Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine met Tuesday with representatives from the Staff Union at the University of Virginia and the Graduate Labor Union.
Throughout the evening, union officials made references to what they say is a refusal of University administers to meet with their group, a policy they say the University justifies by citing Virginia's anti-collective bargaining statutes.
At the meeting, Kaine, who supports "meet and confer" laws but not collective bargaining rights, was careful to couch the reasons for his presence in terms of the routine. Throughout the evening he made frequent references to his long-time policy of visiting government workers to "say thanks," and he started his remarks with an explicit denouncement of collective bargaining.
"I am not a fan of collective bargaining for public employees," he said. "I do think a policy of no collective bargaining has served Virginia well."
But while Kaine may have intended Tuesday's gathering as an informal rap session, members of the Staff Union at the University of Virginia quickly delved into tough questions.
Audience members expressed disappointment at the size of projected state pay raises, citing cost of living increases.
Kaine acknowledged that "it isn't an easy time to be a state employee," but offered little hope for the immediate future.
When asked if state law prohibited the University from increasing worker's salaries beyond the 2.25 percent promised increase for the next calendar year, Kaine said he felt that while such an action would not be illegal, it would be unlikely.
"We make it extremely difficult for Universities to do these things but we don't really preclude them from doing it if they wanted to and could," Kaine said.
And while he listened attentively as workers relayed individual grievances, including statements likening the University to a "plantation" and the treatment of its workers as meeting "third world standards," Kaine disagreed with the source of worker's woes.
While some audience members spoke an inherent "climate of disrespect for staff," at the University, Kaine said he felt budgetary woes and not outright malice were behind unsatisfactory experiences for workers.
"The source of the problems is much less the decision of an administrator on this campus and much more a result of legislative decisions," Kaine said.
"The biggest problem we deal with is a persistent under funding of education," Kaine said. "Lack of funding pits people against each other."
For English Prof. Susan Fraiman, a limited budget does not excuse what she said was faulty prioritizing of expenditures.
"There is a feeling that in fact the University may not have as much money as we'd like it to have," Fraiman said."But it has some money and it is using it for the wrong things, and it is not using it to sufficiently compensate the staff."
Kaine expressed hope that the legislature would eventually begin adequately funding higher education in Virginia, but said he worried that such a change might come too late to maintain academic standards in the commonwealth.
"At some point US News and World Report rankings will drop and at that point the legislature will wake up, but at that point it will take years to get it back," he said.
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