Former UC Davis Officer Claims Violation of Settlement Agreement

Documentary Evidence Suggests University Failed to Adhere to Their Terms of Agreement

On Monday the Vanguard ran a story on the lawsuit filed by former UC Davis police Officer Calvin Chang. The story has since been covered in detail in the California Aggie and mentioned briefly on the Davis Enterprise website. At this point, one of the hang ups has been that the university has not been served and thus not officially notified with the complaint. So at this point they cannot respond.

The Vanguard spoke briefly to UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza and Julia Ann Easley, Senior Public Information Representative at UC Davis News Service.

The Vanguard has now received a copy of the settlement agreement between Officer Chang and the university since in February of 2008. In that agreement, Officer Chang was to be paid by the Regents a sum of $240,000 of which $66,000 would go to his attorney.

"In exchange for the promises and warranties of CHANG as set forth below the REGENTS shall pay the total sum of $240,000 (two hundred forty thousand dollars). The $240,000 will be paid in two separate checks - one payable to Calvin Chang in the amount of $174,000 and the other check payable to James McGlamery in the amount of $66,000."

In addition to the monetary terms there were several key non-monetary provisions including the removal of identified negative documents from Calvin Chang's personnel file.

“To remove certain identified negative documents from CHANG's official personnel file and place them in a separate confidential file (''unsanitized file”) that will be maintained in the office of Campus Counsel, Steve Drown. CHANG, his attorney, and the attorney for the REGENTS will meet to cull through the official personnel file to determine which documents constitute such “negative” documents. A list of the documents that are removed from his personnel file and placed in the separate '''unsanitized file'' will be compile and attached hereto as Exhibit A.”

Moreover, for future employers, information would be limited to dates of his employment, title, and the fact that he has voluntarily resigned.

Specifically it authorizes that the regents will keep the "currently pending laundry-room Internal Affairs investigation open as "not completed." The University will expunge from Officer Chang's personnel file all letters or reprimand older than six months.

Here is the full listing of the items specifically agreed upon by both parties to be removed:




The complaint alleges a breach of contract stemming from the university not adhering to the terms of this agreement.

According to the complaint:

“A fundamental obligation of the settlement was to also preserve Plaintiff's peace officer career and coveted public safety retirement. As such, the settlement imposed a fundamental and material obligation on Regents as established by paragraph 2 of the settlement, that certain negative documents, that were the product of discrimination, be expunged or removed from his personnel file, and otherwise to comply with his rights under the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act (Govt. Code § 3300 et seq., hereinafter "POBR").”

It continues:

Specifically, pursuant to the terms of the settlement, Spicuzza met with Plaintiff and counsel in open session, to review and agree on the removal of documents according to the obligations stated above as outlined in paragraph 2 and "Exhibit A" of the settlement. As a result of this obligation, pursuant to the terms of the settlement, the parties generated "Exhibit A," that delineated the documents to be placed in or removed from Plaintiff's personnel files.

This allegedly did not happen.

“However, defendant Regents unlawfully placed into Plaintiff's personnel file, adverse documents that negated the purpose and effect of the terms of the agreement. These documents have irreparably harmed Plaintiff's ability to successfully obtain other employment as a peace officer and have effectively denied him the ability to continue in his career.”

Instead the complaint alleges that a number of items were placed into Mr. Chang’s personnel file.

“Regents placed into and failed to remove from Plaintiff's police department personnel file, a letter dated January 18, 2008, authored by Spicuzza that placed Plaintiff on "administrative leave."

Regents also placed into and failed to remove from Plaintiff's police department personnel file two additional letters referring to and revealing the "Settlement" and to his "resignation."

Regents also placed over one hundred pages of negative documents into Plaintiff's peace officer personnel file located at the Office of Campus Counsel. Said documents consist of the most inflammatory and derogatory material, false allegations against Plaintiff, and Plaintiff's complaints against other peace officers, as contained in the full bound unredacted Seyfarth Shaw workplace investigation report.

Regents also placed into and failed to remove from Plaintiff's peace officer personnel file, two versions of a Kilday & Kilduff report adverse to Plaintiff's interests - regarding internal affairs investigations that Regents launched against Plaintiff immediately after Plaintiff was reinstated in 2004. Plaintiff is informed and believes, and thereon alleges, that said documents include, a yet to be fully disclosed, unwarranted internal affairs investigation against him by Regents in 2003 for alleged "insubordination" that consisted of "talking about his discrimination complaint."

According to the complaint, Officer Chang only became aware of these breaches after he was denied an employment position by several law enforcement agencies including the city of Davis. Recall that according to the settlement agreement, the university had very specific provisions about how requests for information were to be treated and what information they were to give out.



Instead according to the complaint:

“On July 22,2008, Campus Counsel Steve Drown told Plaintiff that REGENTS showed to the background investigator the above breaching documents, including the Seyfarth Shaw report as well as two versions of the Kilday Kilduff reports. Drown declined Plaintiff's request to read the documents, and declined to show Plaintiff the documents that were contained in his peace officer personnel file.

Plaintiff informed Drown that the documents were not to be in his personnel file, were in violation of the settlement, and that he requested to read them, that REGENTS must remove them, and allow him to provide a response to them after he has read them.”

According to the settlement agreement, the “laundry-room” investigation would be classified as open and “not completed.”



In fact, the complaint alleges that agreement was entered in based on fraudulent information and even then the defendants did not adhere to those provisions.

“As a direct and material obligation of the Settlement, Regents represented that the Laundry Room IA was still pending, had not been concluded, and would be maintained indefinitely as an "open investigation."

On or about February 4, 2008, in the presence of counsel for Regents, Spicuzza, a peace officer, verbally stated to Plaintiff that the Laundry Room IA had no finding, and further represented to Plaintiff that Regents would never disclose the existence or any information regarding the investigation to any party, including to any prospective employer - because it was an "open investigation." This obligation was material and conclusive in that the disclosure of the existence and the "open status" of an IA would substantially foreclose on the ability of a peace officer to obtain other police employment with a prospective employer.

In addition to fraudulently misrepresenting to Plaintiff that the IA had no finding, and would remain open as pending, when in fact this was untrue, Regents and Spicuzza concealed this fact from Plaintiff, in order to further its fraud, duress, and misrepresentation to support constructively discharging Plaintiff's employment through a fraudulent settlement agreement.

Among other things, Plaintiff was induced by Defendants' misrepresentations to enter into the settlement agreement and release certain claims and his pending discrimination lawsuit, and would not have done so if the Defendants had not made false representations, or concealed and failed to disclose the material information alleged above. This further denied Plaintiff his statutory rights under the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act (Cal. Gov't Code § 3300 et. seq.).”

Finally:

“Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Regents have disclosed to the news media that the IA was in fact closed as "sustained" against Plaintiff and that Plaintiff "resigned" as a result of the IA. Plaintiff discovered this fraud when he was contacted and questioned by the news media about what misconduct he had engaged in to be terminated from his position as a police officer.”

Brief Commentary:

Based on a reading of the settlement agreement, it would appear that Officer Calvin Chang would have a case against the University for breach of their settlement agreement. This is particularly damaging if true because the university would have interfered with his ability to receive new employment.

As originally mentioned, the university has not received a copy of the complaint and we have not heard their side of the story. The Vanguard will continue to follow this case as more developments occur.

UPDATE AT 4:30 PM WEDNESDAY

Julia Ann Easley, spokesperson for UC Davis emailed the Vanguard Wednesday afternoon with an official statement from the University:

Although the university has not been served, a lawyer representing the University has reviewed the complaint filed by Calvin Chang.

The university believes the case has no merit.

The university entered into a settlement agreement with Mr. Chang in 2008 to resolve all of his employment-related claims and secure his resignation from the police department.

As a term of the settlement agreement, Mr. Chang agreed that anytime he signed a waiver authorizing a prospective employer to review his personnel file, the potential employer or its agent would be given access to Mr. Chang¹s entire personnel file. The university believes that it has complied with these and all other terms of the agreement.

Once the lawsuit is served on the university, the university will have 30 days to file a response with the court.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Former Officer Files Suit Against UC Davis Charging Racial and Sexual Orientation Discrimination

Former UC Davis Police Officer Calvin Chang has filed a lawsuit against the UC Regents and UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza alleging complaints of racial and sexual orientation discrimination, housing discrimination, and retaliation.

In the lawsuit, Officer Chang, who is openly gay, alleges that he was subject to harassment including homophobic slurs and a death threat while serving as a police officer for the UC Davis Police Department.

Officer Chang was at the time of his hire the only Asian-American officer on the campus and the first openly gay officer. According to the complaint:

“During the relevant times, Plaintiff was subjected to a pattern of harassment and discrimination because of his race and sexual orientation, including but not limited to the following: a racial slur broadcasted to Plaintiff over the police radio by his supervisor, superiors referred to Plaintiff as "Mr. Chang" instead of by his earned title of "Officer Chang," repeatedly referred to by the name of the agency's previous Asian-American officer, denied timely backup, subjected to a derogatory slur ("fag") by a probationary police officer (whom Regents passed on probation) in the presence of his supervisor, offensive homosexual innuendos from a supervisor, referred to as a "****ing fag" by his supervisor (whom Spicuzza promoted and assigned to the "professional standards unit" in command of internal affairs), subjected to numerous false internal affairs investigations.”

In July of 2003, Officer Chang was terminated from the UC Davis Police Department. By September 2003, he filed complaints of discrimination and harassment in connection with his termination.

“After Plaintiff's mistreatment and termination was reported in the news media beginning on or about October 29, 2003, Regents ordered Plaintiff summarily reinstated on October 31, 2003 and agreed with the DFEH [Department of Fair Employment and Housing] to provide all sworn staff with discrimination prevention training. As of Plaintiff's last termination in 2008, despite repeated reassurances, Regents have failed to provide agreed upon training.”

The suit alleges that the

“Defendants initiated, directed, encouraged, and subjecting Plaintiff to a malicious, severe, and unrelenting pattern of retaliation.”

These complaints included an alleged death threat. However according to a press release:

“UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza concluded she ‘could not identify’ which officer wrote the threat, even though the threat was written in the officer’s own handwriting.”

Moreover, Officer Chang alleges that in response to a complaint about discrimination, Chief Spicuzza stated to Officer Chang, “Why don’t you leave?”

The suit alleges a long list of various incidents of harassment and retaliations including a punitive transfer, failure to properly protect Officer Chang, and soliciting complaints against Officer Chang. Officer Chang claims that the Police Chief initiated several “malicious and false” internal affairs investigations against the Officer.

According to the press release by attorney Anthony Luti representing Officer Calvin Chang:

“These actions culminated in a lawsuit filed [today]… Chang alleges that in 2008, he was unlawfully terminated for the second time, after the UC Davis Police Department fabricated an internal affairs alleging that he “failed to have a backup officer” when he searched a laundry room at the Segundo Residence Hall. Chang’s lawsuit alleges that Spicuzza intentionally misrepresented that the internal affairs investigation had “no finding.” However, UC Davis concealed and intentionally misrepresented that it had sustained the allegation and then falsely and maliciously reported that he had resigned as a result of the internal affairs complaint.”

UC Davis has also attempted retaliation, according to the plaintiff, by

“unlawfully threatening [to] take his home of ten years—located in Aggie Village on the UC Davis campus. As a result of a complaint Chang filed with the CA Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the University agreed that it would cease any further actions, again choosing to explain its actions as based on “miscommunication.”

Furthermore, the plaintiff reports:

“In a letter responding to Chang’s complaint, [UC Davis Chancellor Larry] Vanderhoef described the University’s action as “a result of administrative error” and that there was no “evidence that these actions were intended to be retaliatory.”

Officer Calvin Chang is seeking a reinstatement of his position and general damages for the loss of his career and public safety pension valued at over $3 million. Moreover he is also seeking damages for emotional distress and punitive damages against Chief Spicuzza for failure to prevent harassment, fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud.

The Vanguard at time of publication has not had an opportunity to speak to UC Davis, however, will follow up if when there is an official response.

In the fall of 2007, the Vanguard received an anonymous mailing through the US Postal service depicting a series of complaints against Chief Spicuzza, Captain Joyce Souza, and now former Captain Leslie Brown. That was followed up in the spring of 2008 with an anonymous email detailing further events and abuses. Both of these communications appear to have merit and the Vanguard has been conducting a long investigation of the UC Davis Police Department and the upper management. As a result, the Vanguard has discovered reason to believe that Officer Chang’s complaint is not an isolated incident but rather part of a long and sustained pattern of alleged discrimination, retaliation, and abuse. The Vanguard will be following up on these allegations and will have a full report in the future.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Mayor Kevin Johnson Surprise Keynote Address Highlights MLK Scholarship Dinner

Last night the sixth annual MLK Scholarship Fund and Recognition Dinner at Freeborn Hall on the campus of UC Davis gave out scholarships to two UC Davis Students and six high school students that will enable them to either go to graduate school or go to college. The fund was co-founded by the late Mel Trujillo and the Reverend Timothy Malone.

Bob Dunning had the honor of introducing the night's surprise key note addresser, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Mr. Dunning said:

"Mayor Johnson is the first Sacramento Mayor to lead the NBA in assists. The former Mayor wasn't very good at the assists."

Mayor Kevin Johnson spoke at first about the importance of the election of Barack Obama and like many, that he never thought he would live to see an African-American elected President.

"What I appreciate most about Barack Obama is that he does not believe that he just represents the African-American community. He believes that his Presidency transcends color. That's the best of America. Forty years ago Martin Luther King in his 'I have a Dream' speech he said that we should not judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. In a generation's time, his dream is being realized. We all have a chance to witness it."

Mayor Kevin Johnson said that while we have accomplished much, there is still much to be done. One thing specifically he mentioned was the importance of education and the failure of our education system.

"There's still a lot more to do. Let me give you one statistic that I think ties into the theme today. That is, public education is failing our kids around this country. If Martin Luther King was around today, I could assure you that he would say that public education is the Civil Rights issue of the 21st Century."

He continued:

"You have situation now where a third of our kids are not graduating high school. Half our kids are not graduating high school that are black or Latino. That's just not acceptable. We're talking about America being one of the most powerful leading countries in the world, and it's no longer the case. When it comes to math and science we're 18th and 25th. Our schools are not preparing our young people for the 21st century. What makes matters worse is that if you're graduating high school and you are black and Latino, you are at the same academic level as white eighth graders. If your in third grade, and you're not reading at grade level, 80% of those kids, never catch up... That means your future is determined by the time your in third grade. To make matters worse, that we are building prison facilities based on third grade reading scores. That we are taking reading scores and projecting it forward to know how many people we have that are going to be filling up our prisons.

That's why none of us can sit on our hands or say we want to sit on the sidelines. We all have to get involved.

Among the awardees, first was UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef who announced that he is retiring in June after 25 years year. Chancellor Vanderhoef received the lifetime achievement award.

Chancellor Vanderhoef related a story from the mid-1990s during a time when the board of regents had repealed many of the state's affirmative action programs in advance of Proposition 2009.

"UC Davis Gospel choir helped me make that point quite a while ago about 11 years ago. I was at the board of regents at the University of California. It was in the mid-1990s, it was shortly after the board approved policies that prohibited consideration of race and gender in UC admission and hiring.

The campus at that time had a rare opportunity, it had an opportunity to make a presentation before the regents--a presentation about what we thought UC Davis was and what we thought was important to UC Davis...

I could still picture the major event of that presentation. We were just about to begin and we had this group of students come into the hall. They marched in. Now the regents had been having a very difficult time with students marching into the meeting because of Prop 209 and things that the regents did prior to that. So they fretted about that group of students marching in and seated themselves altogether.

Then they all rose as one body and in fact it was the Gospel Choir. The diversity of faces, the diversity just in general was obvious, it just filled the room before they even mouths. And then they began to sing. It was wonderful. For one thing, the regents relaxed. They relaxed enough so that by the end of the presentation by the Gospel Choir, they gave them a standing ovation.

Afterwards I talked to one of those regents... I said that moving that the regents felt so good about that group of students. He said, I don't think that we've ever seen any university group that showed the diversity that that group showed and at the same time they showed us how wonderful diversity can be. And what it can bring to the stage that other groups cannot."

Dave Dionisi from Teach Peace received a well-deserved award as an Outstanding International Peace Leader. He shared early in the evening a rather moving story about some of the things they accomplished in Liberia in attempting to transform it from a war torn country to now a place where they provide hope in the form of education to young children for just $50 per year.

Mr. Dionisi talked about Martin Luther King and importance of action:

"In the packet tonight, there's a quote from Martin Luther King that I just love about cowardice. 'Cowards ask the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right?' There are many people out there tonight that have the courage folks that are standing up, that ask some hard questions about the Federal Reserve, what it's doing to our country, to ask difficult questions about the massacre in Gaza and what that means for justice everywhere, to ask difficult questions about what really happened on 9/11 and what that means for our democracy as we go forward. I want to say thank you to all of you who have made such a big impact on my life..."

Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald received an award for Outstanding Community Service, she told the students:

"One person can make a change and we can all come together to make a better change. So when Dr. King says that we must sometimes take positions because they are the right positions to take, I want to challenge everyone in the community and students as you go through your studies, as you run into challenging opportunities, some of you have said 'I don't know if I'm going to get into that school,' you know what, knock on that door. And if that door slams on your face, then you go through the window. If the window slams on your face, you go back and kick the door open. I came from a family where we... were in a one-bedroom home, where we shared mattresses, we were very poor. But we never knew it because there was so much love and hope in the family. So don't let lack of finances and lack of opportunities... you keep asking questions and do not take no for an answer."

Professor Bruce Haynes of UC Davis was named outstanding educator:

"We've heard this a few times on the stage here tonight, that sometimes we have to take a position because it's right. That's something that I try to do... I wanted to take this opportunity to say that thing that is uncomfortable but what must be heard. I'm one of the few black professors at UC Davis that is actually tenured. There are few Latino faculty, few Native American faculty, and we're at historical times in the university's history. Never before has there been so many faculty up for retirement, so it is a unique time for personnel change. We have a deep pipeline problem in the state of California. At times I found myself battling with Chancellor Vanderhoef because he had challenging times trying to find diverse faculty. Part of that crisis in education in California really goes back to something that happened in the 1970s, something that no politician seems willing to talk about. That's Prop 13 which is pretty much the reason that education in the state of California left us in the dark ages. It prevents us from keeping up with other states in terms of expenditures, teacher qualifications, training our teachers. I guess I'm putting it on all us to do something about that..."

The Reverend Malone closed the night with a very moving tribute to Martin Luther King as the nation's first African-American President is about to be sworn into office.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Friday Strike Update

Today is the final day of the UC service workers' strike. After five days of picketing across the state at 10 UC campuses and five medical centers, the 8500 striking workers will begin returning to their jobs at the end of the day.

According to a statement from AFSCME 3299:

"Though the strike has produced an outpouring of public and political support, UC executives have given no indication that they are willing to lift workers from poverty."

Those who listened to the Vanguard Radio Show on Wednesday, undoubtedly realize listening to both the representative from UC, Nicole Savickas, as well as a worker Matt Tidd, a UC Davis parking officer, that both sides remain far apart.

[To listen to the full Vanguard Radio Show from Wednesday, please click here]

One of the big questions is what will happen to the workers when they come back to work, most of them on Monday.

There have been threats made by UC officials about sanctions for those workers.

Elizabeth Meyer, director of UC Davis employee and labor relations called the strike illegal and suggested that workers could be disciplined.

"We're going to take appropriate discipline up to the fullest extent with the law and in accord with past practice."

Senator Leland Yee and other key legislators have pledged to stand by any UC worker who is unjustly disciplined by an executive on State payroll.

In a letter sent to UC President Mark Yudof, Senator Leland Yee wrote that he was “dismayed by the comments of Elizabeth Meyer and other UC spokespersons who have stated the administration will discipline striking workers to the ‘fullest extent.’”

The Senator wrote in a statement that was released on Tuesday:

“Service workers gave adequate notice of their strike and the law explicitly provides workers the right to strike for fair wages, working conditions, and basic equity. If even one worker is retaliated against or disciplined for exercising their right to strike, I will do everything in my power to appropriately respond to the University.”

Now we learn that State elected officials, many of whom walked the picket line, chastised UC executives for threatening to take disciplinary action against any worker who participated in the strike and thirty-four Assemblymembers wrote a letter to UC executives with their concerns that the threats were counterproductive to reaching a settlement.

On Wednesday the Vanguard reported that a Davis motorcycle officer had been pulling over and ticketing some of drivers who honked their horns in support of the strikers.

The Vanguard spoke to Police Chief Landy Black who confirmed that people had been pulled over for honking their horns, but told us that no tickets had been written for such offenses.

He cited California Vehicle Code as justification for the action by his officers.

California Code: Vehicle Code "27001. (a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation shall give audible warning with his horn. (b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm system which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with Section 28085) of this chapter."

Apparently neighbors called into the police complaining about the noise from the honking vehicles.

As someone else pointed out, a lot of the people who live off of College Park Drive work in the University Administration including Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, so it is little surprise that they might complain about motorists using their horns in support of the striking workers.

This is probably a good example of a case where the police should use their discretion as to whether this constitutes a real public safety risk and a true nuisance to residents, or if this is an attempt by some to silence people whose views they do not agree with.

Nevertheless, the fact that apparently no tickets were issued puts this in the realm of a curiosity rather than a huge issue.

The Vanguard will have more on the strike in the coming days as we look at the impact of the strike and the prospects that a settlement might be reached at some point.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

MAJOR VICTORY FOR CAMPUS FOOD WORKERS

Workers Applaud University Decision but Lament Delay in Timeline

It was nearly a year ago last year that the Campus Food Workers launched their most recent campaign to become university employees. On May 1, 2007, joined by hundreds of UC Davis students and community members they marched from the MU to the corner of Russell and Anderson. Three weeks later, they marched on Mrak Hall shutting it down. The actions have been consistent. They have received the support of many public leaders--Lamar Heystek, Lois Wolk, Christopher Cabaldon, the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee, former President Bill Clinton, and most recently Davis Mayor Sue Greenwald.

For the University it was an embarrassment--the only institution in the system to outsource their food service workers. For the workers it was at times a life and death fight, trying to get fair wages, affordable health coverage, and job protection. The lack of affordable health coverage literally put lives at risk.

The University finally pledged to study the issue, but no one had any idea what this would mean or where this would go.

We spoke with many workers over this time. One would tell us about her appendectomy that left her with a $47,000 debt that she would never repay. For another it was the inability to buy heart medicine that put his life on the line.

For these workers, help is on the way, but not as fast as some would like or need. Yesterday, UC Davis announced that they are taking a new approach toward the management of the food service program and its employees.

According to a press release:

"Under this new direction, the campus's food service contractor, Sodexho, will continue to manage residential and retail food operations on campus, but an estimated 175 to 200 nonmanagement Sodexho employees will be eligible to transition to University of California employment.

UC Davis' decision follows an extensive, six-month-long review of food service delivery models at college and university campuses across the country that employ best practices.

Campus and Sodexo officials here say they intend to act as soon as possible to complete the process of transitioning the Sodexho employees to UC-employee status and amending the existing contract. However, they anticipate it will take nine to 12 months to finish the job in a prudent manner that fully addresses the complexity of human resource issues that need to be managed."

According to the Chancellor:

"We arrived at this new direction only after an engaged, thoughtful and collaborative process. We consulted with many key constituents, including representatives from student governance groups. Throughout the entire review process this campus was guided by several key principles to ensure that our final decision would allow us to retain the high quality and diversity of our campus food service program without weakening our commitment to access and affordability for all students."

Sodexho's senior vice president for campus services, Bill Lacey:

"Our desire is to offer the best opportunities for our employees and services to the campus. The university's decision allows us to continue our long-term relationship and commitment to our employees with our continued focus on service to the campus."

State Assemblywoman Lois Wolk applauded the announcement:

"This is a win-win solution to a problem that has divided the campus community for too long. It's a win for the workers and students and it's a win for the entire university family and the greater Davis community. It also provides for the university to benefit from the expertise and high quality food service that Sodexo management provides.

"Chancellor Vanderhoef should be praised for listening to the workers, students and many in the Davis community who supported bringing these workers into direct UC employee status."

The workers themselves were a bit more circumspect about providing praise and in their celebration. The gist of their position is that this is a good thing, they are excited, but to a person no one understands the need to wait another 9 to 12 months.

I spoke with Ashok Kumar who has worked for Sodexho for six months as a part-time employee. He earns $8 per hour and has much uncertainty about the future since he does not know how he can support his family on that wage.

"I am excited about the long term situation, but it is tough in the short term."

He believes nine months is a long time to wait. Moreover, he has been trying to become a full-time employee but they gave that job to someone else.

Kevin Cole is a worker I have spoken with before, in fact he is one of the workers that got a chance to meet President Clinton in mid-January.

"I was really happy that it happened. The only thing I really am not happy about is why we have to wait so long for this to take place. I don’t think it makes any sense to wait another year for this to take place.

They are telling us they are going through a process--I don't understand what kind of process would take 10 to 12 months? Unless you are going to have to move across the country or something, but we’re right here."

Chris Beran has been with the company for three years and have been fighting for the union the entire time.

“I’m happy with the outcome, I’m really just discouraged with the time frame and the fact that they are holding back on us.”

According to the University, this arrangement will cost an additional $2 million per year. Some of this will be passed on to students, but the university also intends to mitigate the impact.

"The transitioning of the food service employees to UC-employee status and the anticipated amendment to the Sodexo contract are expected to add additional annual costs of approximately $2 million -- an estimated $1.5 million per year in additional costs to Student Housing and $500,000 per year to the Student Union operating services.

While a portion of these increased costs will be passed on to students, UC Davis intends to moderate the impact by: gradually passing on the increased costs over time; potentially expanding and modifying retail food services at places such as the Silo Union and the Activities and Recreation Center; using some reserve funds from the capital reserves of Student Housing and the student unions; and negotiating with Sodexho for an appropriate level of financial participation in the new approach."

That seems the least they could have done. The lack of creativity in this process has often been appalling. To use that as justification for keeping low income people in poverty wages never made any sense.

In the end, timeline or no timeline this is a tremendous victory for not only the food service workers who will hopefully by January be getting better wages, access to affordable health care, and protection in the workplace, but to the entire community. The Chancellor may have done the right thing in the end, but throughout the process it was clear that this was not his first choice. The community forced him to do the right thing. This is a victory for the workers, the organizers, the students, and indeed the entire community. The individuals, the leaders, and the people who got behind this movement are the ones that made it possible. It was a tough fight, but in the end, justice prevailed.

Those who questioned their methods, never had to walk in their shoes. The May Day Protests may indeed have inconvenienced students who needed to get to class and take exams, but for the food service workers this was a fight that for some of them was for their very lives. It is one thing to have substandard wages, it is another thing to lack affordable health care. It is a sacrifice that those students who were inconvenienced made, albeit unwittingly, that has now allowed hundreds of workers the chance for better wages and to get themselves and their families the health insurance coverage that many of them so desperately need.

Without the May Day Protests and the subsequent march on Mrak Hall is doubtful that the community would have become energized and mobilized to the extent that it was. It is doubtful that their struggle would have caught the attention of so many public leaders. It is doubtful that the university would have felt the pressure to negotiate that they eventually did without that pressure. And so today, the victory was only possible because a public university that is so insulated from public accountability, a public university that is in many ways so insulated that they are responsible to no one, bowed to the pressure of a community that would not relent. Yesterday was not just a victory for workers, it was a victory for our community and indeed in the democratic process.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UC Regents, Fee Increase, Pay Raises All Par For the Course

On Wednesday, at UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef's quaterly brown bag lunch he laid out a number of very bleak scenarios for steep cut backs ahead in the wake of Gov. Arnold Schawrzenegger who is calling for across the board cuts.

While Larry Vanderhoef stated that everything was on the table, he listed off several possible areas for cuts and/ or cost savings. Most of them either impacted students or low end employees. These suggestions included a student fee increase higher than the 7% increase already in consideration, freezing increases to enrollment that would turn away as many as 5,000 otherwise eligible students this coming fall, cutbacks to health benefits for low end employees, and cutbacks to services for students. In this post-Virginia Tech era that ominously includes counseling services.

One thing that was not mentioned that was "on the table" and I have been kicking myself for four days not having asked the question is whether his salary would be examined for possible cuts. Whether the salary of the top administrators at UC Davis would be examined for possible cuts. If they are talking about everything being "on the table," if they are talking about pain being spread around, then they have to include their own livelihood in it, even if those cuts are only symbollic and do not help them meet their budget priorities.

Indeed, it was in mid-January that the UC Board of Regents outraged many students in a meeting on the UCLA campus.

There they gave a 26 percent pay increase of $61,000 to Secretary/ Chief of Staff Diane Griffiths. That raised her annual salary to just under $300,000 less than a year after she was hired to her position.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time:

"Students in the regents meeting audience on the UCLA campus waved signs protesting the university's priorities. "Where is the money going? Not toward lowering student fees!" "Where is the money going? Not 2 Students!" "Where is the money going? Executive compensation!"

The only regent opposed to this salary increase Lt. Gov. John Garamendi.

However, this time students are not taking this lying down. Across the state students are now circulating petition for a ballot measure that would freeze tuition at University of California and California State University institutions for five years.

And this measure will be paid for by levying a 1-percent tax on those taxpayers who earn over $1 million. I found this greatly ironic for some reason. They have 150 days to amass 433,971 signatures.

For more information or to sign the petition online click here.

It is also important to understand that what is happening at UC could happen at Davis Joint Unified. The local school district is projecting at present around $4 million worth of cuts to programs and possibly teachers. They have already discussed at length the prognosis and the implications. And while it seems likely that Democrats in the legislature will never allow these cuts to go through from the state level, the cycle of budget for many of these institutions means that the state budget will be passed long after all of these institutions have had to make their own cuts.

And yet it seems ironic further still that DJUSD is while at the same time talking about huge cuts, also talking about increases in salary to administrators. The move for this appears to be coming from newly elected Board Member Susan Lovenberg.

We see it all across the state, agencies facing the same cuts, and we see it all across the nation, major corporations laying off thousands while giving huge salaries and salary increases to their CEO and Board of Directors. We see Exxon-Mobile making tremendous profits off the pay of gas consumers. And we see no end in sight to these examples of shear corporate greed coming at the expense of the average customer, the tax payer, the lower level employees.

As one of our public officials told me in a conversation about UC, it is remarkable that as poorly managed as UC is, as unresponsive and insulated from public accountability, as unresponsive and insulated from the accountability of elected officials, the UC system as a whole works as well as it does at the most basic level of giving California's students a good education at a still not bad fee.

However in the last 25 to 30 years we have gone from a system that allows students to attend school for a very modest fee to a system that forces students to pay an ever increasing burden on their educational costs. It is still a good system but it has lost some of its earlier advantages.

At the end of the day though it will be interesting to see how this first ever student-based initiative will fare in California's electoral system and whether the top administrators will still get away with taking hope their all-too-lucrative salary while the bottom level employees are still fighting for affordable health care and struggling to make their ends meet.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Chancellor's Brown Bag Lunch Brings Renewed Calls for Justice For Sodexho Workers

Yesterday UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef had his "brown bag lunch" where he spoke before a group largely made up of his own assistants, provosts, vice-chancellors, and other upper administration.

He spoke at length about a number of his own concerns before turning it over to questions. The biggest concern at this point is a proposed across-the-board cut from the governor due to the budget crisis. A cut that will be as much as 10 percent.

The Chancellor stressed that all options were on the table. Among those options is a higher than the projected 7 percent tuition increase.

Another option is no enrollment growth. He said they were projecting 5000 new students given the enrollment numbers in high schools across the state. The problem with that approach is that for forty years the UC system has taken in the top 12.5 percent of graduating seniors and if they did not do that this year that would be a marked shift in their philosophy and he indicated not a shift they would be comfortable with.

He also put on the table cuts in services to students and cuts in health care coverage to employees. The latter would force employees to dig into their own resources in order to maintain their health coverage.

It is interesting that one item not mentioned as being on the table even though it would not generate a lot of savings would be a roll back of upper administrative salaries. Some may recall the near riots that took place when the UC Board of Regents announced huge tuition hikes while at the same time increased some of their top administrative salaries by $50,000 per year. Symbolic to be sure, but it would be similar to a CEO of a major corporation taking a huge salary increase while at the same they were laying off $10,000 rank and file employees.

Dominating the question and answer period were concerns about worker contracts including Sodexho workers but also university employees who are seeking new contracts amid talks of huge budget cuts.

Don Gibson, a UC Davis student who is VP of the Davis College Democrats and an elected member of the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee. He read from the resolution passed on January 7, 2008 that called for a university contract for food service employees.

The Chancellor asked Janet Gong to speak to this issue.

"In October, the end of the month, we signed what's called a memorandum of understanding between the university and Sodexho. Sodexho is the vendor that supplies contracted out food service for both our vendor halls as well as our retail operations such as you see in this building downstairs.

That MOU provides for increases in wages at classification levels for campus food service workers that are equal between what Sodexho is paying and what campus workers would be making on campus. The wages are identical in terms of the classification wages.

It also spoke to health insurance and we did find that there were disparities in health insurance between what benefits the university would provide employees and what the vendor was providing. So we arranged with Sodexho to go from a 60-40 employer-employee pay plan to an 80-20 plan. And we supplemented that with $100.10 per month as a stipend that could also go to employees for insurance.

Wages were increased in September, insurance increases were effective in January, since that time there has been a 47 percent increase in the number of Sodexho employees who are now receiving health insurance."

Ms. Gong further suggested that:

"We've agreed to undertake a process to look at all options... certainly the option of bringing food service employees in house is one of the options that we're looking at. To do that we are mining all kinds of operational and financial data."

The goal according to Janet Gong was to have preliminary recommendations by April as to whether they should bring food service employees in house. It seems obvious on two levels first that conditions for employees have improved since October both on the wages front and the health care front. However, it also seems obvious that the university would not continue its relationship with Sodexho unless there remained strong financial incentive to do so, which necessarily means that the workers are receiving less in terms of wages and benefits than they would under a university contract. And while the budget crunch is a concern, UC Davis has less excuse on this issue than on others since it is really the only UC outsourcing labor.

Max Alper of AFSCME 3299 disagreed with Janet Gong on some of the points that she raised.

"I just wanted to make sure that everybody saw that there was a report put out by a progressive faculty group for UC Davis that found many interesting things including that Sodexho wages are still even with these changes 5 to 9 percent below UC Davis wages that are paid at the UC Davis medical center. And more disturbing is that health care for families is still 41 percent more expensive including the 100 dollar stipend. And when you ask people to wait until April for preliminary results there are some workers right here who can tell you why they can't wait."

Janet Gong responded that food service workers at the UC Davis medical center are not comparable to the food service workers on campus.

"There are very distinct differences between those two which include things like at the medical center food service workers are dealing directly with patients, there is delivery of food to patients, there is compliance with charting restrictions, with regulations, there are different regulatory agencies, it is a 365, 7 day a week, 24 hour a day operation. Those kind of responsibilities in the job descriptions and classifications are very different than working in a campus food-based operation."

Tarone Bittner unit chair for UAW 2865 at Davis spoke passionately on the issue of outsourced workers and disputed notions by university staff and administration that they were working to bring UC pay inline with market wages.

"I have been here for three years, I have seen no movement on this. Yet we have you sitting here saying that you want to pay market wages. Well do it, what else needs to be done. The Sodexho issue is a sad issue in and of itself because we're talking about out-sourcing which is intolerable... It should be intolerable for every worker on this campus. Because what you're saying is that we're going to take the opportunity to exploit not only the workers that are unionized but the workers in our midst that work for Sodexho. So we're going to pay them even less.

And we all know where this concept comes from, right, outsourcing, downsizing, etc., that happens when a corporation wants to make more money by paying less in labor costs. It makes sense to a certain degree to do that nationally, but to do it in your community is particularly offense because what you're talking about is bringing down your standard of living for everyone in your own community. That doesn't make any sense to me.

There's a social cost here that seems to be missed. So let me reiterate, all of the workers at UC are paid a substandard wage. So let's start right there. Let's fix the thing with Sodexho, we're the last campus in the system that's outsourcing, so we're like the backwater of the UC system.

But we need to fix this so that we can get to the issue of bringing up the wages to market which you said your for. We could deal with that right now. I'm sure all the unions would be happy to meet tomorrow to bring up all the wages to market."

In the end, Sodexho workers Joe Moreno and Esther Juarez tried to talk with the Chancellor about their health situations and the impact of the university's policy on their lives. However, the Chancellor was quickly ushered out the back door and the workers were left frustrated at their lack of ability to express to the Chancellor the impact of the university's policies.

People will look at the improvements and perhaps ask why the workers are continuing their struggle, but it is clear that the university has been forced since October to make concessions they did not want to make and they also are considering more changes. It is difficult to know what will happen in April and it therefore makes sense to continue to press their demands to become UC employees with better wages, better health insurance, and better working conditions.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting