UC Berkeley Students Occupy Chancellor’s Office to Demand Justice for UC Workers

On Thursday morning, over sixty UC Berkeley students occupied their administrative building and hundreds rallied outside to demand living wages and benefits for subcontracted campus employees. Occupying students shut down all administrative functions until they were forcibly removed, in order to show solidarity with the ongoing struggles of subcontracted workers on the Berkeley campus.

Custodians and parking attendants employed at UC Berkeley through contracts with private companies went public with their demand to be insourced by the University at the end of August 2015. These workers, who on average have 9 years of experience working at Cal, are exclusively people of color. Up until the beginning of October, they were making as little as $9.30/hr in a city where the minimum wage is $11.00/hr. Despite performing the same tasks as their UC­employed counterparts, subcontracted campus workers are paid half as much, with no access to any of the same health benefits, retirement plans or job security. One of the contractor companies, Performance First, is currently under investigation for egregious labor violations: including abuses of child labor law and a failure to pay employees overtime (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uc-contractor-investigation-20150930-story.html).

Their demands for wages and benefits equal to those of their UC­-employed counterparts have been repeatedly met with the indifference of a Chancellor who has explicitly refused to challenge the racist exploitation of subcontracted workers of color.

Students demand that our Chancellor take responsibility for, and seek to rectify, the fact that his hiring decisions ruthlessly exploit marginalized Bay Area workers in order to cut costs, while administrative salaries continue to expand at an astronomical rate. A broad coalition of students demands that their tuition dollars no longer fund racism and injustice at the UC. And they will continue to campaign with increasing intensity until UC Berkeley’s hiring practices adhere to the values embodied (and advertised) by an elite, progressive university. These workers are necessary for the daily functioning of the school, and deserve the respect afforded to all other actors on this campus. Tactics of exploitation and retaliation corrupt and degrade the mission of the entire University of California system.