AFSCME contract fight continues, UC Berkeley protest

The pressure on UC management for a settlement with AFSCME is mounting. Politicians, clergy, citizens, parents, alumni, other UC unions and now a new crop of freshman are supporting AFSCME 3299's fight against poverty wages at the University of California.

We marched through campus to California Hall and then visited the festivities (for freshman designed to make them forget the exorbitant tuitions) at Memorial Glade today, 8.25.08, and our speakers were heard from by megaphone before the speech by Birgeneau, who refused to give us time at the microphone. But we chanted him down and the assembled students heard poverty stories from workers on campus. The chancellor waited twenty minutes to speak, pulled the "free-speech" card and so we listened, and then he answered us; saying nobody should work at UC Berkeley for poverty wages.