Dear Editor,
Last Friday, 60 of the University of California’s lowest-wage workers went to the San Francisco office of UC Regent Richard Blum. The purpose of their visit was to talk with him directly regarding their contract. During their visit, the workers asked to meet and/or talk with Regent Blum in person or by telephone. When Regent Blum denied their request, 20 of these low-wage service workers sat down and refused to leave.
Currently, 96 percent of the university’s 8,500 service workers receive such low wages that they qualify for at least one form of public assistance. Service workers felt that after over a year and a half of little action at the bargaining table by the leadership of the UC system, it was necessary to deal directly with the leadership themselves.
Unfortunately, UC President Mark G. Yudof’s response to the plight of these workers was business as usual. Instead of moving to immediately solve this contract and meet the university’s moral responsibility to provide workers a wage that will not keep them and their families in poverty, President Yudof wrote a letter to AFSCME Local 3299’s president expressing his strong feelings that worker actions such as these must stop.
This clearly shows that once again the current leadership of the UC system only cares about those few individuals at the top and that they continue to turn their backs on the real pressing needs of 8,500 of their employees who they pay a poverty wage.
In answer to this misguided letter, AFSCME Local 3299 President Lakesha Harrison has responded today to President Yudof.