Unionized employees from UCLA and UC Irvine will join students in campus protests Thursday, denouncing what they call bloated executive salaries and retirement packages as labor negotiations with the University of California system approach the one-year mark.
The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, Local 3299, will be leading pickets at 10 University of California campuses and medical facilities, according to AFSCME officials.
Local 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger said the demonstrations were scheduled, in part, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the deaths of two members — Echol Cole and Robert Walker — killed in Memphis, Tennessee, when their sanitation truck malfunctioned, causing them to be crushed by a compactor as they stood in the back of the vehicle.
Their deaths set off a wave of protests that spurred changes to city safety and human resources policies. Lybarger said the battle for working class rights ignited back then is alive Thursday and will be on display Thursday at campuses statewide.
The union has been in contract talks with the UC Office of the President over a new collective bargaining agreement since early last spring, and Thursday’s demonstration will be part of the union’s campaign to spotlight conflicts.
UC spokeswoman Claire Doan told City News Service that AFSCME has been offered “fair wage increases, quality health benefits (and) excellent retirement benefits.”
“UC’s retirement benefits are among the most generous in the market,” she said. “Current employees will see no change in their pension benefits, while future hires would be given a choice between a traditional pension plan or a 401(k)-style plan. Few employers offer this kind of choice, let alone a pension benefit.”
A third-party mediator is involved in talks to bridge the gap between UC negotiators and union representatives, Doan said, adding that hopes are high that AFSCME will embrace “realistic proposals that lead to an agreement.”
Lybarger cast the union’s cause as one of reformation, “as UC administrators seek to finance their secret slush funds, executive pay raises and half-million-dollar parachutes for disgraced ex-chancellors, with tuition hikes for students and low-wage workers.”
Her slush fund criticism is in reference to a 2017 state audit that uncovered $175 million in off-the-books money UC officials had set aside while pushing for tuition hikes and ever-increasing appropriations from the Legislature. UC President Janet Napolitano characterized the undeclared surplus as part of a reserve for contingencies and outlying expenditures.
The golden “parachutes” swipe was aimed at former UC President Mark Yudof, who received $546,000 in retirement pay and extras from the UC system in 2014 — a year after he stepped down. According to published reports, almost three dozen former UC employees each received more than $300,000 in pension benefits in 2016.
The UC Board of Regents is slated to consider a system-wide 2.5 percent tuition hike in May. Students were hit with a 2.7 percent increase last year.
—City News Service