Two weeks ago, low-wage U.C. workers represented by AFSCME walked the Woodmont way neighborhood in the Oakland Hills inviting newly appointed University of California president Mark Yudof and his neighbors to come eat pancakes on September 27th. We wanted Yudof to come out and explain how he intends to END POVERT WAGES at the University of California.

AFSCME workers at all ten campuses and five hospitals have been in contract negotiations with UC management for nearly a year and even though ninety percent of our workforce is eligible for public assistance, worry about feeding their children and some take two or three jobs to survive or collect cans during lunch breaks for recycling, UC executives have not moved.

It was a good school and is a good place to work and we care more for the students than the executives do, but if we can't afford the rent, or gas or clothes for our kids, something is wrong. UC executives have no trouble hiring celebrity professors, spending millions on sports and new buildings and paying themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but they can't find the pittance to pay a custodian or a food worker a living wage? What's up with that?

Who wants to have their blood drawn by a technician worried about paying the rent or go into surgery with x-rays taken by a temp? Who wants to send their child to an ever more expensive university where the toilets are neglected and the trash sits and rots due to workforce shortages, workplace injuries and underpaid staff?

Saturday. September 27th at 11: a.m. nearly a hundred workers from local UC campuses including members of UPTE(hooray!) converged in the rarified air of the Oakland hills to make pancakes for newly appointed president MARK YUDOF at the huge Oakland Hills mansion on Woodmont Way rented by the university for somewhere around eleven to thirteen thousand dollars a month.

Workers don't want to get rich, but we are starving and are insulted they would hire president Yudof at nearly a million a year, plus this huge, all-expense paid mcmansion, while pleading poor to long time workers stuck at eleven dollars an hour. They claim the state is at fault but the state budget is a tiny portion of service workers salaries and the food service, housing and hospital sectors in the University are cash cows, a fact they never mention.

And we are not finished. UCSF workers visited head regent Richard Blum two weeks ago and boy was he pissed, last week we had an all union march at UC Berkeley's famous Sproul Plaza, and if they think they can wait us out, well, how long will it be until hell frezees over?

Finally, because we've lost faith in the regents, whom we believe are mismanaging UC's huge pension fund, AFSCME statewide will place an initiative on the California ballot next year establishing joint governance of pension program (see Mercury News story).

See the pics below.

hc

for more information;

http://www.newuniversity.org/main/article?slug=uc_priorities_ignore_fair161

http://www.dailycal.org/article/102110/striking_a_fair_deal_for_all

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/17/EDDO11OSPT.DTL&hw=uc+workers&sn=001&sc=1000

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-miles16-2008jul16,0,1442927.story

http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/1084601.html

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10489815?nclick_check=1&forced=true