We escaped strikes twice

Times-Standard 4/5/07

Two strikes that could have had major impacts on our area were averted in the past week -- a sure sign that bargaining works.

On Tuesday, the California State University administration and faculty union reached a tentative contract agreement after a nearly two-year dispute. Last Thursday, Humboldt Creamery union employees voted to accept the final contract offer from the company.

This CSU tentative settlement puts planned rolling strikes among the 23-campus CSU system on hold. The series of two-day strikes had been scheduled to start next week.

The accord was reached using recommendations made by an impartial fact finder as a framework, which called for a nearly 25 percent retroactive pay raise through June 2010.

The report also echoed the CFA's argument that CSU professors' salaries are significantly less than those of their peers at other institutions -- the California Postsecondary Education Commission said CSU faculty are paid 18 percent less than comparable institution salaries around the country.

At the Creamery, the final vote Thursday evening was 79 to 22 in favor of the offer that gives the vast majority of Creamery union members salary increases.

There are between 100 and 125 union employees at the Humboldt Creamery Fernbridge plant. The previous union contract expired at the end of 2006.

Labor negotiations can sometimes become contentious as both sides dig in -- labor saying they will fight for every penny and benefit they feel they deserve, while management fights to keep their costs as low as possible.

In both the CSU and the Creamery bargaining, third parties were brought in to play neutral roles and work with both sides.

We applaud all for resolving the issues in a civil way and, apparently, in ways that kept all sides, in the end, satisfied to a degree. It is seldom that everybody ends up 100 percent satisfied. But at least in these cases, there were no work stoppages.