Everyone else is striking…why not us?

I seems that lately everyone and their pet goat have been striking. Employees are being treated badly, and talks between employers and unions have gone to crap.

For the past few weeks, recyclables in my neighborhood were not picked up because of the Waste Management strike. In the next few weeks, if things don’t get sorted out, our televisions will be inundated with even more shit reality television because of the WGA strike.

But that leads me to a more personal issue… personal to me and to the thousands of California State University staff members, that is. Last year, after a fierce battle with the Chancellor’s Office and the Board of (un)Trustees (fuck it, let’s just call them the Board of Assholes…why mince words?), the CSU Employees Union came to an agreement on a three year contract which would not entirely, but largely, fill the pay gap between private sector employees and CSU staff members. The only problem is that the contract hinged on the state funding one percent over the “compact” with the Chancellor (which, for the record, hardly ever happens).

So here we are, four months into the new fiscal year when out raise should have come through, and we’re officially stuck at impasse. Essentially, that means that a third party mediator has been brought in to mediate confidential bargaining between the union, and the Board of Assholes and the Chancellor’s Office.

To be clear, I’m fine with a mediator coming in. I’m fine with talking things out. The two things I am not OK with however, is that these talks are confidential, which means that employees are left in the dark about what’s going on, and that the most recent meeting was November 1st, and the next one doesn’t happen until November 28th. At this rate, we might see an agreement in 2012.

So yeah, everyone’s else striking, so why not CSU employees? Oh right, because we’re contractually not allowed to. Sweet.