Last Thursday, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union protested the UC’s recent contract renewal offer.
Their display of civil disobedience was impressive ““ sitting in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard blocking traffic. Some were eventually arrested.
AFSCME was asking the UC for a $15 minimum wage for its thousands of workers employed by the university ““ a wage that would help them take better care of their families and afford to live close to UCLA.
The UC could not oblige their request, and gave them an inferior contract renewal offer.
The most recent offer gave the workers an additional $16 million, but still did not meet their demands.
The UC Board of Regents has repeatedly heard reports that both faculty and staff are underpaid as much as 20 to 30 percent when compared to comparable institutions.
And the regents have said they would love nothing more than to pay everyone that works for the university market wages.
So ultimately, there is no fundamental disagreement between AFSCME and the UC ““ they both want market wages, and they both know it probably isn’t going to happen. They are also both well aware of the problem.
The bottom line here is that the UC is not the one to blame for subpar wages for its workers.
There simply is not enough money in the university’s budget to pay everyone as well as they should be paid.
Instead, the onus must fall on the people who control the state purse ““ the governor and the legislature.
It is simultaneously confusing and worrisome that in a state with a Democratic-controlled legislature that claims to care about workers’ rights, such a condition exists.
The lawmakers are well aware of this situation, and yet they continue to underfund the university.
Everyone here is suffering, and we all have sympathy for these workers. Employees can’t afford to take care of their families, students have mounting and unmanageable debt, professors are not being paid as much as their peers at other universities, and the UC is making countless other sacrifices.
Perhaps the fault of the university in this matter is that they are failing to do a good enough job lobbying the state government for money.
And perhaps the protests from students and workers alike should be focused in Sacramento and aimed at the legislature, rather than at the university or Wilshire Boulevard.
Maybe our newly appointed UC president, Mark Yudof, will feel more comfortable demanding that our institution be better funded and will offer an aggressive plan for the university to pursue better state funding ““ but that has yet to be seen.
This may be an idealistic request, but it would be very good to see all of the different constituents of the university that would like to see it funded better join one unified lobbying effort.
Imagine the university’s president, regents, staff, faculty and students all joining their efforts and standing together in front of the capital demanding the money we need.
Would it cause the state to buckle and exempt us from the 10-percent budget cuts? Likely not, but at least it’s an effort, and at least it would unite us under one cause rather than separating all of our constituents into less powerful parts.