As the people who cook, clean and care for you and your campus, the work we do is essential to UC’s ability to provide you with a world-class education. Our work isn’t glamorous, but the purpose of our work is to support you — our future — and we take real pride in that. Today, we are engaged in a struggle with the UC administration over issues that affect us and our families deeply: retirement with dignity, wages and jobs that sustain us, and the ability to advocate for ourselves and the people we serve — like all of you.
At age 60, after 20-plus years of hard work, we will retire with permanent injuries, unaffordable health care and an average retirement income of $18,000 per year. By contrast, UC President Mark Yudof can retire after just seven years of service to UC on more than $350,000 per year, with decreased health insurance costs.
We pay for our retirement benefit each month of our working lives so that we can afford to stop working when we are old, and we have foregone hefty raises for the promise of health care when our bodies are too broken to work. The UC Board of Regents, however, has proposed changes to these benefits that will leave us impoverished. We would retire at age 65, well past the point of physical ability, and for some of us, the increased cost of our health insurance would exceed our monthly retirement income. Yet our risk of work-related injury is only increasing.
UC now hires fewer custodians, maintenance workers, and gardeners to clean your restrooms, fix the lights in your classrooms, and make your campus clean and safe. Increasingly, this work is being done by people who work for outside contractors, make poverty wages with no benefits and have no rights at work. This creates unsafe working conditions for us, and poor conditions for your education.
For this, you are paying higher fees, yet the training and research you do while at UC is the foundation for what is a highly profitable university system. We think that UC can and should do better.
The UC system is the third largest employer in the state, impacts one out of 46 jobs in the state and reported an increase of $414 million in net assets in fiscal year 2010-2011. The University of California is an economic engine that can either help drive the state’s economy forward or help drag it down, but the administration is making further and deeper cuts to your education and our livelihoods. How will workers be able to retire if the UC continues to cut our pensions? How will you be able to earn your degree if the UC continues to raise fees and cut classes? How will California recover and grow if UC’s workers and graduates are living in debt?
As you see us on the picket line this month, please understand that we are putting our greatest effort into reaching a fair agreement with the UC administration — one that honors our dignity, safety, and livelihoods, and that can help to restore the excellence that you deserve and should expect from the University of California.
Kathryn Lybarger is the president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 3299.
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Contact the opinion desk at [email protected]
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> At age 60, after 20-plus years of hard work, we will retire with
permanent injuries, unaffordable health care and an average retirement
income of $18,000 per year. By contrast, UC President Mark Yudof can
retire after just seven years of service to UC on more than $350,000 per
year, with decreased health insurance costs.
Oh please … I mean, I get it that you’re not paid well and I get that the high pay of administrators is sometimes painful to look at (it is for me, too, as a UC faculty member making way less than any Dean, any UCOP member, …) but
(1) you really want to bitch about the retirement of someone who worked probably for 35 years (first as a allegedly world-renowned professor, then as an administrator with billions in management responsibility) to that of a janitor who worked 20 yrs? Really, your rhetoric is this cheap and stupid to pick out just one convenient target?
(2) you really want to ignore the fact that some staff is the only group of UC employees that is overpaid compared to the comparison 8? Administrators and faculty (outside of UCSF) are underpaid compared to market conditions whereas union-represented service workers make 18% more and other support staff only 2% less. Really? Such facts just get ignored?
Seriously, I swallow hard to stomach senior management salaries, too, and I swallow hard to tolerate my salary, the furlough, the higher pension contributions, etc. but this argumentation with convenient scapegoats and ignoring facts leads me to say that not only UC can do better – you could do better too (argumentatively) …
(1) you really want to bitch about the retirement of someone who worked
probably for 35 years (first as a allegedly world-renowned professor,
then as an administrator with billions in management responsibility) to
that of a janitor who worked 20 yrs? Really, your rhetoric is this cheap
and stupid to pick out just one convenient target?
———> This is so typical. Outrage because of poor argumentation, not outrage because there are hundreds of UC employees doing physical labor for 20 years and not getting retirement benefits sufficient to sustain them.
(2) you really want to ignore the fact that some staff is the only group
of UC employees that is overpaid compared to the comparison 8?
Administrators and faculty (outside of UCSF) are underpaid compared to
market conditions whereas union-represented service workers make 18%
more and other support staff only 2% less. Really? Such facts just get
ignored?
———-> First, I can’t for the life of me understand what your first sentence means. Secondly, yes, faculty here are underpaid relative to other people in their field. Sadly, their salaries start at $70,000-$120,000 with prospects for hitting $200,000-$350,000, as compared with their peer salaries that are 15% higher. I pity them so.
———-> In the meantime, those behemoth union employees are making $15,000-$40,000 to start with the potential to make $25,000-$65,000!. And for those non-unionized employees, I say, unionize! Get what you deserve!
Thank you for this insightful article. As an incoming UCB graduate student and union organizer, I stand in solidarity with UC workers. It is imperitave that we protect our workers and make the connections between the UC workers and students who are the target of unnecessary budget cuts, tuition hikes and layoffs.
For all those who attacks this op-ed piece: don’t forget that those whom you step on to get to the top will one day comeback to haunt you. I am so grateful for our UCB staff, and they deserve a dignified wage and retirement .
How is UCB “your” staff when your avatar says Chicago Teacher’s Union?
Thousands of people across the country, regardless of where they live, changed their avatars and facebook profile pictures to “Chicago Teachers Union” in solidarity with their strike and to spread awareness of what was happening.
Proving that thousands of people across the country are suckers and shills for a corrupt union. Next…
Great article, unfortunately as too often occurs on these lists, they are dominated by hatemongers who enjoy taking jabs at the least well-to-do in our society. That is sad and demonstrates the lack of compassion that has driven so many people in this state and this country to poverty over the years.
It is sad that so many Americans have become the haters of the poor and the defenders of the rich and belligerent forces in our society.
It is of course no coincidence that the former are often brown, black or female, and the latter white and male.
I stand in support of AFSCME 3299 and all it stands for, as well as Chicago teachers and all other people who would have us live in a society where people stand up for one another!
You are mistaken. The least well-to-do are the students. More than half receive financial aid and perhaps 70% will graduate with significant student loans. Students deserve to come first, and it’s sad that well-compensated union workers are trying to steal from the students. If the task of planting flowers or cleaning whiteboards is too challenging for AFSCME workers then why did they choose this line of work anyways? Even if UC administrators capitulated to their pension and wage demands, how will that change the nature of their “backbreaking” work? A professional sympathy-seeking agitator like this union president can pretend to be serving the students, but in reality she is only serving her union’s greed. And oh yeah, congratulations for playing the race card, but it won’t work. Kathryn Lybarger is white.
Students have good reason to be concerned about their loans and job prospects, just like aging workers have good reason to be concerned about how they are going to take care of themselves when their retirement income is near or below the poverty line. When state support for public education declines, this means a smaller pot for all who depend on it — students who depend on it for financial aid, and union workers who depend on it for their income. That workers would demand that they be paid a living wage and have a secure retirement is no different from students demanding that their tuition not be so high that they cannot afford to repay their loans in this uncertain job market. Would you call the student demands stealing from workers?
As for backbreaking work, no one is complaining that the work is hard. They are simply asking that they be provided affordable medical care and retirement income necessary to sustain themselves after they’ve finished working, and that the retirement age not be so high that, once they retire, they can enjoy themselves rather than writhe in pain from the damage to their bodies.
Let me address several points. You said the union workers “demand that they be paid a living wage and have a secure retirement”. How do you know they’re not paid a living wage? Union employees earn higher wages than non-union employees doing the same tasks. Kathryn Lybarger earned over $50,000 a year in 2009 doing gardening work for UC. Can you afford to pay $50,000 a year to your gardener? Even if a union worker made less than “living wage”, whatever that is, so what? The only federal guideline is the minimum wage. If a person’s skill level only justifies minimum wage, then that’s all he or she deserves. Can’t live on minimum wage? Too bad. Find a roommate, move in with relatives, or go back to school to learn a more marketable skill than watering flowers. As for retirement, I do agree the workers have been let down. If they were promised retirement at age 60 and now must negotiate for age 65, that kinda throws a wrench into their future plans. The blame lies squarely with UC administrators who were too generous in previous negotiations. Maybe they assumed UC would have a lot more money for union pensions. However, money for those pensions has to come from higher tuition for students, so good luck convincing students to cough up even more money for non-instructional purposes.
You asked the question “Would you call the student demands stealing from workers?”. That depends. Students who make demands on the California legislature are asking for higher taxes, which means union benefits are not in peril. Students who make demands on UC administrators are in effect asking for redistribution of wealth from UC employees. Student activists who join forces with union activists in demanding UC to reduce tuition while raising union wages and pensions don’t realize they are fighting each other for the same pot of money.
Finally, the author of the op-ed did in fact whine about the backbreaking work as a ploy to gain sympathy from unsophisticated readers. Kathryn said “At age 60, after 20-plus years of hard work, we will retire with permanent injuries…when our bodies are too broken to work.” Even you said they “writhe in pain from the damage to their bodies.” Such hyperbole may fool some readers but to those of us accustomed to reading outrageous union accusations we know it’s just rhetoric to gain an upper hand in salary negotiations.
Let me address several points. You said the union workers “demand
that they be paid a living wage and have a secure retirement”. How do
you know they’re not paid a living wage? Union employees earn higher
wages than non-union employees doing the same tasks. Kathryn Lybarger
earned over $50,000 a year in 2009 doing gardening work for UC.
—->Because I am friends with some of these workers. Kathryn is by far on the high end of the pay scale, and even $50,000/year is barely enough to raise a family in the Bay Area.
Can you
afford to pay $50,000 a year to your gardener?
—->No, but I also don’t own a 1,200 acre garden and have god only knows how many species of plants to take care of. You can’t be seriously comparing the wages of people who are gardeners for Berkeley and people who do gardening for individual homes?
Even if a union worker
made less than “living wage”, whatever that is, so what? The only
federal guideline is the minimum wage. If a person’s skill level only
justifies minimum wage, then that’s all he or she deserves. Can’t live
on minimum wage? Too bad. Find a roommate, move in with relatives, or
go back to school to learn a more marketable skill than watering
flowers.
—–>When there is extraordinary concentration of wealth in the hands of very few people, I think it is fair for those who provide services to the institutions that often take part of reproducing that concentration to ask that they be paid enough to live on. The fact that we are the richest country in the world and have a ridiculously high poverty rate is a testament to the fact that while markets are efficient for distributing power and prices, they need some regulating to make sure that those who participate in them are taken care of.
When the combined cost of living for workers exceeds the combined wages distributed, you have a structural problem, not a lack of thrift/motivation/resourcefulness. There are literally hundreds of applications for a single barely minimum wage jobs every day. Also, it’s hard to go back to school when you’re not paid enough to be able to afford it without loans, and the future income prospects in this job market do not outweigh the cost of repaying the loans.
As for retirement, I do agree the workers have been let down.
If they were promised retirement at age 60 and now must negotiate for
age 65, that kinda throws a wrench into their future plans. The blame
lies squarely with UC administrators who were too generous in previous
negotiations. Maybe they assumed UC would have a lot more money for
union pensions. However, money for those pensions has to come from
higher tuition for students, so good luck convincing students to cough
up even more money for non-instructional purposes. You asked the question “Would you call the student demands stealing
from workers?”. That depends. Students who make demands on the
California legislature are asking for higher taxes, which means union
benefits are not in peril. Students who make demands on UC
administrators are in effect asking for redistribution of wealth from UC
employees. Student activists who join forces with union activists in
demanding UC to reduce tuition while raising union wages and pensions
don’t realize they are fighting each other for the same pot of money.
———-> You’ve completely misread my post if you don’t think we know we’re working from the same pot of money. This is why I emphasized increasing revenue via taxes on the wealthy. In the meantime, you are right that we’re between a rock and a hard place, as student tuition pays a portion of worker salaries, but, honestly, I’d happily take out a loan for a few thousand more dollars to pay for tuition and live more frugally over the next several years if it means that someone who is doing physical labor 40 hours/week can take care of themselves and their families. I know that for many UC students, this is definitely not the case. But for you to just outright say that workers are automatically wrong to ask for a raise because their wages are paid for by student tuition just wreaks of class bigotry to me — especially because many of the students themselves have parents who work similar jobs, if not at UC specifically.
Finally, the author of the op-ed did in fact whine about the
backbreaking work as a ploy to gain sympathy from unsophisticated
readers. Kathryn said “At age 60, after 20-plus years of hard work, we
will retire with permanent injuries…when our bodies are too broken to
work.” Even you said they “writhe in pain from the damage to their
bodies.”
———> You obviously don’t know anyone who does this work.
Hold on, how did your appeal for a “living wage” now evolve to “raise a family”? Is there some upper limit to the size of this hypothetical family? You also contradicted yourself. You said “You can’t be seriously comparing the wages of people who are gardeners
for Berkeley and people who do gardening for individual homes?” In that one sentence you reveal a common inconsistency of the left. You don’t think gardeners for individual homes ought to make as much as unionized UC gardeners, yet you also claim UC gardeners are not making a living wage, so you are condemning gardeners for private homes to sub-living wages as if that’s acceptable. How can you claim to be a champion of the poor if you don’t want the poor to make a living wage?
Next, as is typical of the well-meaning Berkeley left, you think the solution to all these problems is to tax the rich. OK, fine, then ask Kathryn to write an op-ed to support tax hikes on the 1%. Why did she instead choose to target UC administrators with that misleading title? Why did she not mention taxes or Prop 30 once? Why did she make her pension negotiation adversaries to seem like Scrooges? It’s because she pretends UC administrators are hiding a big pot of gold somewhere. She claims UC is a profit generating machine! She doesn’t truly believe it. She knows California is broke. She knows many alumni target their donations to specific departments so union workers don’t get a cut. But if she can use gullible student groups to help her pressure the UC administration into unfunded concessions, then when UC has to raise tuition to pay those union pensions she won’t look like the bad guy. She gets to shed crocodile tears when the UC administration raises tuition to pay for higher pensions that she negotiated. She is locking in her union’s pension levels just in case Proposition 30 is defeated, or in case the Democrats in Sacramento decide not to fund UC even with billions of new revenue.
Your accusations of bigotry against me are justified. I admit I am a bigot when it comes to finding fault with union tactics. Unions support illegal immigration while at the same time blaming private janitorial services that hire these illegal aliens for undercutting union wages. Unions support lower fees for students while at the same time negotiating for a bigger piece of student fees for their own wages and pensions. And unions support higher taxes and regulations on California’s businesses while at the same time demanding higher wages from those businesses. It’s too bad Cal students are caught in the middle. You’ve got brains and heart though and I hope you make it to union leadership some day, so that you can talk some sense and turn them into partners for prosperity instead of liabilities.
Hold
on, how did your appeal for a “living wage” now evolve to “raise a
family”? Is there some upper limit to the size of this hypothetical
family?
—> That’s an interesting question. I think we have enough money being generated in the U.S. economy that every family should be able to raise at least two children. I think of a living wage as being the wage required to live what most people would feel is a dignified life. For me, this means enough money for housing, food, health, higher education and to raise children, if you choose to have them. I think a nice solution to many of the nation’s issues would be to move to a Scandinavian “flexicurity” situation, where wages are still relatively low (because the cost of living is really high), but tax support for housing, food, health, education, and family is high enough that even the poorest can feel comfortable raising a family.
You also contradicted yourself. You said “You can’t be
seriously comparing the wages of people who are gardeners for Berkeley
and people who do gardening for individual homes?” In that one sentence
you reveal a common inconsistency of the left. You don’t think
gardeners for individual homes ought to make as much as unionized UC
gardeners, yet you also claim UC gardeners are not making a living wage,
so you are condemning gardeners for private homes to sub-living wages
as if that’s acceptable. How can you claim to be a champion of the poor
if you don’t want the poor to make a living wage?
—> What home gardener works 40 hours/week for a a single home? I didn’t say they didn’t deserve to paid a living wage, I said that I wouldn’t be paying myself. $70,000/year (we’ll say $60,000 in wages and $10,000 for health benefits and retirement) seems like enough money to me. This comes out to about $33/hour. So that’s what I’d pay, for whatever hours they work for me, and hopefully they can find enough other work to fill the other hours they need. Maybe I pay for $10,000 of it, another neighbor $15,000 for the work on their yard, etc.
—> As for the rest of your post, I think those are reasonable critiques, with the exception of the immigration issue (I’ve seen some of your other posts about this, and we are just so far apart, I don’t have the time to have a conversation about that online). I don’t know why there is no mention of Prop 30, and I, too, am baffled by why there isn’t more of a constant linking of the pot that we are all struggling over with ways to raise revenue, like taxing the rich.
—> Regarding union leadership, my experience is that “union leadership” has very little to do with how productive unions are for themselves and the general welfare. Member involvement has much more to do with it — ideas come together, there is actually a space to have discussion, dogma gets pushed by the wayside etc.
Hi all. It is very funny to see how poorly UC management does in this comments section…
It always does the same: pit low-paid workers against even lower-paid workers. According to their logic we should be taking things away from each other, and being extremely happy when other sectors of the labor movement get ripped-off… But who really wins with this “race-to-the-bottom”? I will say that UC management has been increasing the number of top paid executives and privatizing the univesity through raising fees and layoffs, and in the meantime, tried to keep us, the students and workers, busy fighting between us. Well, we should show them that we also learn their “tricks” and fight back united against this parasitic management layer and sucks all our ressources and lowers our working and learning conditions and rights to free expression!
I challenge you to look outside the box at what is really happening in California. We have to take things away from each other because the paltry state revenue is a zero sum game. Raise union pensions? Students suffer. Cut tuition? Bids for top professors fail. Fund illegal alien education? All of us suffer. The only way out of this death spiral is to vote Democrats out and elect pro-business leaders who can grow our economy and provide billions of new tax revenue for everyone to use. We have great weather and natural resources. We have educated thinkers and skilled builders as well as global business ties. Why do the Democrats have to ruin it all by pitting us against each other while businesses look for an escape from our high taxes and regulations?
You are a right-wing troll that is doing nothing to persuade viewers of this article into your narrow minority neo-conservative point of view which seems to be evidenced by the frequency of responses that you have left on this article. Those who believe in the transformative unity of students and workers striving for shared vision and in the undeniable right to a dignified life and retirement for all workers (current and future, as students will some day be), please stand together and let’s ignore squeaky wheels like this one.
In that case you are a left wing Communist pro-union troll since you posted just as many responses as I did. Cal students are smarter and less prone to ultra-liberal politically correct manipulation these days. Why should union workers retire 5 years earlier than the hard working parents of Cal students? Why should union workers get any pension when the only other workers getting pensions are CEOs and CFOs?
As a student-worker at UC, I stand with with caregivers like Kathryn who work on campus and in UC’s dining halls, dorms, and hospitals. After decades of physical labor, they deserve to retire with dignity and financial security. But they’re not just fighting for themselves. They’re also fighting for students like me who want a job at UC or elsewhere where we know we too can retire some day. The money is there for retirement security for all of us — stashed away in UC Office of the President, hospital profits, and the private fortunes of the Wall Street types who sit on the UC Board of Regents. It’s time for them to pay for a better university — students and workers have already paid too much.
Do you really think the union is looking out for you, a part-time student-worker with four decades to go before retirement? No, the union is looking out for the best interests of its most senior members who face retirement this decade and want to cash out as much as possible. They don’t care how high your tuition rises. They don’t care if you graduate and leave the union for better paying corporate jobs. If they can’t retire before 65, what’s wrong with that?
I’m a student worker, too, and the union has been nothing but great as of late. Our leadership a few years ago was shitty, but a member-driven movement has taken over the union, so that when you say “They don’t care how high your tuition rises,” this makes no sense, because I am the “they.” There are literally thousands of union student workers across the state, the vast majority rank-and-file, working to fight tuition increases.
Kathryn Lybarger, the union local’s president, spent most of the op-ed talking about union pensions. I doubt most students working in her union are thinking about their own retirement. Instead, you are probably more worried about paying the bills. However, she is probably willing to sacrifice some wage increases in return for higher pensions and an earlier retirement age. This may benefit you if you can’t afford tuition and end up working permanently for the union. However, you ought to have higher aspirations in life, and part of growing up is realizing when you’re been taken advantage of by cunning manipulators who have been playing students against UC negotiators for decades.
How is my “worrying about paying the bills” any different from retirees worrying about their pensions?? That’s what they pay the bills with!
And what are you talking about with my growing up and working for the union? I don’t work for the union, I’m a member. I did database management in the non-profit sector for two years and am currently taking statistics coursework. I’ll probably end up in consulting or in the research arm of a non-profit when I graduate.
Let me explain something about pensions. You have to reach a certain age, typically mid 50s to mid 60s, before you can collect pensions. Right now you are young and you have bills to pay. You could use a higher wage, but your union leadership is balancing your needs against the retirement needs of senior union members, and when push comes to shove you will lose. You will think your union has won when Kathryn announces improved pension benefits, but without wage gains you personally have not won.
I know you are a union member now. I’m glad you know SQL and statistics (BTW learn SAS if you haven’t done so already). I have high expectations of your future career which is why it would be a shame if you can’t afford your tuition due to the focus your union has on pensions rather than wages. I just don’t want you to end up stuck in a lowly job in the union after graduation. Cal graduates have much brighter prospects.
I know how pensions work, as well as their politics, thank you. I am rooting for my wages to go up, I’m rooting for pensions to go up, and while these items do come from the same pile of money, given the amount that executive wages have also gone up, it’s pretty clear that there’s more money than UC is letting onto. There was no tuition increase last year (despite the threat that an increase was absolutely necessary) and the rate of class offerings and layoffs throughout the university has not change. This is clear evidence that, at a certain point, it will logically become a zero sum game, but it isn’t yet. I’ll be able to afford my tuition with loans. A 65 year old can’t afford living on $18,000/year putting the rest on his/her credit card. I have 6.8% interest, credit cards will be pushing 20%. My income can only go up after I graduate, while older workers are likely to see theirs go down.
Also, I don’t know what you do for a living, but SAS is crap, though better than SPSS. STATA and R are much more flexible and powerful.
You make a great union member. You have no idea how the economy works, and believe all the crap your union tells you.
No, YOU have no idea how the economy works.
See how effective an argument I just made?
Rather than arguing by assertion, why don’t you actually tell me what I got wrong?
> No, YOU have no idea how the economy works.
I have 2 jobs: one as an engineer with a technology start-up, another as an independent engineering consultant specializing is supporting the semiconductor and optics/photonics industries. In both jobs I am tasked with coming up with solutions that have to be both technologically feasible as well as economically viable. My “day job” pays a decent enough but not spectacular salary (commensurate with a senior engineer with 15-20 years experience), but keeps me regularly employed. Where I get ahead is with my consulting, which averages about 5-6 days per month but constitutes ~40% of my gross income. Even though I bill the equivalent of about 3x of my regular “day job” pay scale, my customers are usually quite happy to see me and write the check, because what I do is work on solutions to improve their quality, throughput and lower costs. My customers don’t have a problem paying me the $6-8K/week that I may bill them to travel to their worksite (this includes of course travel, per diem and other expenses in addition to “labor”) because they will often recover that money within a matter of weeks due to increased productivity once I resolve their particular issues. One one job a few years back, I was able to quote the customer $1200/day for labor alone, and the response was “how soon can you get here and where do we send the check?” because I was the only one they knew who could resolve the issue and get them into production to meet a hard deadline (they made their money back within days). Having real skills and knowledge gives you that type of value, and understanding their cost structure and knowing what you are worth allows you to optimize your income. THAT demonstrates a true understanding of economics. I don’t need to protest or demand special laws to increase my income. I merely have to educate myself on the economic realities of my chosen profession to understand where I can best apply my efforts.
I’m glad you’ve found success in your career, and of course it’s difficult to achieve success without understanding the economics of your field, but you are working in a field where there is a TON of capital floating around available to go to the best and brightest. This is not true for student workers. We can’t go around from university to university showing our wonderful teaching skills and demanding that the university pay us top dollar because we’re the best in town — because despite the fact we depend on wages from the university to pay for our lives, the university doesn’t really depend on us to make its money. Until we graduate and get skills that are as indispensable as the ones you have in your position, the university can constantly drive our wages down without a union, and constantly push our tuition up without some pushback. The Regents threatened an additional fee increase last year, and our protest led to the first year in something like 20 years where there wasn’t a fee increase. I know several other students for whom this was the only reason they didn’t have to drop out of school.
Regarding the gardeners, janitors, custodial staff here — believe it or not, not everyone is in position to achieve the success you’ve found. Those who parents did not go to college, who themselves didn’t have the money to go to college, who went to high schools where the math curriculum was so poor that they had no chance of succeeding in a STEM discipline in college — they have to make do with what they’ve got. And, like with student workers, because they have skills that are easily replaceable, the university can continue to drive down their wages if they don’t have a union that can push back.
> I’m glad you’ve found success in your career, and
> of course it’s
difficult to achieve success without
> understanding the economics of your
field, but you
> are working in a field where there is a TON of capital
> floating around available to go to the best and brightest.
So you’re surprised that there isn’t a “ton of capital” available for custodians and cafeteria workers?
> This is not
true for student workers. We can’t go around
> from university to
university showing our wonderful teaching
> skills and demanding that the
university pay us top dollar
> because we’re the best in town
You plan on being a student for the rest of your life or what? Seems to me that you haven’t grasped the concept that college for most students is merely a stop on the way to bigger and better things, not a career choice.
> because
despite the fact we depend on wages from the
> university to pay for our
lives,
There’s your problem right there. The purpose of a campus job is to allow students to earn some pocket money while taking are of some of the miscellaneous tasks that need to be performed to keep the UC running, not to subsidize your education.
> the university doesn’t really depend on us to make its money.
Of course not. So why are you spinning your wheels here?
> Until we graduate and get skills that are as indispensable
> as the ones
you have in your position, the university can
> constantly drive our wages
down without a union
You can always quit if you think you’re getting a raw deal.
> and constantly push our tuition up without some
pushback.
> The Regents threatened an additional fee increase last year,
> and our protest led to the first year in something like 20
> years where
there wasn’t a fee increase.
If you think you somehow stopped any future fee increases, you’re only kidding yourself. All they did is push back the day of reckoning another couple of years, as the fiscal problems certainly have not been resolved.
> Regarding the gardeners, janitors, custodial staff here —
> believe
it or not, not everyone is in position to achieve
> the success you’ve
found.
I did not FIND success. I worked my ass off to get what I have.
> Those who parents did not go to college, who themselves
> didn’t
have the money to go to college, who went to high
> schools where the math
curriculum was so poor that they
> had no chance of succeeding in a STEM
discipline in college
> — they have to make do with what they’ve got.
Newsflash for Junior: I attended primarily black, low-income schools when I was in Jr High and High School – schools that performed below average (and still do). Unlike most of the other students, however, my parents for all their faults instilled respect for the value of education on all their kids, as well as the importance of hard work and personal responsibility. All the school funding in the world means nothing if you don’t try.
I agree with you that ethnic/race/gender/PAC grievance studies are useless in the real world, but I’m curious about what you think about the majors I’ve listed below.
Which of these are marketable, which are useless?
English, Business, Economics, Engineering (Electrical, Chemical, Nuclear, Mechanical, etc.), Mathematics, Computer Science, Biology/Chemistry/Physics/Environmental Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Spanish/Italian/Chinese/Japanese/other languages
Having a degree in Chemical Engineering that has given me the opportunity to work and travel all over the globe, I’m certainly not throwing that one into the “useless” category.
> I did database management in the non-profit
> sector for two years and am currently taking
> statistics coursework. I’ll probably end up in
> consulting or in the research arm of a
> non-profit when I graduate.
In other words, you’re consciously avoiding working in any type of for-profit enterprise because you don’t want your performance held to objective standards. Figures.
Actually, no. I’m just not interested in helping companies figure out new ways to make money. They seem pretty good at that already. We’re not quite as good at figuring out how to mitigate capitalism’s negative effects (like persistent joblessness, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, emotional distress due to the uncertainty of making ends meet), so I’d rather do research that identifies these problems and considers possible solutions. And given how little money there is available to non-profits to sustain themselves, combined with the competition to work there (100-500 applicants per job among those I applied for), there’s no incentive for employers in non-profits not to hold their employees to high standards.
As an aside, because my wages as a student-worker are so low, I am
working not only as a teacher, but also as a part-time consultant for a
national market research firm. My employers have been so happy with my work that they have recommended me to other companies with whom they are non-competitors. I currently hold 3 part-time gigs where I use my knowledge of STATA, SPSS, and general linear modeling (HLM, latent class analysis, multiple regression, longitudinal models). So, surprise, I can hold my own in the for-profit sector.
> We’re not quite as good at figuring out
> how to mitigate capitalism’s negative
> effects (like persistent joblessness,
> concentration of wealth in the hands
> of the few at the expense of the many,
> emotional distress due to the uncertainty
> of making ends meet),
If you think those are the “negative effects” of capitalism, why don’t you move to some place such as Cuba or North Korea, where they practice the type of socialist collectivism you yearn for? Everything above that you have mentioned is even WORSE in those places, except for “persistent joblessness”, only because the State can FORCE people into working, whether they are compensated or not. You’re clearly another child who has been suckered into the usual left-wing talking points. As far as your pissing and moaning about what student workers are paid, what’s your problem – you plan on being a ward of the state for the rest of your life or what?
The purpose of on-campus student employment is NOT a “living wage” to support a family, or even to fund your education, but to have some spending money to handle day to day expenses, and maybe a bit extra for some morale boosting recreational/entertainment/social activities for those occasions when you have some spare time. Student workers typically don’t get paid much because not only do they not have the skills/experience to justify a higher wage, but they typically aren’t very productive for a number of reasons.
I will give you an example: before I transferred to Cal from a CC, I interviewed and was hired for a job as the senior technician/lab manager of their chemistry department lab, making $14.85/hour in 1991 (which wasn’t too bad back then). I had 4-5 student workers under me, ranging from hard-working and bright to totally useless (thanks to a campus “diversity” policy that forced me to hire people so I wouldn’t have “too many Asians” as the admin put it).
Working with students was a lot like herding cats, as between administrative/supervisory/training tasks, I got an average of 20-30 minutes of productive labor out of each student per hour. Some of the diversity hires were so bad that it took more time to explain the tasks and check on them to make sure they were done correctly than it would if I merely did the tasks myself (what else do you do with an 18-year old who can barely read or write, much less have actually learned anything in HS chemistry).
If you really want to make a legitimate complaint against the UC system, why don’t you question why the push to give “underrepresented students” preference in on-campus hiring? Less money given away to mitigate some administrator’s white liberal guilt would mean more money for those students who are actually productive.
Great article, Kathryn! It is really disgusting to see how poorly UC treats its lowest paid employees. UC workers have been standing with students for years as we’ve fought cut-backs and tuition increases — now, it’s our turn to stand with them.
UC can do better? Of course it can! It can do a better job negotiating with unions so that we are not at the mercy of all their demands. If you think pushing a mop around or changing light bulbs is too strenuous, file a lawsuit with OSHA or demand better tools. If your injuries are work related and not due to obesity then go on disability. If you want a pension comparable to Yudof’s then apply for his job. If you don’t want competition from outside contractors then demand that your union (AFSCME) publicly opposes illegal immigration and the DREAM act so that outside contractors won’t be able to compete with low bids.
The quality of this university is clearly diminishing. The grounds and facilities have fewer staff than ever. Class sizes are higher, and it is increasingly difficult for PhDs to find the funding to get through their entire career. Poorly treated service employees is a clear indication of the priorities of the University. These jobs are essential. It’s ludicrous to suggest that workers should be satisfied with pithy salaries, and that the University needs to clamp down on labor demands. The University is going to end up without any labor. Characterizing service workers as the problem demonstrates a complete disconnect to the infrastructure of this university, as if it could exist at all without them. Unhappy with that? Apply to the University of Phoenix and get an online degree.
So what have the tuition hikes been for? One big answer is the UCOP salaries. Sweet executive care packages. To attract and retain supposedly better administration. Well if this is what we get, I’d rather return the whole lot at UCOP and get my money back.
You are free to apply to a cheaper college that does not recruit Nobel laureates or top researchers. It’s called CSUEB, located in nearby Hayward. You think this university will end up with no labor? The author of this op-ed has already admitted that this university can exist just fine without unionized janitors. Plenty of janitors are happy to have jobs with non-union outside contractors so Cal will survive just fine without AFSCME.
The CSU and community colleges all have unionized labor and their cooks, gardeners & janitors all make higher wages that the same employees at UC. UC makes more money than those institutions. So check yourself. As a graduate of UC Berkeley I expect more from the UC. UC can do better.
What unionized laborers make in CSU and community colleges is not the issue. What’s important is how much you have to pay for the quality of education you are getting. Just remember, the liberal politicians know there are far more community college students than UC students so they did not guarantee funding for UC. Since UC does not get the love of Democrat politicians, why should UC’s unionized workers get the same benefits as community college workers? Maybe if the Democrats can find some way to cut spending on illegal aliens and unnecessary bureaucrats then they’ll find the money to reduce tuition as well as pay unionized UC laborers.
You obviously don’t know anyone who does this work and the toll it takes.
And believe it or not, the unions actually care about the welfare of people who live here without authorization — the solution is not to send them back to the countries with hopelessly poor prospects, but to fight for their rights to unionize and demand higher wages.
> And believe it or not, the unions actually care
> about the welfare of people who live here
> without authorization
The fact that those same illegals are driving down wages for the same unskilled people you pretend to care SOOOO much about is completely lost on you, idiot.
I feel for Kathryn. She is a victim of the union she works for. Just like so many other unions they didn’t forecast accurately their needs to cover the pensions they promised. They took too little pay from the union members, because they forecast outrageous investment income based on the money they did collect. If Prop 30 passes, all the money raised will go to pay teacher’s pensions, because their union made the same forecasting mistakes when calculating how much pay they should take from teacher’s salaries. The question now is whether the rest of us should have to suffer for those mistakes or if the workers should handle that burden themselves?
> At age 60, after 20-plus years of hard work, we will retire with
> permanent injuries, unaffordable health care and an average
> retirement
income of $18,000 per year.
Which is a hell of a lot better than most unskilled and semi-skilled laborers in the private sector ever will. There’s a reason some of us chose to improve our earning power through education (formal and self-directed) as well as learning new marketable skills. There’s also a reason that many of us don’t vote for every stupid budget-busting idea (incentives for illegal aliens, high-speed trains to nowhere) that comes from the minds of the political “progressives”. In case you haven’t figured it out, the State of California is BROKE – and a good deal of that is from unsustainable pensions. Get a clue.
And the devil take the hindmost!
The pensions are unsustainable because the legislature has refused to raise revenue for fear of being voted out of office. It is *chosen* unsustainability. That most pensions in the private sector are lower is an absolute travesty. You really blame people for trying to get a pension that’s enough to sustain themselves in retirement? You think they say to themselves, “Well, people in the private sector have bad pensions. so we should accept a bad pension, too.” Hell no! We say, “We’re going to fight to take care of ourselves with our employers, and we’re going to organize workers in the private sector, and we’re going to fight to get them what they deserve, too!”
> The pensions are unsustainable because the legislature
> has refused to raise revenue for fear of being voted out
> of office.
No, the pensions are unsustainable because they are not based on economic reality. Children such as yourself forget that others have to pay taxes to make up that “revenue”, funds that are not available to be used elsewhere.
1) I pay taxes, thank you.
2) I’m not suggesting raising taxes on low income or middle class workers. I’m suggesting raising taxes on the wealthy. Where do you think that wealth comes from? Hard work? Being smart? It comes from labor-saving technology and pushing down wages.
3) If someone promised you better retirement in exchange for lower wages now, and then did nothing do meet their commitment to provide for your retirement — who is the irresponsible one? The one who made a deal with the person who has the money, or the people whose job it is to raise the money to keep their promises?
> 1) I pay taxes, thank you.
I pay taxes too, probably far more than you do. Why should my taxes go up merely to finance an organization that can’t manage the $8 billion it already gets each year?
> 2) I’m not suggesting raising taxes on low income
> or middle class workers. I’m suggesting raising
> taxes on the wealthy.
The usual solution from marginal minds. You apparently aren’t aware “the wealthy” are the ones who invest their capital in the economy, and typically got that way because they aren’t stupid with their money. Raise income taxes enough, and you will actually start to LOSE revenue, because all those rich people have to do is buy a house or condo in Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Dallas, move their 6 months out of the year, and they are no longer CA residents. If you really piss them off, they move out of state completely – and who are you counting on again to finance all those “green jobs” again? Idiots like you would be laughable if it were not for the fact that your chosen courses of action will screw things up even more for the rest of us.
> 3) If someone promised you better retirement in
> exchange for lower wages now, and then did
> nothing do meet their commitment to provide
> for your retirement
Once again, the state of California is broke. Why were these people stupid enough to trust politicians in the first place?
Agreed. And it’s a dirty shame. Workers in the private sector deserve better. And California is broke, for sure. But that’s only because the legislature refuses to raise revenue from those who actually have the money.