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92% of UC Service Workers Vote to Strike
Low-Wage Workers Say 'Disrespect' and 'Bad-Faith Bargaining' Are Key
For Immediate Release
March 16, 2005
Contact: Jane McDonald, Organizing Director
510-844-1160 x117
510-468-7113 (cell)
92% UC Service Workers Vote to Strike
Low-wage workers say "disrespect" and "bad-faith bargaining" are key
Oakland, CA – 92% of University of California union members who serve food, clean buildings, and help run the campuses and medical centers voted to strike UC for bargaining in bad faith and refusing to sign a fair contract.
"Service workers have spoken with one voice to say that we are willing to do whatever it takes – including strike – to force UC to bargain in good faith and provide chances to advance, family wages, and respect for our quality work," said Julian Posadas, a 10-year principal food service worker at UC Santa Cruz. Posadas is also on the Executive Board of AFSCME Local 3299, the union that represents the 7,300 service workers.
Voting took place at all UC campuses and medical centers between March 10 and 16.
Negotiations are stalled on over 30 issues, including fair wages and an end to discrimination and favoritism in hiring and promotions. UC unfairly refuses to bargain on a number of issues, including safer staffing and workload. The union has filed unfair labor practice charges, and workers are upset about UC breaking the law.
The contract expired June 30, 2004 and was extended to January 31, 2005.
An elected bargaining committee met with UC management over 24 times since September 2004 before declaring impasse and entering state-mandated mediation and fact-finding. If UC does not change its positions, the bargaining committee will make the decision on the timing of a strike.
UC students, faculty, staff and community supporters have attended rallies and picket lines in support of the lowest paid workers in the UC system, who are mostly immigrant and minority workers.
A recent report issued by the National Economic Development and Law Center found that 46% of UC service workers earned wages to low to support a family. It also found UC workers earning much less than workers at California State University (CSU) and many community colleges. A copy of the report is available at:
http://www.afscme3299.org/reportonucworkerpoverty1/
UC angered workers by giving its top medical executives $2.4 million in bonuses in October 2004 while its lowest paid workers had not received a raise in over two years.
For more information:
http://www.afscme3299.org
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Well, it won't effect teaching in the serious subjects. And the serious students won't care. Can always sweep your own office and eat off campus.
Keep on hearing rumors that all the different unions on campus might strike at the same time finally, or at least work together a little more. The AFSCME ratification is a step in that direction, and combined with CUE and CNA could really have a big impact. Hopefully the AFSCME patient care workers will also come out in solidarity somehow since they already settled, and still have service workers in their facilities.
So? Let them. Serious teachers will continue to do their jobs teaching serious students. Back when I was a grad student, someone was always trying to shut the place down over the South African business. We didn't care. We continued to teach, do research, and get on with the business of what we are there for. I have no animus against labor. But it's not my concern, either. And I'm certain that certain people enrolled at Berkeley will find all sorts of "solidarity" actions to make themselves feel better. They are not serious students.
"Serious students" typically rely on service workers to empty their garbage and feed them while they live in the dorms, and clean up after their shit whether in the classrooms or the bathrooms. "Serious students" who only pay attention to their studies, basically have their head stuck up their ass and live in some alternate reality.
Luckily there are enough students and community members that are conscious of those who do the work to keep "serious students" from being distracted from their studies, otherwise the university wouldn't work at all, and spoiled brats(aka "serious students") would have to wipe their own asses and wake up to the reality around them.
UC works because clerical workers, service workers, nurses, and grad students keep it working; and it will stop when they decide to make it stop.
Luckily there are enough students and community members that are conscious of those who do the work to keep "serious students" from being distracted from their studies, otherwise the university wouldn't work at all, and spoiled brats(aka "serious students") would have to wipe their own asses and wake up to the reality around them.
UC works because clerical workers, service workers, nurses, and grad students keep it working; and it will stop when they decide to make it stop.
I was talking with our janitor at the lab yesterday. We typically just say hello, but I asked him how much of the building he has to do, and he said that they had positions they were leaving unfilled and just have the other people cover it so he has a few floors and the library to do. Nobody notices them when they're cleaning at night, but it is only in their absence that it takes about a day for trash to pile up all over Sproul. The same thing happens in downtown SF if people doing come through several times a day.
cp is right, and uccu's response if very flip and short-sighted. UC campuses are huge - more than 10,000 people work for ucsf alone. And then there's the patients, research participants, and the thousands of poor captive animals. You don't gather that many beings in huge buildings and have no effect when the floors and restrooms go unwashed all at once, trash piles up, etc. I'm one pct employee who will be at the rally next week if I'm not tied up with work - Thursday March 24 at noon, in front of the Parnassus medical center up on Parnassus Street (N-Judah, 6, 66, 43 busses). We in the pct unit have had wage freezes for a couple of years too, but these folks make even less, which is absolutely criminal, when the ceo's at uc get 6 figure salaries and bonuses. I have tremendous respect for anyone who sells their labor to this evil capitalist system; and without these folks, it wouldn't be habitable to even work there - I mean basic nuts and bolts funtioning that we take for granted. Support the UC Service workers - raise all up, not some at the expense of others.
The University of California, and especially UC Berkeley, is a rich folks' finishing school. With the ever-increasing fees, cost of books and cost of living, as well as the non-existent education in the workingclass schools, it is rare that anyone from the workingclass can attend UC, no matter how brilliant or dedicated. The workers at UC make possible all the paper work, communication, cleaning, food, and everything else that takes place at the University aside from teaching, without whom there is no UC. The professors are not there 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year; the classified staff are. The professors also depend on the classified staff to make their job possible.
The ignorant folks who seem to think they can do without the classified staff clearly have no concept of what it takes to run a university, especially the huge UC Berkeley.
Those of us who work for lawyers educated at UC either for their BA, their JD or both, are not impressed by UC. The one thing UC cannot teach is class struggle; only life itself can teach that, and it is that knowledge that makes a very big difference in the quality of "professional."
As Uriah Heep kept saying in Charles Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, "be 'umble" or be humble. That is the advice all who think they can do without classified personnel should take very seriously. Be humble. And further, honor labor by paying all of us decent living wages and health care benefits.
The ignorant folks who seem to think they can do without the classified staff clearly have no concept of what it takes to run a university, especially the huge UC Berkeley.
Those of us who work for lawyers educated at UC either for their BA, their JD or both, are not impressed by UC. The one thing UC cannot teach is class struggle; only life itself can teach that, and it is that knowledge that makes a very big difference in the quality of "professional."
As Uriah Heep kept saying in Charles Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, "be 'umble" or be humble. That is the advice all who think they can do without classified personnel should take very seriously. Be humble. And further, honor labor by paying all of us decent living wages and health care benefits.
<<We continued to teach, do research, and get on with the business of what we are there for. I have no animus against labor. But it's not my concern, either.>>
No, you don't have any animus toward labor, UCCU, you're just a self-absorbed, myopic piece of shit.
Here's to hoping you eat shit pie soon.
No, you don't have any animus toward labor, UCCU, you're just a self-absorbed, myopic piece of shit.
Here's to hoping you eat shit pie soon.
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