Losing 30 minutes a day means a lot to Martha Torres, a Bruin Café employee who has felt the pressure of prevalent layoffs earlier in the year.
Now, with the UC Board of Regents’ recent decision to reduce her work hours until May 2010, she thinks that the lines at Bruin Café will only get longer, and the service will only worsen.
Torres was just one among more than 200 UC workers from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 who took a bus after work on Thursday to travel to Regent Joanne Kozberg’s home. The union members hoped to stress the daily impact of cuts to the budget.
Charter buses brought these employees straight from San Diego and Irvine, and workers and their families marched with candles at the regent’s Beverly Hills home.
“We are here to prove that our families are hurting,” said Jose Mendez, who has worked at UCLA for 26 years.
Torres had similar sentiments.
“Students, teachers, workers, everybody is upset about these cuts, and by cutting our hours, we’re already short on staff, and we cannot provide the best service to the students,” she said.
Police were present at the event to speak with the union leaders. Kozberg chose not to answer the protesters’ requests, and only union leaders were allowed to approach her driveway and her door.
A member of the finance and compensation committee, Kozberg declined the requests for negotiations, said Mario Fuentes, lead organizer for the union.
“These decisions have cost us pain and brought us misfortune for all in the service sector, and we want to take that message back publicly to where she lives,” Fuentes said.
At UCLA, those in the custodial, food, bus fleet, parking and security services have seen their hours cut this year.
Although the union reached a five-year contract for higher wages, these cuts in hours bring their total salaries lower, Fuentes said.
For Mendez and his 600 employees, the new cuts total to 21 days without work, including the spring and winter breaks.
“It doesn’t make me happy that it has come all the way to this point,” said Julian Posada, vice president of the union and a worker at UC Santa Barbara. “It took us 18 months to ratify our five-year contract, and now we get this. Even with the increases, we’re back into poverty.”
Posada understands arriving at Kozberg’s home was a “drastic move,” but he said it was necessary to show how personally cuts to the budget have affected UC employees.