Sureya Melkonian/Staff

Roughly one-half of the friendly faces serving you at your local fast-food chain rely on public assistance programs to survive, according to a report by UC Berkeley and University of Illinois researchers published Tuesday.

The report, entitled “The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast-Food Industry,” found that 52 percent of fast-food workers’ families require some sort of government program, from Medicaid to food stamps, to supplement extraordinarily low wages — costing roughly $7 billion per year. In the entire workforce, the percentage of workers requiring such assistance is 25 percent, making the fast-food industry’s proportion double that of the nation’s workforce as a whole.

The report was created in response to months of worker protests across the country regarding wage increases and rights for unskilled workers, according to Sylvia Allegretto, one of the report’s authors and an economist at the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

“There’s sort of this public image of fast-food workers being teenagers or students, but over two-thirds are the main breadwinners in their families,” said Ken Jacobs, a co-author of the report and chair of the campus Center for Labor Research and Education. “These jobs and the income from these jobs are core to families’ incomes by and large.”

One of the most recent developments in the national minimum wage controversy was California Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing of a bill to increase the state’s minimum wage to $10 per hour by 2016. The increase is long overdue but would be more effective if implemented immediately rather than over the course of the next three years, the researchers said.

“It is absolutely a step in the right direction,” Jacobs said. “In terms of people earning enough to survive and support their families, it’s still not going to be enough, but it is a clear positive step.”

The report also aims to dispel common myths surrounding unskilled, low-income jobs by proving that workers’ low wages cost the nation a tremendous amount of money through various in-kind transfers.

“We could be using that (money) to build up our communities, invest in our schools, fix our roads and create good-paying jobs,” said Jonathan Westin, director of Fast Food Forward, a labor rights movement.

The report, however, has drawn criticism from organizations such as the National Restaurant Association for misrepresentation of data, such as the inclusion of Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax refund that is separate from the traditional classification of government entitlement programs.

“America’s restaurant industry provides opportunities for millions of Americans, women and men from all backgrounds, to move up the ladder and succeed,” said Scott DeFife, executive vice president of policy and government affairs at the National Restaurant Association, in a statement. “These misleading efforts use a very narrow lens and selective data to attack the industry for their own purposes.”

Claire Chiara covers research and ideas. Contact her at cchiara@dailycal.org.

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Arya Aliabadi/File

AC Transit employees could strike this Thursday, following a 72-hour notice they issued Monday night.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, a union that represents 1,760 bus operators, mechanics, dispatchers, clerical and allied workers at AC Transit, rejected a labor contract proposed by AC Transit. AC Transit union employees have already twice rejected proposed labor agreements.

On Tuesday, AC Transit’s board of directors asked Gov. Jerry Brown to impose a 60-day cooling-off period to stop AC Transit workers from striking, according to a press release from AC Transit. In a letter to Brown, AC Transit said the proposed strike would “significantly endanger the public’s health, safety and welfare.”

In early August, ATU Local 192 and AC Transit reached a tentative agreement on negotiations that included a wage increase of 9.5 percent over the next three years and monthly health care contributions of $70, $140 and $180, respectively, for each of the three years. However, the union rejected the contract.

“Like most Americans, our members lost substantial income during the great recession,” said ATU Local 192 President Yvonne Williams in an Oct. 2 press release by the union. “They are expressing concern about how this raise, after medical deductions, makes up for those past concessions.”

AC Transit spokesperson Clarence Johnson said that AC Transit has not received any requests from the union to change its proposal. There are no negotiations scheduled at this time, but he said there may be “at some point.”

“They rejected the contract, but they haven’t gotten back to us on what’s wrong with it,” Johnson said. “We’re kind of in the dark here on how to proceed with negotiations.”

ATU Local 192 workers transport about 200,000 passengers a day in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Of that number, Johnson said about 60,000 are schoolchildren.

BART union employees also threatened to strike on Tuesday, but they postponed the strike after deciding to continue negotiations that day. If an agreement is not met between unions and BART management, BART workers could go on strike this week.

In that case, 400,000 daily BART commuters could be left without transportation, in addition to the potentially 200,000 AC Transit riders on Thursday.

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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The bill, AB 10, will raise the state’s minimum wage from the current level of $8 an hour to $9 an hour by July 1, 2014. The next increase will be implemented Jan. 1, 2016, bumping up the minimum wage to $10.

Brown signed the bill at a ceremony in Los Angeles, where he was accompanied by members of the California State Assembly and dozens of workers.

“It’s my goal and it’s my moral responsibility to do what I can to make our society more harmonious, to make our social fabric tighter and closer and to work toward a solidarity that every day appears to become more distant,” Brown said in a press release.

The Public Policy Institute of California reports that more than 6 million California residents were living under the federal poverty line in 2011. At the same time, the cost of living in many cities in California is well above the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Because of the state’s high cost of living, Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin strongly supported the bill.

“This bill provides a long overdue increase to help working families and working people in the state,” he said. “I think it’s a huge step forward.”

The city of Berkeley does not have a minimum wage. Since May, however, Berkeley City Council has been considering a proposal to implement a citywide minimum wage of $10.55 an hour.

After the state bill’s approval, Arreguin met with a representative of Berkeley’s Commission on Labor to discuss the relationship between AB 10 and the city proposal.

A 2013 report by the city’s economic development manager, Michael Caplan, suggests that many people may not be able to afford living in Berkeley. According to the study, only 17.1 percent of those who work in Berkeley are city residents.

“Whatever minimum wage we adopt should exceed the state minimum wage,” he said. “It is much more expensive to live in Berkeley than in other areas of the state.”

Contact Tahmina Achekzai at tachekzai@dailycal.org.

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Benny Grush/Staff

California’s community colleges may soon be able to charge higher fees for certain high-demand classes, after both houses of the California State Legislature passed a bill earlier this month.

Normally, California residents pay about $46 per unit to take classes at community colleges, with each class offering about three units. The bill, waiting to be signed or vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, would implement a pilot program allowing six community colleges across California to offer additional classes during summer and winter sessions at a cost of about $200 per unit.

“I fundamentally don’t believe that our system should force students to take six to eight years to complete a four-year education,” said Assemblymember Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, author of the bill.

The bill comes in the wake of a 21 percent decline in community college course offerings since the 2007-08 academic year, according to a March 2013 report by the Public Policy Institute of California. Williams hopes the additional courses — although more expensive upfront — will allow students to ultimately save money by graduating earlier.

The pilot program, if the bill is signed, would begin in 2014 and be evaluated in 2017. If deemed successful, the policy could extend to community colleges across the state, including Berkeley City College.

Ben Tagami, a BCC freshman, said classes often fill up quickly, sometimes within one week. He is taking a required math course at another community college because he could not get into the class at BCC.

“I would be willing to pay more for popular classes,” Tagami said. “Students need to fill certain class credits, and if they aren’t available at BCC, (they have to) either commute to another college or wait until the next sign-up period.”

However, Jonathan Lightman, executive director of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, believes the bill, instead of aiding students, will divide those who can afford higher fees and those who cannot.

He also noted that out of the six community colleges in the program, only one or two have indicated interest in providing the higher-cost classes.

Pasadena City College, which the bill aims to include in the pilot program, does not intend to participate and is instead looking into federal grants and legislation that would give students school credits for past professional work, said Juan Gutierrez, director of public relations at the Pasadena college.

Although Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, agrees community college funding should come from the government, he would rather colleges charge more for additional classes than not offer them at all.

“It’s a shame that the state has defunded its higher education system to such an extent,” Rothstein said. “It is a slippery slope. The problem is, we’re already halfway down the slope.”

Contact Alison Fu and Melissa Wen at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Senate Bill 135 enables the development of a system to notify residents at least one minute prior to an earthquake. Methods of notification are still unclear, but State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, the main sponsor of the bill, has proposed using Amber Alerts and smartphone apps as well as halting transportation as means of ensuring public safety.

The estimated initial cost to build the system is $80 million for the first five years.

During an earthquake, energy radiates from faults in two phases. The first phase, called P-waves, is low-amplitude and causes no damage. The second phase, S-waves, causes damage through shaking. While the system does not predict earthquakes, it detects P-waves and estimates the magnitude before it strikes, warning residents in the area.

For the past two years, UC Berkeley has been running a successful demonstration system, said Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. Researchers at the lab contributed extensively to the project.

“This is a big deal for UC Berkeley,” Allen said. “This is a great example of how fundamental research at a university can produce a real public good.”

Berkeley is located near the San Andreas Fault, a prominent earthquake-prone zone. Another one, the Hayward Fault, runs behind Clark Kerr Campus and underneath Memorial Stadium.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services now has until January 1, 2016, to find sufficient funds for the system, according to California Newswire.

Allen said Padilla has suggested a variety of sources, including federal grants and bond measures.

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Kira Walker/Staff

Government debt is in the news again. Recent national headlines ranged in tone from the breathless to cataclysmic. First, Detroit asked Christie’s Auction House to value its museum collection, should the city need to pay creditors with its Rembrandts and Cezannes. Then, President Obama told “This Week” that he would not negotiate with Congress over raising the debt ceiling — even as the chair of the House Republican study group, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), linked Congressional action on debt to an unrelated domestic policy issue. Earlier this month, NPR’s Adam Davidson wrote in The New York Times Magazine that a debt impasse would, in all likelihood, make everyone on the globe — not just Americans — poorer.

An op-ed recently published in The Daily Californian by the nonprofit think tank, The Can Kicks Back, raises this question: Are present taxpayers financing the full cost of the services they consume, or are they shifting costs to future taxpayers?

What are we to make of this? Are these stories merely exaggerations feeding on our cynicism about leadership and general despair about the future? Or are local, state and federal policies so tattered that our cultural inheritance is bartered away? If our global enterprise is at stake, can the president and Congress be seriously contemplating inaction?

For my part, I don’t think these issues can be written off as political posturing. Cal’s undergraduates — and millennials in general – might find that how we manage our debt reflects not only our priorities today, but how we prepare for the future.

In California, state law directs the controller to inform the public of the annual financial transactions and accounting practices of local governments. In the past, the discussion focused only on annual budget. But with increasing urgency, public finance experts have focused on broader measures of “fiscal responsibility.” Not only should governments manage their 12-month annual budgets, but they also should monitor future costs, such as the expenses of providing health care for current and future retired state workers. Still, other experts argue for ensuring “intergenerational” balance and sustainability, in order to keep present taxpayers from shifting their costs to future taxpayers.

Too often in recent years, the expediency to balance the current budget has resulted in pushing costs to later years and future taxpayers. For example, facing a troubled economy and budget shortages, former governor Schwarzenegger urged California voters to authorize a loan for financing carryover deficits in 2004. The deficits emerged during the 2000-2003 recession and reflected the cost of services that were provided but not yet paid. Sympathetic to a multiyear financing schedule, voters approved the issuance of deficit-retirement bonds. The state then issued deficit bonds with principal of about $14 billion and earmarked a portion of the sales tax to pay down that debt. Since then, the state has made regular interest and principal payments but still owes more than $5 billion on the bonds and will make annual payments of about $500 million for each of the next 10 years, with a final payment in 2024.

Consider this: For the Cal class admitted in 2019, a portion of the sales tax on all textbooks bought while at Berkeley will finance the last payments on the deficit bond. Ironically, these students – born after 2001 – will be paying the costs of services rendered in 2000. No wonder Cal students are concerned about the sustainability of current budget decisions!

The state and nation need long-term sustainability and plans to address concerns about solvency, growth, stability and fairness. In other words, how can the state pay for all of its current and future obligations? Do fiscal practices encourage sufficient economic growth? Can the state’s tax structure finance future costs without a change in the tax burden? And finally, will current taxpayers pay for the services they receive?

Sustainability, in its many dimensions, may have received insufficient consideration in recent years. After all, considerations for fiscal sustainability are abstract, complex and difficult. From a logistical and technical perspective, it is unlikely that the state can simultaneously balance its current accounts, mitigate its long-term obligations and provide for a sustainable budget.

But there is hope.

Gov. Brown has begun to address intergenerational issues by focusing on the Wall of Debt. Recent budgets have reduced long-term spending commitments, and passage of Proposition 30 improved our immediate revenue stream. In time, I expect we will get better at calibrating the long-term consequences for our fiscal decisions, though I doubt there can be a single budget that puts all of our fiscal considerations on the same footing. Rather, as we get better at calibrating sustainability, we can say, as T.S. Eliot did, “If we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.”

John Chiang is the California controller.

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Gregory Arena/Staff

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Below is a sample of some of the items that will be discussed at the meeting:

Tuesday: Capital Projects

The Committee on Grounds and Buildings will review a plan to repair defects on 17 residential buildings at UC Santa Cruz.

Wednesday: Student regent and finance

The regents’ Special Committee on Selection of a Student Regent will recommend for approval UC Berkeley undergraduate and ASUC Senator Sadia Saifuddin as student regent.

If approved, Saifuddin will serve as regent-designate before becoming student regent from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

Also, the Committee on Finance will discuss updates on the university’s 2013-14 budget. This coming year, the state portion of the budget will increase from roughly $2.4 billion in 2012-13 to $2.8 billion. $125 million will come from a tuition buyout promised by the state in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The budget also includes $10 million in funds previously allocated by Gov. Jerry Brown for online education in an earlier budget proposal. Brown later vetoed provisions in the budget that would have mandated the University of California spend the funds on online course development.

The university will still use the funds to offer about 150 online courses over the next three years, facilitating cross-campus coordination of academic programs and frameworks for evaluation and accountability within the programs, according to the regents’ agenda item.

The regents will also preliminarily discuss the 2014-15 budget. The UC Office of the President raised concerns over Brown’s call for a continued general tuition freeze without any promise to buy out an increase in tuition, according to the agenda item.

Issues concerning the 2014-15 budget will also be discussed in the regents’ September meeting prior to their  final adoption of the budget at their November meeting.

Thursday: Long-range planning

The Committee on Long Range Planning will review the annual University of California Accountability Report.

The report found that since 1990-91, average inflation-adjusted expenditures for educating UC students have declined 25 percent. However, the share of expenditures borne by students in the form of fees has more than tripled from 13 percent to 49 percent.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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The NEA awards the title to governors who have improved public education through legislation. A press release announcing the award cited Proposition 30 and Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula as primary achievements.

Last November, Brown campaigned for Prop. 30, a successful ballot measure that instituted a sales tax as well as an income tax for those making over $250,000. The measure prevented billions of dollars in planned cuts and is expected to generate $47 billion over the next seven years for California’s public universities and schools, according to a press release by the California Teachers Association.

Brown’s 2013-14 budget also increases funding for K-12 schools by about $2 billion, while implementing the new Local Control Funding Formula that directs additional state funds to districts with low-income students and English learners. Also included in the budget are new Common Core State Standards that would improve the quality of essential classes such as math and English.

“Students and families will reap the benefits of Governor Brown’s initiatives for years to come,” said NEA president Dennis Van Roekel in the press release. “The state and our country will be stronger and more competitive as a result of the choices he’s making today.”

On Friday, Brown spoke to 9,000 educators in Atlanta at the NEA’s annual assembly. He said that public education in the U.S. still needs important reforms and that good reform requires a holistic approach.

“We believe in teachers and administrators — education is not one-size-fits-all,” Brown said at the assembly. “Students should not be cogs in a corporatized system that cares more about metrics than personalities.”

The California Teachers Association nominated Brown for the NEA’s award earlier this year because of his innovative budget plan and dedication to public education.

“We need to understand that at-risk students cost more to educate, and districts with a lot of them need more resources,” said Mike Myslinski, a spokesperson for the California Teachers Association. “Now, that’s going to happen.”

Contact Madeleine Pauker at mpauker@dailycal.org.

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A day after the Berkeley-based plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case were married at San Francisco Hall, after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the ban on gay marriage, the two found their marriage in jeopardy.

Typically, a grace period exists between the Supreme Court’s final ruling and implementation, but in this case, the 9th circuit court acted almost immediately to enact same-sex marriage just two days after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Proposition 8, causing an emergency appeal filed on behalf of the Prop. 8 legal team.

The appeal was filed after the California Department of Public Health released a letter directed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the clerks and registrar and recorders of the 58 counties of California that “effective immediately, county clerks shall issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in California.”

A Protect Marriage press release brought up the lack of a 25-day waiting period: “under Supreme Court procedural rules, ‘final disposition’ comes when the Supreme Court issues a ‘mandate’ to the Ninth Circuit, at least 25 days after announcing its opinion in the case.”

According to the press release, this immediate action of the decision did not allow time for petitions for the Supreme Court to rehear the case.

On Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down the appeal, and Stier and Perry’s union will stand after more than four years of legal entanglement for the right to marry in California. Their marriage, witnessed by hundreds of enthusiastic onlookers, is finally legal.

With that final blockade to the marriage of Sandy and Kris gone, more celebration and happiness is sure to abound in the Perry household, according to their son Spencer Perry.

“It never occurred to me that I would feel any different after my parents got married,” Spencer said. “I can only describe how I’m feeling now as patriotic: I feel more connected to my country after this decision.”

Contact Nico Correia at ncorreia@dailycal.org

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