We are Dining Hall Workers, Grounds Keepers, Janitors and Shuttle Drivers. We are the people committed to cooking and serving you meals, keeping the campus trash-free and beautiful, making sure the classrooms and bathrooms are clean and sanitary and taking you across campus to whereever you need to go in the pouring rain, or after a long day.


WHAT ARE WE BARGAINING FOR?

• Quality service – Expanding the campus with new buildings and dramatically higher student enrollment without hiring additional workers results in a decline in services for the UC community.

• A “chance to advance� – The majority of us are immigrants, women, and/or people of color who are not given the proper training or opportunity by UC to be promoted out of entry-level jobs.

• Improve our families’ lives – We are demanding that UC help our families move out of poverty by giving us guaranteed raises.


SERVICE WORKER FACTS:


1. UC service workers’ wages do not cover the bare-bones costs of raising a family: 93% of UC service workers earn wages that would not meet basic needs for a single adult with a child, and 46% earn wages that would not meet basic needs for a two wage-earner, two child family (if both adults earned the same amount).

2. For many service workers, UC wage levels are not sufficient for a single adult without children: 35% of UC service employees earn wages that would not be adequate to meet basic needs for a single adult.

3. UC’s wage rates are substantially lower than those of employees performing the same work at comparable institutions: UC senior custodian wage rates are 15% less than those for employees performing the same work in the California State University system and 26% less than their counterparts at community colleges.

4. UC food service workers earn wages so low that they are income eligible to qualify for nine major publicly-funded welfare benefit programs.

Sources: Aimee Durfee & Tim Lohrentz, NEDLC; Deborah Frankle, MSW Candidate, San Francisco State University.

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For more information, contact AFSCME Local 3299 at 425-4822 or check out www.local3299.org

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“We may not be professors or executives—but all workers deserve decent wages, respect, and opportunities to move up. It is outrageous that the top executives get bonuses of more than $50,000—nearly twice our yearly salary. We are not trying to be greedy like that; we just want to see a better future for our families.�

- Maria Padilla

UCSC Food Service Worker




photos by: bradley (at) riseup.net