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Santa Cruz Indymedia
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UCSC Workers, Students Grill Chancellor, Give June 5 Deadline
On Tuesday, May 23, UC Santa Cruz's custodians, part of the union AFSCME, continued their hard-fought wage parity campaign by staging a respectful protest inside Chancellor Denice Denton's Brown Bag event. The workers are frusterated over the Chancellor's lack of support for custodians and their families. While the Chancellor consistently refers to 'market rates' to justify top admin salaries (she earns upwards of $400,000/yr.), she has yet to support custodians whose poverty wages are up to 30% less than neighboring colleges. At the event, AFSCME organizer Julian Posadas announced that some workers were considering a hunger strike and that the Chancellor has June 5 as a deadline to support the workers.
While over 1700 student petitions were delivered to the Chancellor, showing student solidarity with workers, many students associated with the successful C.A.R.E. (Community and Resource Empowerment) measure from last spring attended to remind the Chancellor of her yet unfulfilled legal commitment to provide the funding she promised for Student Initiated Outreach (SIO) and retention programs. The SIO programs, housed in the student-run Engaging Education (e^2) center, are responsible for the recruitment and retention of thousands of students of color on campus. Yet, when the Chancellor announced that UCSC's class of 2006-2007 was, for the first time in history, majority people of color, she failed to mention the students who are largely responsible for this occurance. The students, dressed in their green C.A.R.E. shirts, came to remind the Chancellor of the over the $70,000 she has owed SIO programs for months now. In Spring of 2005, the Chancellor agreed to match the funding generated by a new student fee (called C.A.R.E.) to support SIO programs. Expecting this money, the programs budgeted in her stated contribution, only to find themselves deep in debt after the Chancellor failed to meet her legal obligations. To this date, the SIO programs have still not received the promised money from the Chancellor. If this $70,000 is not deposited soon, the SIO programs will be unable to operate, drastically harming the diversity of the campus.
While she's continously asserted a 'diversity' platform, students are frusterated over the Chancellor's lack of any meaningful action towards this end, the huge rate of key faculty of color leaving (especially from American Studies) as a result of disrespect from the administration, the lack of Ethnic Studies and Asian American/Pacific Islander studies, the continued attempt to cut programs vital to students of color (including SOAR, the unit that houses student organizations), and the attack on the humanities (including the Language Program). All of this is amidst a top-admin salary/perk scandal, efforts to continue the management of UC's two nuclear weapons labs, and attempts to drastically expand the UCSC campus. The only question that remains is this: what exactly are they trying to expand?
-----
Please contact sugarloaf@riseup.net to repost/reprint these photos. Thanks!
For more information please visit:
http://www.afscme3299.org
http://www.engagingeducation.org
While she's continously asserted a 'diversity' platform, students are frusterated over the Chancellor's lack of any meaningful action towards this end, the huge rate of key faculty of color leaving (especially from American Studies) as a result of disrespect from the administration, the lack of Ethnic Studies and Asian American/Pacific Islander studies, the continued attempt to cut programs vital to students of color (including SOAR, the unit that houses student organizations), and the attack on the humanities (including the Language Program). All of this is amidst a top-admin salary/perk scandal, efforts to continue the management of UC's two nuclear weapons labs, and attempts to drastically expand the UCSC campus. The only question that remains is this: what exactly are they trying to expand?
-----
Please contact sugarloaf@riseup.net to repost/reprint these photos. Thanks!
For more information please visit:
http://www.afscme3299.org
http://www.engagingeducation.org
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yeah - many of the people doing primary teaching tasks of grading papers and teaching sections are paid between $9-$14/hour. Graders get the worst deal because there are no side benefits, while many graduate student teaching instructors get tuition remission. However, if they didn't have those workers, they'd have to hire real teachers to do the same thing. It isn't like this is a volunteer position that grad students would vie to do anyway. Here is a pay scale. This is actually about a dollar higher this year. I specifically remember being offered $9 for grading and getting $1250/month for 20 hrs/week or $15 for teaching genetics labs:
http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/pay/uawwg.htm
http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/pay/uawwg.htm
You guys and gals rock! Gracias por su contribucion a nuestra lucha por justicia...
By the way, nice new hairstyle Denice.... Much better than that curly mullet thingy you had before.
By the way, nice new hairstyle Denice.... Much better than that curly mullet thingy you had before.
For more information:
http://www.freakradio.org
Academia is a fuckin slave pit of ruthless exploitation. The most severe examples are not seen in places like Santa Cruz, where people can commute to major urban job markets if they so choose and thus universities have to adjust their pay rates to fit this reality. The worst exploitation happens in isolated college towns where the university in question has virtual monopoly control of local employment and the only way to escape this is to move away. Under these conditions, universities can treat the locals like indentured servants, and they invariably DO. US culture socializes us to idealize academia, to think of universities as monastic sanctuaries of enlightened thinking. Well I'm here to tell you they're NOT. They're fucking open sewers of raw capitalist greed, just like almost every other institution of this very sick society, and the professors and researchers -- the "high priests" as it were -- are all ruthless class enemies to most of the people who make their "grand achievements" possible. That's clearly how it's always been.
The students and workers efforts always amaze me and I'm glad that you are holding Chancellor Denton accountable. I've always supported what Student Initiated Outreach has done on this campus as well as Workers' justice on this campus. Diversity is a necessity on this campus as well as an end to poverty wages.
Why are Kids making nine to fifteen dollars an hour for grading papers complaining about being exploited. The words that come to mind just thinking about it are SPOILED, INGRATEFUL, LAZY, and lets not forget INGNORANT. My people work in the hot fields of western United States making minimum wage ($6.75/hr in case you haven't looked it), while you sit there grading papers in a more likely than not an air conditioned room. What health problems do u experience a sore butt, pencil cramp, and blurred vision. Go ask field workers about their conditions, ask them about twelve hour days, heatstroke, freezing temperatures, lack of clean restrooms, fear of not getting paid for the days work, and long term heath problems from exposure to cancerous chemicals and other grueling work conditions. Please go out there and tell them how you are being exploited. If you are lucky and they don't justly hit you over your ignorant head with a hole, rock, or fall over laughing at your ass, then come back on Indymedia and tell us what you learned. You are nothing but a bunch of ungrateful spoiled brats.
deleting this post only prove you have no rebuttal, and you wont get anywhere since I'll just repost it :)
It also proves that you are members of the white elitist system that wishes to keep minorities as slaves.
deleting this post only prove you have no rebuttal, and you wont get anywhere since I'll just repost it :)
It also proves that you are members of the white elitist system that wishes to keep minorities as slaves.
Just because somebody else has worse conditions doesn't mean that these
GSI's shouldn't stand up for what is right. They should stand as well as the Mexican
workers you speak of. If you haven't noticed, mr smart guy, the California University
system is totally screwing it's workers and students over on an incredibly large scale.
These people have the balls to not just roll over and moan.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/03/MNGTUIJNTJ1.DTL
GSI's shouldn't stand up for what is right. They should stand as well as the Mexican
workers you speak of. If you haven't noticed, mr smart guy, the California University
system is totally screwing it's workers and students over on an incredibly large scale.
These people have the balls to not just roll over and moan.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/03/MNGTUIJNTJ1.DTL
I'm always amazed how stupid and cruel young people can be....why comment on the chancellor's hair style? Get serious...
I have to laugh at these obviously white and right wing trolls coming out of the woodwork professing love for a lesbian chancellor and upset with her demise. First off, to "g" who claims "his people" are working the fields. Yeah right troll. The only bending over your relatives have likely done lately in the back of a car. Why do I say that? Because if you actually knew anything about the politics on campus of UCSC, instead of speaking out of your ass, you'd know that "your people" are the lowest paid and worst treated. Custodial, particularly temp custodial workers, as well as clerical workers work very hard and are paid a wage that is barely liveable in the Santa Cruz area. The fact that students are in support of economic parity for workers on this campus is quite frankly amazing. So, cut with the bogus crap about "your people" because we know you're just an angry white right wing freak.
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