Bargaining updates: September 12
On the Contract
Management did not have any counter proposals, saying again that they will need some time to work on the economics for some proposals because “labor costing is new to us.”
On Accountability
Our time in negotiations recently has been taken up by representing one of your colleagues, Aleks Liou, and their work for the Youth Action for the Planet program. Read Aleks’ description of the program here, where you’ll also see a great photo of an exhibit on environmental activism that the youth put together.
We’re sharing this with you because the Academy management team’s conduct constitutes a threat to all of our rights as union members. It is not just a personnel matter, but an instance that highlights how a lack of management accountability endangers the Academy’s mission, and how our union can help management to become more accountable.
Aleks was hired as Program Manager for Youth Action for the Planet which was funded by a grant and set out to recruit and train a group of fourteen local youth to become strong activists to address climate change. Aleks has a PhD in youth organizing, and is one of the individuals responsible for securing the grant which funded the program.
During our June 25th solidarity break, some of the young people in Youth Action decided–on their own–to take action in solidarity with us by creating a leaflet about Scott Sampson and the wage inequalities that exist within the Academy, and distributed them on the public floor of the Academy. The next day, management prevented the youth from coming into the building, and they were told to not come onsite. Aleks was placed on leave the following day as well.
In short, the Academy created a program to train young people to be organizers and then, when the young people decided to organize around wage inequalities and the budget crisis at the Academy, the Academy shut down the program and now seeks to fire Aleks as Program Manager. This is, of course, not the stated reason the Academy wants to fire Aleks. They went on a fishing expedition to come up with a variety of flimsy pretexts on obscure policy grounds to justify the termination.
How does abruptly ending a program for fourteen young people of color advance our mission to regenerate that natural world through science, learning, and collaboration? If management thought that the flier that the youth put out was harmful or in bad taste, wouldn't it have been more productive to sit with them and discuss the pros and cons of their actions as a valuable learning experience in activist and solidarity work rather than banishing them from the building? Shouldn’t the connection that they made between economic and environmental justice be celebrated and encouraged?
So, how are you and your union holding management accountable?
First, by reading this update and learning about what happened. Talk about it with your colleagues and forward any questions you have for management over the incident to our bargaining team or CAT activists.
Without our union, Aleks would have already been fired. With our union, management has to turn over information justifying their desire to terminate Aleks’ employment to our bargaining team and field representatives. They will have to listen to your questions about the incident at the bargaining table, and the impacts of their actions on the Youth Action program–and our mission–won't remain a secret.
