University of California administrators and the union representing 9,000 UC hospital nurses have asked a state mediator for help in breaking a deadlock over a new contract agreement. The talks, now in their ninth month, have taken on an increasingly political air after a Sacramento judge blocked a planned one-day July walkout by the nurses.

Negotiators from the California Nurses Association, which represents the nurses, have accused the university of unfair labor practices for failing to budge on key issues, ranging from pensions and compensation to the inclusion of nurse-to-patient ratios in the contract, as demanded by the union. Both sides have filed complaints with the state Public Employment Relations Board, accusing each other of misconduct.

“On all of the … issues the CNA has been demanding, we have offered proposals, but obviously differences still remain,” UC spokesman Noel Van Nyhuis said. “We hope that an outside mediator will help bring the parties closer.”

In early July, CNA informed the university that its workers would hold a one-day “unfair labor practices strike” later that month, but Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster blocked the walkout, at the request of PERB and the university. On Sept. 2, McMaster ruled that the union could not strike until the conclusion of a mandatory impasse process, as required by state law.

“The firm positions that UC has maintained … although in disagreement with CNA’s positions on the issues, are mistakenly characterized either as refusals to bargain or as attempts to condition a successor agreement upon CNA’s acquiescence in UC’s positions,” McMaster’s ruling stated in response to union complaints. “Indeed, CNA’s positions on the issues appear to be just as firm as UC’s positions and may suggest, not a refusal to bargain or conditional bargaining, but a point of impasse within the meaning [of the law].”

The decision frustrated nurses, according to the CNA’s chief negotiator Joe Lindsay, though the union has not yet decided whether it would appeal.

“There was disappointment and disagreement with the decision that the judge made,” Lindsay said. “But we recognized that the PERB has been taken over [by] appointees of the governor and that this was a very political decision. Nurses were disappointed but not shocked.”

Currently, both sides are waiting for a state mediator to conduct a fact-finding investigation, though the university has unilaterally implemented its proposed wage increases for next year. Van Nyhuis said the higher wages would strengthen the university’s ability to remain competitive in recruiting new nurses in a state infamous for its nursing shortages.

In a press release, CNA called McMaster’s ruling “the latest illustration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ongoing attack on” registered nurses. Since last year, the union and Schwarzenegger have been involved in a bitter dispute over the governor’s attempt to block an increase in the required nurse-to-patient ratio in the state’s hospitals, regulations that the governor contended would have put several hospitals out of business.

The union’s decision to follow the governor to many of his public appearances helped set off Schwarzenegger’s battle with the state’s public employees’ unions, a dispute that largely precipitated the dramatic decline in support for his policies among state voters.

“The Court feels compelled to first state what this case is NOT about,” McMaster stated in the opinion. “It is not about whether the services of nurses are highly valued. No one has contended or commented to the contrary. It is not about whether staffing ratios are a good idea or not — that issue has not reached the court in this proceeding.”

However, CNA has called its negotiations an extension of the union’s political dispute with the governor, pointing out that four of five PERB members have been appointed by Schwarzenegger and that he serves as the president of the UC Board of Regents, though the title is largely a formality.

“Efforts by those linked to the Schwarzenegger administration to silence the voice of UC nurses follow months of attacks by Schwarzenegger on [registered nurses],” CNA Executive Director Rose Anne DeMoro stated in a union press release.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, DeMoro was even more bold, tying in the contract talks to the dispute over staffing levels with the governor.

“Everything leads back to Schwarzenegger,” the paper quoted her as saying. “There’s an agenda in the state of California basically to reduce staffing ratios, to go after pensions and it’s all playing out here at the University of California.”

However, Lindsay, the chief negotiator, said the union believes the contract dispute has political undertones.

“Our dispute with the UC is completely about the contract,” he said. “But UC’s reaction to some of the issues that we raised we think is affected by their political commitment with the governor.”

PERB General Counsel Robert Thompson — an appointee of former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat and Schwarzenegger’s predecessor — rejected the union’s claims that politics have played a role in the board’s decision to ask for the injunction.

“That’s absolutely untrue,” Thompson said. “I was involved personally in the investigation in the case. There were no political considerations at all — we interpreted the facts based on the law as it currently stands.”

The university has also made itself a target of CNA critics by opposing legislation sponsored by the union that called on hospitals to use special equipment to lift overweight patients, a practice the nurses said was the cause of serious back injuries among their ranks. Schwarzenegger’s decision to veto the bill last year was met with strong protest from the union.

The question of lifting regulations also remains a key point of contention between the union and the university in the ongoing contract talks.