UC strikers explain their plight

By MARTÍN E. MARTÍNEZ / Vida En El Valle
(Published Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 08:51AM)

SACRAMENTO -- Fernando Jiménez says the $10-an hour wage he earns as janitor at the University of California-Davis are not enough to provide for his wife and two small children. Further, he says sometimes he works overtime and doesn't get paid for it.

That's why as soon as he heard that maintenance and medical assistance workers were going on strike he joined their cause.

"It has been a long time since the workers complained about this situation, but no one did anything about it. As soon as I heard the strike was for real I had no doubts about joining because it's not fair doing all the work we do here with such a small compensation," Jiménez said.

Since the start of the year the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a union representing 8,500 state medical workers, stated its intention to call for a strike unless its members got pay raises. The situation came to a head last week, when union members in 10 state universities, including UC-Davis, went on strike for five days and held a rally by midweek.

"This is nothing new for us. We have always known that wages for health care employees were very low. We're just looking for recognition and for fair wages for all these people whose job it is to take care of the sick," said Lakesha Harrison, president of the union.

Harrison said a recent study by the Center for Labor and Community Research shows great disparito in pay between private hospital workers and those in state-run institutions.

"Maintenance employees, medical assistants and nurses earn as much as 30 percent less than employees of other hospitals. That is a big difference and it means people are living in poverty," said Harrison.

She said state universities that run hospitals hurt themselves by not paying better wages because their nurses -- and all the other employees -- end up leaving in search of better pay.

Once the strike started last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked union leaders to return to the negotiating table and called on strikers to go back to work as to not jeopardize public health with their absence.

"Public health is my biggest priority and this strike threatens the health and welfare of many people who depend on the essential services provided by medical support personnel. There could be legitimate issues that need to be resolved, but it's unacceptable to use the well-being of innocent people as a bargaining tool," the governor said.

The University of California is one of the largest employers of medical workers in the state, with 124,000 full-time workers. Those employees get about $9.5 billion in annual wages and 40 percent of them are Latino.

Howard Pripas, executive director for systemwide labor relations at the University of California, has offered to increase the minimum wage for health care and maintenance workers from $10.28 an hour to $11.50 and $12, depending on the city where they work.

Under the proposal, UC would continue to pay the vast majority of the cost of employees' health benefits -- more than 93 percent for workers earning $40,000 or less -- and employee premiums would be based on a sliding scale so that lower paid employees, like service workers, pay lower monthly premiums.

"Employees would continue to get UC's gold-standard pension benefits, which they currently do not contribute toward the cost of, something virtually unheard of among U.S. employers," he said. UC has also stipulated that any employee contributions will be negotiated with AFSCME.

The proposals have been turned down by the strikers, who said they're just not enough.

"I make $10 an hour and they want to pay just one dollar more. What am I going to do with that money? That's not enough for anything, especially now that gasoline is so expensive and food prices keep going up," said Norma González, a nurse that took part in last Wednesday's protest. "To me, this is a bad joke because what I do is very important and our profession deserves respect."

The union expects a counterproposal from the UC System sometime this week, but if that doesn't happen, the strike would continue, union officials said.

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