11 October 2003


Fed up....

I rushed in late to a work meeting the other day, just in time to hear our HR representative winding up a talk on upcoming budget cuts, belt-tightening, heavier workloads and possible salary freezes.

Gloomy predictions have become commonplace at the large, state-funded California university where I work. The $20 billion state budget deficit lurks around every campus corner, an uninvited guest at the banquet, ravaging the buffet before anyone else can get to it.

After HR left the room, my fellow faculty assistants erupted into talk. We have to make the best of a bad situation, they said. Suck it up. Help one another when the workload gets too heavy.

No one questioned the basic premise of the situation. Not a word was uttered about fighting back if our workloads became unbearable or our workplace conditions intolerable.

Until finally I could take it no longer and piped up. “Hey, isn’t there a limit to how much we’ll take? After all, we do have a union…”

You would have thought I had suggested jumping off a cliff into the nearby Pacific. If only a fraction of the anti-union sentiment my remark occasioned would be channeled into campus labor organizing, our union wouldn’t be the well-meaning but ineffectual body even I agree it is.

Instead, the most vocal group members around the table damned the union and insisted that we have to take whatever the university dishes out because...well...that’s the way it is. Who can argue with a state budget deficit? Employers hold all the cards. Besides, we have it better than many others out there.

That the latter is true, makes me even angrier. I am so sick of low-paid workers getting the shaft, then being manipulated into turning against one another. The university has used the budget deficit for years to intimidate employees, keep lower-level wages low and excuse a host of ridiculous business practices.

Yes, California’s budget is in a colossal crisis—especially now that an inexperienced Republican actor has been placed in the governor’s mansion. (Remember what happened the last time this occurred.) The university, however, is a huge, pampered financial entity, rich in cash, land, facilities, resources and employees. Its wealth is anything but evenly distributed throughout the system.

A case in point. I recently saw one my boss’ federal tax returns. A relatively new faculty-member in electrical and computer engineering, he reported $149,000 in income in 2001. That's nothing compared to what senior U.C. administrators and other top academic leaders make. In 2001, the average salary of a UC chancellor was $280,610. And they've given themselves raises since then.

Yet, when I brought up wage-disparities in the meeting, without naming names or quoting salaries, and suggested that maybe fat could be cut from above rather than below, my fellow employees reacted more strongly than when HR had threatened to freeze their own salaries.

The faculty, they said, would go elsewhere if they aren’t paid enough. Not only that, they are "Ph.D.'s," the letters uttered as if discussing godly attributes. They have to study four years undergraduate, six years graduate, then take a post-graduate position, be an intern or whatever for even longer. Do you want to do that? someone asked.

You bet! I said. Only, I’m too broke, too indebted and most likely, too old.

Ten years ago, I tried to better my circumstances through education. I worked like a maniac and went into $20,000 in debt to earn first a B.A., then a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. Only to graduate and be offered $9 an hour to pursue my field, journalism, in one of the most expensive regions of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area. With a child to support and no savings or investments to fall back on, I had no choice but to turn the job down and return to higher-paying office work.

So much for my attempt to escape the admin-support ghetto.

But those poor Ph.D.’s! To hear my coworkers talk, it’s as if schooling, followed by interesting, creative and highly-paid work are sacrifices, not amazingly good fortune.

While grad students out there are studying and making, what, $25,000? Other workers are earning the same or less, pushing coffee, pumping gas, stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, cleaning motel rooms and performing other less-than-desirable labor. Rather than rosier futures to look forward to in a few years, they have bunions, blown spinal-discs, hundreds of rude, disrespectful and filthy customers, mind-numbing boredom and no healthcare or dental benefits. Vacations? Hell, most working-class Americans are lucky now if they can get by holding down only one job.

People in the privileged classes consider several years of making less than $100,000 an economic hardship, above and beyond the call of duty.

The rest of us call it Life and consider ourselves lucky if we ever break $35,000.

08 October 2003


Sad day for Ca-lee-for-nya...

How's this for a quote from the governor-elect of the largest state (population-wise) of the union?
"I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you, and I will not let you down," Schwarzenegger said to cheers from the crowd.
Well, he already has by uttering the same thing three ways without saying anything of substance.

A true protégé of President Bush in this regard, Schwarzenegger promises to go far!

What's more, don’t feel too smug from the safety of faraway states and foreign countries. He will soon be heading your way.

His celebration last night was held in the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars in LA, where Republicans have toasted Reagan election-night victories for two decades.

Want more proof the Republican Party is grooming him for the Oval Office? In July, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced what he hopes will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, permitting foreign-born nationals to be elected president.

Time to wake up!

According to the LAX, Hummers clogged the Avenue of the Stars last night, as invitees to the victory celebration searched for nonexistent parking places. Security was tight at the super-swank affair: if you weren't on the list, you didn’t get in. And that seems to have included a fair number of disappointed reporters.

Well, what do you expect from a multi-millionaire Republican actor-cum-politician-cum-governor?

Pandering to California voters’ basest instincts, Schwarzenegger’s first move will be to overturn a law granting drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants. But make sure you somehow get a ride to the fields, nurseries, kitchens and laundry-rooms!

Just as quickly, he’s promising to undo the unpopular tripling of the car tax. And balance the state budget.

Oh well, we all know when he fails, the Democrats will somehow be blamed.

By the way, someone ought to tell Maria Shriver to ease up on whatever chemical substance has been smoothing her way on those late nights on the campaign trail. In every recent photo, she looks like a Stepford Wife on coke.

Election story here.