Everyone wants a piece of the pie. During boom years gone by, there was more than enough to go around at the University of California, with administrators, faculty and staff well-compensated and students enjoying lower and lower fees. However, since the turn of the century, the pie has shrunk and the various factions on campuses are left to fight over the scraps: Students are calling for an end to fee hikes, administrators are doing rain dances for more funding and a union of university service workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are rallying for a cost-of-living adjustment. The current university budget doesn’t include funds for cost-of-living increases. The university-backed compact with the governor does provide funds for increases in future years, but the state legislature has yet to approve it.
In the meantime, and despite the university’s precarious financial situation, leaving out these service workers — the people who serve our food, maintain our buildings and clean up after us — leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. After all, who’s more deserving of a little public help: students attending the best university system in the world, faculty with the opportunity to conduct research with someone else’s money, or the people actually getting their hands dirty and keeping students fed and bathrooms usable.
Despite the university’s cries of poverty, it recently reached an agreement with UC patient-care workers that provides 10-percent raises over the next three years. So we know that the university recognizes workers’ plight — just not these workers. Because the service workers are already among the worst paid university employees on campus at approximately $10 an hour, they are probably the most deserving — and most in need — of a cost-of-living adjustment, especially in the day of $55-a-barrel oil and in an area like La Jolla. Yet, because the university has implicitly deemed them easily replaceable, they get the shaft.
In light of these workers’ plight, it seems very hypocritical of the university to undertake a multimillion-dollar Price Center expansion project when it will be staffed by workers being paid near-poverty wages. In fact, despite the budget situation, UCSD in particular is continuing with a number of ambitious construction projects. According to UCSD’s 2003 annual financial report, UCSD booked $1.8 billion in revenue last year against only $1.6 billion in expenditures, with the balance being spent on debt service, construction and capital improvements, according to Assistant Vice Chancellor of Business Affairs Margaret F. Pryatel. Granted, the university also needs to improve its student and research facilities to continue attracting students and faculty, but achieving that goal shouldn’t preclude fairly paying its employees, who make the day-to-day operation of the university run smoothly.
Despite the budget situation, the university has still managed to open a new campus at Merced for graduate students and hire three new chancellors. Why can’t the university find it in its heart (or more relevantly, its budget) to help out the people who do the dishes? And if the university can’t even afford to pay its staffers a reasonable salary, one should wonder whether it should even be opening any new campuses.
Also included in UCSD’s long -term plans are a new and improved Price Center, a new housing development for Sixth College and an opera house to be built near Price Center. With all those big plans in store, it’s probably easy to forget about campus workers. After all, if they do their job well, no one’s even supposed to notice them.
As a public institution, the University of California has an obligation to treat its workers fairly, even workers that serve food and clean bathrooms. Having tens of thousands of university employees — essentially state employees — earning near poverty wages is not a good thing for the state and is a black eye for the university. In the grand scheme of things, the money necessary to implement such an agreement would be relatively small compared to UCSD’s total resources — or even the money the university spends to beautify its campus. That’s why the University of California should bite the bullet and extend cost-of-living adjustments to all UC workers, even if it means holding up plans for shiny new buildings.
