Darrel Menthe is a graduate representative on the ASUCLA board
of directors and a member of the political science department.
By Darrel Menthe
I am writing to explain the ASUCLA labor issue and the budget
cuts for student governments and to try to dispel some of the
misinformation. On April 18, 2002, the Association of Federal,
State, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) approached our executive
director Pat Eastman with a list of demands. Eastman began to
disseminate this information to the board of directors, and the
chairperson of the board scheduled a special presentation for the
general board meeting on April 26. The board is a part-time
organization made up of a student majority with some alumni,
faculty and administrators.Â
Instead of information and dialogue, we got a couple hundred
activists, including USAC’s president Karren Lane. They
tromped en masse into our meeting in matching T-shirts with nasty
accusations about “slave labor.” They crowded
around the board table in intimidating poses. They demanded that
the board take immediate action and sign legal documents on the
spot without even consulting counsel or management. They
reacted with hissing and booing when we told them that we needed to
understand the issue first. It was as though we were all
supposed to be characters in some community college play about a
West Virginia coal mining town in the 1920s. We scheduled a
special board meeting to deal with the issue two weekdays later, by
which time we hoped to understand the issue and its financial
impact.
It turns out that the issue was nothing like what AFSCME and the
student activists claimed. To begin with, until 1995, pretty
much all food service jobs were held by students because we had and
still have a commitment to student employment. Students who
work for ASUCLA can work part-time, on campus and around their
class schedules. No other employer can offer that. We are
also committed to putting students in supervisory
positions. With changing university demographics, however,
along with a booming economy, it became harder to fill those jobs,
so we contracted with temporary employment agencies to provide
temporary workers as a stop-gap measure during hours when no
students were available. This arrangement worked well.
Over the past few years there are some jobs that we were never
able to fill with students, and it turns out that the agency we
used was sending the same temp workers repeatedly. Depending
on how it’s counted, there are some 30-40 people who work on
a quasi full-time basis in ASUCLA food service, but are actually
brought in through the temp agency. Average wages are
$7.20/hour, and working conditions are considered good. We
have no trouble finding non-students who want to work at ASUCLA
facilities instead of Burger King. It turns out that AFSCME wants
to raise wages for food service workers to about $9.50/hour plus
full health and retirement benefits. That represents
approximately a 50 percent increase in labor costs.
As a board, we met and reviewed figures and gathered
information. We agreed almost immediately that we wanted to be
leaders in labor relations, and we agreed to make these changes. At
our special board meeting, we made the announcement, but the drama
had already escalated. At one point student activists
(including USAC people) were pounding on the windows of Kerckhoff
screaming and chanting. When the board threatened to adjourn
because of the noise, the union representative raised his hand and
the crowd fell silent on cue. I could not decide if this was
tragedy or comedy.
Now that we are committed, the hard part is paying for
it. ASUCLA has great responsibilities on campus, and our
business model is severely cramped. Ask any merchant on Third
Street when they experience their best sales, and they will say
summer, weekends and during the holidays. That’s when UCLA
empties out. Our restaurants must compete in price with fast
food establishments that already pay less for labor than we
do. We eliminated 41 career positions in 2000-2001 in order to
balance our budget, and it has not been easy.
We have two other big problems facing us now. First, the
annual student fee will decrease from $51 (already the lowest in
the UC system) to $7.50. That costs us $1.5 million. Second,
our new commitment to high wages for food service will cost between
half a million and $1 million. Something has to give.
USAC has been terribly irresponsible with these issues. GSA
raised fees this year in anticipation of the funding needs, but
USAC refused. Now that the reality is starting to percolate down,
USAC is considering a pathetic $1 increase.
USAC needs to raise its fees to the neighborhood of
$25, which is still just half of what they are paying now.
USAC also demanded the new labor policy, and they have to
participate in paying for it just like everybody else. GSA is
taking a big hit next year. Our remaining management is accepting
what amounts to pay cuts. Food prices will have to
increase. There will be restructuring and fewer jobs all
around next year. Across the board everyone is going to
sacrifice to accommodate the new labor policy and deal with the
loss of fee revenues. We’ll do it because it is the right
thing to do, but we need USAC to pitch in and be responsible for a
change. The only thing worse than bad theatre is an audience
who wants a free show.