-Nany Rowan, CLUE SB Board Member and Jennifer Bailey, CLUE SB Executive Director

“It is not the lack of state funding but the University’s priorities that leave the service workers’ wages at the bottom of the list.”

UC President Mark Yudof will receive a total compensation of $924,642 this year. Some service workers make as little as $10 an hour. What values do we express as a society when we accept such shocking economic disparities? When I hear these facts, it occurs to me that we aren’t just experiencing an economic crisis; we’re experiencing a crisis of conscience in which our deepest values are challenged by financial insecurities and the economic interests of the few rather than the many.

This isn’t just a problem in the UC system. SEIU 721 is facing county budget cuts that will significantly (and often with little warning or clarity) affect social service workers and the vulnerable members of our community who they serve.

County social service workers gather on July 2nd to remind Santa Barbara what our priorities should be.

This month, CLUE participated in an SEIU rally at the county courthouse in support of public service workers. Our board president, Anne Anderson, gave an invocation to start out the event:

Anne Anderson begins the rally with an invocation, reminding us of the abiding source of our deepest values.

We come together today celebrating the potential of the human spirit and a vision of a world where there is enough.

For those who see God, may we know that it is through service that God’s love is made visible.

For those called to right action, may we walk together in solidarity toward a world where the web of interdependence is netted with the threads of service.

Here’s some of what I had to say at the rally:

CLUE is here today to support these workers and to stand up for those vulnerable people in our community who need the vital social services that they provide. CLUE is an interfaith organization that believes all economic decisions are also moral choices. The way we prioritize the distribution of our shared economic resources reflects how well we are able to recognize and respond to the dignity, respect, and compassion that are basic rights of every member of our community.

During difficult budget years, when our leaders are making tough decisions about spending, we people of faith want to remind them how important it is to us that this process be as transparent, fair, and just as possible. We want a budget that prioritizes not just economic sense, but the moral sense of dignity, respect, and compassion for our community’s vulnerable and needy members, and for the hardworking individuals who spend their careers assisting them.

When I work with union members on these issues, I am guided by my faith to prioritize helping those in need and honoring those who labor. I am guided by my faith to desire equitable distribution of shared economic resources, rather than policies that favor the wealthy through special tax exemptions. It is at times of budget crises that our commitment to our deepest values becomes most apparent. These workers should be priorities during hard economic times, not the ones who bear the brunt of budget shortfalls.

CLUE will be sending a letter in response. This represents the first in a series of letters we will be sending to local newspapers. We’ll also be working with PUEBLO and others to try to encourage our local media to do more balanced coverage on immigration issues in the future. Here’s the text of our first letter:

I am writing on behalf Santa Barbara’s Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE SB) in support of the California Dream Act (SB 1301). This bill will give young people with undocumented immigration status the opportunity to apply for financial aid at our public colleges and universities if they have graduated from a California high school after at least three years of attendance.

These kids should not be held responsible for our country’s broken immigration system. They were brought here as children, often when they were too young to even know what was happening, and many of them have been members of our community for most of their lives. Most of them will live out their adult lives here with us. These are not “aliens”—these are the kids our children grow up with in school, the men and women who stand in line with us at the grocery store. These are our neighbors.

It is in our own best interest to help talented young people pursue better lives for themselves and their communities. If we want them to thrive, we have to assist them when they make positive choices and seek ways to use their talents to give back to their neighborhoods. We can’t pull the rug out from under them when it comes to financing higher education.

When addressing the needs of individuals with undocumented immigration status, it is understandable that many of us worry about losing out on opportunities for ourselves and our loved ones. However, as people of faith, our organization believes that we must approach these issues from a perspective of compassion and fairness for all people, rather than fear or alarm. Helping kids pursue positive goals is a good idea for our state, for our communities, and for our families. Being fair to our neighbors is also the right thing to do.

Would you like to help? We need people who are willing to speak out once in a while by writing short letters to the editor of our local papers. Let’s let our community know that we support our immigrant neighbors and desire fair and just immigration reform!

Recently, we have been in contact with members of AFSCME Local 3299. They explained to us the issues that most concern them, including the disparity between their wages and the wages of workers doing comparable labor at other University of California campuses, Santa Barbara City College, the California State University system, and the City and County of Santa Barbara. We also discussed their concerns about the current system for wage increases, as well as their desire to have a more active role in negotiating pension and health insurance benefits.

Several workers shared with us the effects that these issues have on their lives and the lives of their families. Some commute long distances to work multiple jobs. Their frustration and exhaustion was palpable to us as we listened to their stories. These comparatively low wages are of special concern to us in Santa Barbara, as the cost of living in our community (including housing and transportation) is so high compared to other parts of the state.

Individuals also shared with us that, as a direct consequence of their low wages and their struggle to support themselves and their families, they cannot spend essential time with their children. We believe that this is an example of the ways in which such issues can have ripple effects far beyond the individual workers, causing hardships for families and entire communities.

We would like to meet with you and listen to your perspective on these issues, as we recognize that there is always more than one side to any story. We would also like to invite you to meet with workers from the Santa Barbara area to hear about their experiences.

While Regent Hopkinson declined our request for a meeting, this month we received a response from her in letter form. In her letter, Regent Hopkinson states that:

The University has been working hard to improve the wages of our lower paid employees despite the difficult budget year that is before us. In 2007, the University provided special increases for employees earning less than $40,000 per year. The AFSCME Service unit received these special increases in addition to the 4.5% accros-the-board increase provided in October 2007 under the now expired collective bargaining agreement.

It is good to hear that Regent Hopkinson is aware of the need to improve the wages of UC employees. I will have to check with my contacts at AFSCME to find out what, specifically, the special increases she mentions entailed. Frustrated workers have spoken to us of raises so slight they were “insulting,” and of increases in healthcare and transportation costs (including parking fees) that have been keeping pace with – and essentially canceling out – any wage increases they have received. It would be helpful to have more specific data on this issue.

Regent Hopkinson’s point about the difficult budget year for the UC also raises a larger moral issue. Most of us are aware that this is a very difficult economic year for the state as a whole, and the fact that this labor dispute is happening at a time of such increased budget strain must make negotiations especially difficult. At times like this, an institution’s priorities become more important than ever. We are seeing that on the statewide level, as funding for services to some of our most vulnerable populations is being targeted. Are we also seeing a problem in priorities within the UC system?

To answer that question, I think we need to know how helpful the university was in addressing the wage disparities during years when the budget was not as tight. We also need to know if the university’s other expenditure choices during this difficult budget year have been in keeping with Regent Hopkinson’s recognition that wage disparities for UC workers are a concern that the University needs to address even during a difficult budget year. Regent Hopkinson states that:

The University looks forward to working toward the mutual goal of agreements which appropriately balance the needs of UC, its communities served, and those employees represented by AFSCME.

But what is an appropriate balance in this case, and how do we define the three groups whose interests must be weighted in this calculation? Are they separate interests necessarily in conflict, or are they in fact overlapping categories in which each group is interpenetrated by and interdependent upon members of every other group. Put more simply, we should be careful about taking for granted the idea that what is good for the workers is not also good for the UC and the communities it serves. I don’t believe that this is an assumption Regent Hopkinson is necessarily making here, but I think it’s worth pointing out that we can easily become entrenched in an understanding of the workers as a group that is entirely separate from rather than a vital part of the UC, and we might too easily forget that they and their families are a substantial constituency in the community that the UC is charged to serve.

Regent Hopkinson also offers us some insight into current negotiations:

It is my understanding that, in the current bargaining process, the University of California has offered increases for various titles in the service unit at UC Santa Barbara ranging from 2% to 13.5%. This proposal would provide approximately $406,000 in increases to our AFSCME service employees at UCSB. The University based these market increases in part on an analysis of local competitors in the Santa Barbara area … I understand that the campus believes that they lag the market for many of the service unit titles and have offered these increases as a way to address some of these lags.

It would be helpful to know what proportion of the pay increases are concentrated at the minimum and what at the maximum percentage. It would also be helpful to know how that $406,000 is to be distributed amongst the workers. More importantly, however, is the acknowledgment here that there is a disparity between UC wages and market rates, and that this proposed solution only addresses some – not all – of the disparity.

Unfortunately, we have not received a response directly addressing workers’ concerns about the current system for individual wage increases or the ability of the union to participate in a timely fashion in negotiations about healthcare and pensions that fall outside of the normal bargaining process.

Despite lingering questions, we are very thankful that Regent Hopkinson took the time to communicate with us about this issue. We look forward to continuing this dialog between AFSCME workers, our membership, and Regent Hopkinson.