.html.

**https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-06-13/union-ordered-to-pay-hca-healthcare-6-26-million-in-strike-damages.