By Michael Levine
Daily Bruin Contributor
University Professional and Technical Employees and the
Coalition of University Employees organizers rallied Wednesday in
Westwood Plaza, though they had to compete with a rock band and the
bargain tables in front of the UCLA Store for the lunchtime
public’s attention.
Despite the rally’s quiet start at noon, by 12:30 p.m. the
two unions representing UC employees had attracted enough
supporters to begin their march to Covel Commons, where the UC
Regents were meeting.
Kathlynne Kasten, a CUE organizer, beat her large spoon on a
pot, keeping the marchers in rhythm while they chanted slogans
like, “The workers, united, will never be
defeated!”
Ten minutes later, CUE and UPTE marchers met up with affirmative
action demonstrators in front of Covel Commons, many of whom were
By Any Means Necessary student activists visiting from all over
California.
Leaders from both groups spoke in turns, emphasizing their
common cause of boosting the number of staff and student minorities
in the UC system and promoting labor rights.
At about 1:45 p.m., the public comment period began and a
limited number of protesters addressed the regents for two minutes
each.
Cliff Fried, executive vice president of UPTE, told the regents
he wanted them to expedite contract settlements with his union and
end the abuse of casual employees, who lack the job security and
benefits of full employees.
After Fried, Bert Thomas, a member of CUE’s executive
board, reading from a prepared statement, compared the university
to WalMart in how it treats its employees.
Counted together, CUE and UPTE represent some 28,000 UC
employees system-wide. CUE members, who recently concluded a
tentative contract agreement with UC that included a 7.8 percent
salary increase, said they came out to support UPTE, which has yet
to finish its contract negotiations with UC.
“They’re a lot of links between the two
unions,” Claudia Horning said, a CUE organizer.
Low wages at UC were a repeated topic of speakers and
protesters.
“I’ve been making the same wage I started out at two
years ago,” said Michael Daines, who holds down two part-time
administrative assistant jobs, one in Center for Health Sciences
and another in the department of molecular cell and developmental
biology, during the rally. “The only way I’ll get
higher wages is through the union and fighting for it.”
UC spokesman Dan Kier, said the university was addressing the
problem of wages which haven’t kept up with inflation or the
private sector.
According to Kier, UC salaries remain low because the university
hasn’t fully recovered from the tight budgets of the early
1990s, when, for three years in a row, there were no cost of living
increases. The university can’t make up for this in one year,
he said.
“There’s a real misconception out there about what
our wage proposal is,” Kier said. “Career employees get
9 percent on top of the 7.8 percent average wage
increase.”