Workers, like students, face an unfair university administration in many areas of their life at the University of California. Students face endless fee hikes and less emphasis on education. Workers face endless harassment and poverty-level wages. After 14 months of unfair labor practices at the bargaining table, researchers and technical employees (UPTE-CWA 9119, Local 1) will strike this Wednesday, May 6 in protest of these wasteful and illegal practices. Since 2001, student undergraduate fees have doubled due to diminishing educational resources because of policies implemented by UC Regents. From the attempt to abolish affirmative action by Regent Ward Connerly to the willingness of current UC Regents to limit enrollment and raise fees, actions by UC Regents hurt students and those from underrepresented communities the most. Decisions by the regents such as the one to buy two properties in Berkeley for at least $70 million make no sense when the UC pays much more than the assessed value of the property during a major downturn in real estate value. The purchase makes no sense when student fees will probably increase by 9.3 percent, student enrollment is curtailed, and workers are laid off and denied annual cost-of-living increases.

The regents have set a course for UC that ignores students and workers and occasionally gives faculty a nod of passing recognition. They court corporate donors and scorn elected leaders who question their secret decisions to raise executive salaries in these difficult economic times. They use the livelihoods of their employees to make up for any loss in state revenues, even though the UC has plenty of money in reserves-enough to keep UC workers out of poverty and to give longtime employees cost of living increases, enough to restore the 2,300 freshmen who will not be admitted due to "State financial problems." Instead, the UC Regents have tripled the number of executives making over $200,000 in recent years. Executive average pay is $305,000. By cutting all 400 executives' pay in in half, UC would save $61 million. Restoring student enrollment-adding 2,300 students at $11,073 each-would only cost $25.5 million. Bringing the wages of 3,800 researchers and technicians to a "family sustaining wage" (the amount two adults need to make to support a family of four) would cost $21.6 million. And that still leaves another $13 million! It is up to students and workers to Take Back UC.

UPTE's elected bargainers have been harassed, in some cases to the point of layoff and dismissal. UC management has failed to bargain changes in policies and has engaged in bad faith bargaining by canceling scheduled sessions and disrupting one day's negotiations five times by moving the union bargainers to different rooms. The climate of fear created by the harassment of UPTE bargainers is unacceptable. UC management must ensure that workers who participate in bargaining are not victimized in the workplace, especially not over the time that they spend in bargaining. We would be happy to suggest possible solutions. For 14 months, UC management made no initial proposals and only two counter proposals to the over 40 proposals submitted by UPTE. Such stalling is wasteful, disrespectful and an abuse of the authority vested in the UC Regents. On behalf of 9,000 UPTE members statewide, we demand that the UC Regents bargain in good faith with them and with all UC workers.

Clerical workers from the Coalition of University Employees, also in bargaining, will be on the picket lines. Other union members-UAW (graduate student instructors), UC-AFT librarians, and AFSCME who recently won a contract after over a year of hard fighting with UC management-will join the lines. Some will come before and after work. AFT lecturers will bring classes to the picket lines and some brave faculty will join in solidarity.

It's time for us to join together to convince the UC Regents to change their priorities. The priorities in place today, excessive executive pay and top heavy management, don't preserve and enhance education and research at UC. Instead, these priorities reward a few hundred overpaid, underperforming executives who act with extreme callousness toward the students for which this institution exists and who have shown little willingness to bargain in good faith with the workers who keep UC running. Stand up for justice for students and for workers; join the picket lines on May 6. Take Back UC.