Union wants SF State to talk parking policy

SF State employees' union leaders decided Wednesday to file a formal request to meet with campus administrators to discuss parking policy before going ahead with more than 100 grievances against the university, according to the campus' chapter president.

"The grievances will be held in abeyance until the university sets up a meet-and-confer with the union," Bill Insley, chief steward for SF State's chapter of the California State Employee Association, said. "If they don't meet with us in a timely fashion, then the grievances will be processed. They won't go anywhere until then."

SF State President Robert Corrigan said the university is obligated to sit across from the table with union representatives.

"Those meetings will be held," Corrigan assured. "We will meet and confer on a very sincere basis."

And Denise Fox, director of the human resources department where the grievances were filed, said university administrators will negotiate in good faith.
"The university has already agreed to initiate a consultation process with employees over the next year," Fox said. "The university hopes to resolve the differences through the consultation process ... (and) is obligated to discuss the impact of any parking fee increase."

The union's ultimatum comes on the heels of 136 grievances filed last week by SF State California State Employees' Association union members. In filing the grievances as a group on Aug. 29, union members demanded a meeting with school administrators over a proposed price hike of faculty and staff parking permits. The proposal would create "reserved" parking spaces in Lots 6, 8 and 19 would raise faculty and staff permit fees from the current $18 per month to $42 per month, according to a memo from the parking and transportation department.

"The university cannot change the price of parking on us until July 1, 1997," said SF State CSEA Chapter President Geraldine Martin, citing the union's current contract. "You talk to us or you don't raise it."

Union members maintain that SF State administrators have already established the fee hike.

"It would be premature to say what the decision will be (with the proposed permit hikes)," Corrigan said. "That would make a bit of a mockery out of the idea of the meeting and conferring."

Insley said he did not expect the consultation process to begin before Nov. 1.
"Things like this just don't happen that quickly," Martin added.

She said the grievances also call for an "equitable and fair" way of distributing the parking permits.

Union members charge there are no established guidelines for the distribution of parking permits within the various schools and departments on campus. Parking and Transportation Coordinator Lily Gee confirmed the distribution of faculty and staff parking permits is handled at the discretion of each department.

Martin said parking permits are based on seniority in some departments while in others, she contended, top department managers dole out permits to friends leaving "everyone else out in the boondocks."

[ Golden Gater Online September 5, 1996 ]

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