Guest Commentary: Vote No to Green Initiative Slush Fund

By Derick Lennox

Don't be duped into raising your own student fees.

The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) is a campus ballot measure that attempts to mislead students into funding a $269,000 special interest slush fund. A history of unfulfilled promises at other UC campuses has proven that for TGIF, "greed" has become the new "green."

UC Davis would not be the first campus to be let down by TGIF's big promises. The same program has been implemented at other UC schools, such as Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. In each case, voters were lured by the chance to "develop, propose, and enact sustainable projects" using the collected student fees. In the past two years, TGIF has racked up over a half-million dollars in unused grant money at these three UC campuses. In hindsight, that money should have stayed in students' pockets to pay for the increasing price of education.

We should learn from others' mistakes.

Less than half of the proposed Davis fees will go to student grants. The rest will be spent on a $40,000 staff position, while an estimated $30,000 would be needed for office and accounting services, according estimates from a Student Services and Fees Administrative Advisory Committee meeting. Thankfully, the most useful misdirection of "green" funds would be the 25 percent spent on university-required return-to-aid, assisting PELL-grant eligible students. And with the average public university student graduating with over $10,000 in debt, why not spend all the money on financial assistance instead?

In tough economic times, only greedy special interests would want to tax us doubly. Thank goodness, this is one fee hike to which we can say "no." After all, James Quinn, professor and co-director of the information center for the environment, reminds us that UC Davis receives more environmental research funding than almost any other school in the country.

Since 2002, statewide UC fees have more than doubled. And already, UC Davis has the highest campus-based fees in the system—three-times greater than at campuses like UCLA. Budget shortfalls almost forced us to say farewell to many needed services last spring at the Learning Skills Center, financial aid office, and campus recreation (just to name a few). Despite expecting another fee hike next year, TGIF makes no effort to respect our financial burden.

The possibility of financial abuse is ripe as this seven-member committee decides how to spend your money. The current language of the initiative should offend any person in favor of responsible governance. Appointments from the university administration—not students—will fill three positions on this student fees committee. Meanwhile, half the student members will have a mandated connection with the same environmental advocacy communities that will be receiving the grants.

If your intuition shouts "conflict of interest!" then you're not alone. Opponents to this boongoggle include the president of Davis College Democrats, the chair of Davis College Republicans, and the ASUCD president, controller, and University Affairs director.

Numbers aside, you may think that this is just a quarterly $4 fee—the price of a fancy latte or trip to the Coffee House. But remember, this fee will not help the environment or create sustainability. If history rings true, TGIF will misuse hundreds of thousands of dollars at the cost of many UC Davis generations to come.

With these facts in mind, students should take pride in not being cajoled into fronting the cash for a special interest slush fund. Let's vote together to defeat this ill-conceived initiative on February 18 and 19 at elections.ucdavis.edu.

Derick Lennox is a fourth-year undergraduate and member of the "No on TGIF" campaign.

Strong Corporate Influence in Energy-Efficiency Research at UC Davis

This week UC Davis announced that the Chevron Corporation has given UC Davis $2.5 million to create a permanent leadership position for the campus's Energy Efficiency Center.

According to a January 13, 2009 release from the University:

"The person appointed to the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency will direct the center, which was established in 2006. The world's first university center of excellence in energy efficiency, its primary objective is to speed the transfer of energy-saving products and services into the homes, businesses and lives of Californians.

The new Chevron gift brings the center's funding total to more than $7.5 million. The center's start-up funding of $1 million came from the California Clean Energy Fund, a public benefit corporation dedicated to making equity investments in clean energy companies. UC Davis matched the CalCEF grant with $1.3 million in operating and research funds, faculty time, and office and laboratory space. Other key funders include Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., Edison International, Sempra Energy, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Goldman Sachs."

Speaking today at an event announcing the new Chevron gift, UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said: "Chevron's endowment will ensure long-term strategic leadership for the Energy Efficiency Center. By bridging long-term research with real-world applications, the director will guide the center in its goal of commercializing groundbreaking technologies, powering economic progress and helping to conserve resources."

The campus will conduct a national search for the person to hold the Chevron Chair, who will expand the impact of the center's research programs through interdisciplinary collaboration, education, outreach and commercialization of technologies. He or she also will continue developing strong links with state and federal government, as well as with international programs.

"Advancing energy efficiency, which is the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant form of new energy, is critical to the challenge of meeting the world's growing energy needs," said John McDonald, Chevron vice president and chief technology officer.

"California has been a pacesetter in energy efficiency, so it's fitting that one of the state's leading universities and California's largest company should partner on the next generation of energy efficiency."

The endowment for the Chevron Chair complements Chevron's ongoing support for UC Davis, which includes a $500,000 gift in 2008 for the Energy Efficiency Center and a $25 million biofuels research collaboration begun in 2006 to develop technology to convert nonfood agricultural waste into next-generation transportation fuels.

Sounds good right? The university getting millions of money from a large variety of huge corporations to fund research on energy-efficiency. One question that immediately arose was a seeming contradiction in a company like Chevron, that makes the bulk of its money selling oil, funding research for energy efficiency, a rising new field that would eventually imperil oil sales.

Indeed, as the background on the press stated:

"Chevron explores for, produces and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes transportation fuels and other energy products; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops the energy resources of the future, including biofuels and other renewables."

The Vanguard spoke with Ben Finkelor of the Energy Efficiency Center. He strongly defended the contribution. First he explained that Chevron has created a separate endowment specifically to support energy efficiency. He believes that Chevron and other large companies have as much to gain by energy efficiency as any one else.

He also suggested that such donations have never come with any strings attached. They have never been told what to do by Chevron or any other company. This is simply a new market for the future.

While Ben Finkelor certainly gave an impassioned defense of the reliance on corporate funding for academic research, there still seems to be glaring contradictions in such policies. After all the development of fuel efficient technologies would seem to inherently need to focus on the reduction of the use of oil companies. Is this simply a way for Chevron to earn positive process? Is there a hope that they can somehow make these research centers beholden to their interests among many corporate interests? Or is it as Ben Finkelor suggests, a matter that Chevron has a separate wing devoted to the development of new fuels and fuel efficiency?

It is hard to know for certain. It will be interesting to see who is eventually hired as Chair as the result of this gift. However, one does have to question companies particularly like PG&E and Edison pumping money into fuel efficiency programs.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

As Regional and State Growth Rates Fall, What Will Be the Impact on Davis?

The Sacramento Bee reported back on December 18, 2008 that the regional and state growth rates have fallen to its lowest levels in more than a decade.

In six counties surrounding Sacramento which include Yolo, Sutter, Yuba, Placer, El Dorado and Sacramento Counties, the growth rate from July 1, 2007 to July 1, 2008 was only 1.39%. Separately, Yolo County grew at 1.46 percent adding around 3,000 people. Placer was the fastest growing county in California at 2.6 percent. Sacramento grew at a rate below the statewide level at 1.11 percent.

Statewide the growth rate was actually lower at 1.16%.

More people moved out of California than moved into California during this time period.

What does all of this mean for Yolo County and Davis?



Davis has spent considerable time and energy focusing on the issue of growth. One of the arguments in recent years has been that Davis must take on its fair share of new growth. That was a more poignant argument in the early part of this decade was population growth was exploding and the housing market booming.

Regional governance groups like SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) and RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) have developed models for growth based on allocations of fair share. In other words, the basic model determines how much of the region's growth a given area should accommodate.

The problem is that this has become a moving target for local growth politics. Back during the Measure X debate, the argument used by proponents was the Davis would be penalized if it did not take on its supposed fair share of growth.

However, by 2007, RHNA had come out with new numbers suggesting that Davis needed to take on a much smaller share of growth--considerably less than the current projected growth rate of 1%. When it did however, the debate was shifted in Davis.

First, the 1% growth requirement became a growth cap. Now 1% is the target and the limit rather than the threshold that we need to meet.

Second, the debate in Davis is about internal housing needs rather than regional fair share growth allocations. Frankly this is what the debate always should have been about from the beginning.

In this sense, falling state and regional rates may relieve some pressure for Davis to grow. However, perceptions about the internal needs of Davis, which have thus far been more theoretic and less concrete, have continued to drive the debate.

Frankly, for everyone but the most ardent no-growther, the question is really about where, how, and how quickly we grow. I am not in the no-growth camp. I would also prefer not to put a number on our growth rate.

From my perspective one problem with housing in Davis is that UC Davis has taken on less than its share of student housing. UC Davis has the lowest percentage of on-campus housing in the UC system. There are several advantages for UC Davis to provide more housing. First, they can subsidize it, which lowers the costs to the students. Second, they have a large amount of available land. A good, dense, and environmentally friendly project on the UC campus would go a long way toward helping the city better assess its own needs.

A recent survey of apartments in Davis found that the vacancy rate in the city of Davis increased slightly this fall to .8 percent. However, the rental rates continued to rise by an average of 4.36 percent. Interestingly, though the vacancy rate was higher this year, the rate of increase was also higher than the previous year where a .7 percent vacancy yielded a 4.18 percent increase in rent. This despite the depressed housing market and economy.

In the comparable cities, Woodland saw a 4.1 percent vacancy rate but a 4.8 percent rent increase. On the other hand, West Sacramento nearly has 20% of its apartments vacant and the resultant rate only saw a .6 percent increase.

Clearly Davis needs more student housing. The argument again for UC Davis to provide on-campus housing is first that they have the land and can subsidize the property, but second that UC Davis' growth in recent years is a large culprit in the lack of student housing in Davis. By providing more housing, more single family units within the city could be freed up for people who work in Davis but have not been able to live here.

This is the strongest pressure driving the need for Davis to grow. Earlier this month, the Vanguard suggested one option, similar to what Cal Poly did, which is create a large and dense housing complex on campus. A facility of that sort, highly innovative and land conscious, could take a huge pressure off the city to have to expand its borders.

For all of the talk about internal housing needs, very few of the proposed projects in the Housing Element Steering Committee's top sites have a sizable student housing component. Almost all of them focus instead on single family residences with a few affordable and multifamily dwellings thrown in the mix.

In other words, with perhaps the exception of Nishi, which has other problems, there are no plans put forth to deal with the largest internal housing need we have.

The West Village will break ground this year and provide an additional 2000 units or so for student housing. That is a good start, but with UC Davis continuing to grow and not enough student housing at present, West Village is clearly not enough.

Many residents are not opposed to growth with good, environmentally friendly projects that continue to preserve the character of Davis. The problem is from many of our perspectives, the new subdivisions that we have seen in town could have been plopped down anywhere in the country. That's not the kind of large scale growth we would like to see.

Give me a housing project I can get behind and I will. I would like to focus on environmentally sustainable, smaller houses so that middle income people can afford them, a student housing component, a senior housing component, and a work force housing component.

The city of Davis has already approved housing for Verona, for Simmons, and for Grande. That's over 200 units right there. In addition, West Village will provide a large number of units over three phases. In addition, Lewis is proposing 600 units, on a property that would be better served with a business park. The Wild Horse Ranch will be proposing somewhere just under 200 units in the coming months for a project that would require a Measure J vote.

In this housing market, that is more than enough housing to last us the foreseeable future. I would like to see one additional project, and that would be a high density, UC Davis campus project that provides 3000 to 5000 beds on the UC Campus in an environmentally sustainable way. If we do that, I think we our needs for a while in terms of housing.

The external pressures have lessened and the housing market is in bad shape. That will give us time to work on making what we do have as carbon neutral as possible--a very worthwhile endeavor in the coming years.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Paradigm Shift: A Bold New Plan for Davis

During the course of the last Davis City Council campaign, one of the big debates was the extent to which Davis needs more housing. The argument from the pro-development candidates was always that we do not have enough housing to fill our internal needs. For them, we needed more student housing because of a large number of students who do not reside in Davis, we need more faculty and workforce housing, we need more senior housing. To them this means we need developments like Nishi and Covell Village.

I do not necessarily disagree with some of this. I have always said that if you give me a housing development I can support, I would be happy to do so. The problem I have is that most of the current proposals for new housing, especially those outside of the city, are not especially appealing. I'm not a fan of the newer subdivisions in town which have predominantly large houses and neighborhoods that could really be part of any city in this state and really this country. I want to see new and innovative urban design. And frankly I have not seen that. I want to see as Stephen Souza would say, the wow factor.

During the campaign, one of the things we talked about as slower growth advocates, was the need for UC Davis to provide its fair share of housing. West Village in some ways is a good start, but not really all that innovative, and not really what I was primarily getting at. UC Davis has the lowest percentage of on-campus student housing in the UC system. Think about that. That means that the city of Davis is responsible for finding housing for up to and exceeding three-quarters of the thirty thousand or so students who attend the university. A town of 64,000 people has to provide for nearly 50% of its population. If UC Davis could just provide a larger percentage of housing on campus, in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner it could be a huge pressure release for growth on Davis.

Keep this in mind as I share the next portion of this story. As many regular readers know, I grew up in San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo is a similar city to Davis in some respects. It is a college town, in fact, a very similar college to UC Davis with a large degree of cross-applicants because of similar programs. Cal Poly has about 18,000 students and the city of San Luis Obispo is also somewhat smaller at 44,000 people in population. I attended Cal Poly for undergraduate school.

This past week over Thanksgiving, my wife and I went down to San Luis Obispo to visit my family who still lives there. During the course of the week, Cecilia and I drove to Cal Poly and around the campus. I guess I have not been on campus in a while because I was startled to see a huge new student housing development. We drove through it, and let me tell you, talk about WOW factor. The housing development blew us away.

It is called Poly Canyon Village, named after Poly Canyon a popular hiking and jogging area that extends from the Cal Poly campus up into the foothills of the local mountain range. Very scenic.

Poly Canyon Village from what we could see at night was a very dense development, but it was huge, with four story buildings, and in the center of them, a good array of amenities--coffee shops, eateries, a mini-grocery store, a bank, another store. There is a good sized parking garage. A gym with a swimming pool. It was really impressive.

Our thoughts as we drove through Poly Canyon Village: this is what UC Davis needs. We want to believe we are innovative and on the cutting edge, but we quite simply are not.

I have since done some research on the project. It has 2700 units on 30 acres of land. Talk about density. And yet, despite that density, it is well-done and very appealing and attractive. It is the largest on-campus housing development in the nation. It is the first LEED-certified student housing in the CSU system. The project contains nine four and five-story buildings. And these are apartment-style units, usually four bedrooms with a common kitchen. The size is from 900 to 1100 square feet, so these are good sized units.

It is a fully sustainable project. I am not going to sit here and advocate for an identical project for Davis or UC Davis. What I am going to argue for is that we take this as a model, a goal, and then we improve upon it and adapt to make it work here. This is what we need. Imagine an innovative, environmentally sustainable, carbon neutral, energy neutral development on the edge of the UC Davis campus that could provide housing, on-campus, for 3000 students just for starters. These students do not need to drive because they can bike and walk everywhere. There are amenities right there. It's a mixed-used housing development right on campus. But they will have access to parking and roads for when they want to drive. That would free up a large number of housing units in the city. Those housing units could then supply housing to faculty and staff.

• Here is a link to a live-camera view of the project

One of the big advantages of on-campus housing is that the university can subsidize it and make it more affordable for the students. In addition, it would free up West Village to become a staff and faculty housing development. We often complain about the price of housing in Davis, but Davis is really neither unique in that respect nor is it worse than other university towns. I've often discussed on this blog and shared others what they do at Stanford to attract young assistant professors. UC Davis could develop their own system by which young professors can get housing near the campus and build equity with that housing. There are models out there, we simply can look at these models and adapt them to our own unique situation.

My biggest problem is not the development but the kind of development we want to create. We need to change the way we do things if we want to have a future. I am not just talking about this community. I am talking about on a national and global scale. Poly Canyon Village has almost 50 percent more housing units on less than one tenth the land that Covell Village proposed. That is what we need to do and the great thing is that you don't feel like it is overwhelmingly dense. It is attractive, it is nice, it is a place I would have loved to have lived in as a student.

It is time that UC Davis and Davis make a paradigm shift with a bold new plan.

---David M. Greenwald

West Village Development Takes a Major Step Forward

For those wondering when the West Village development will get moving, the answer is apparently very soon. The University announced yesterday that they had signed the "ground lease" for the West Village and thus taken a major step toward the first phase of development.

According to the release:

"UC Davis and its development partner, West Village Community Partnership LLC, last week signed a ground lease for the project, clearing the way for the design and construction phase of the project."

The University will begin construction this fall on the project's off-site infrastructure, including water and sewer connections to campus systems, a storm water drainage system and entry road improvements.

Ground is expected to be broken in the spring of 2009.

Faculty/ staff housing and student housing could be available as early as fall 2010.

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef applauded the announcement.

"After years of planning, we are excited to be moving on to the design and construction phase of the project with our private development partners. We are confident that West Village Community Partnership will be delivering an exceptional neighborhood not only for our university community, but for our region, as well."

Ron Zeff, CEO of Carmel Partners of San Franiciso, on of the groups that makes up West Village Community Partnership, said:

"This successful milestone represents our continued collaborative approach with the university to address UC Davis' long-term housing needs. West Village Community Partnership can now focus our full energies and resources to design and construct the West Village neighborhood that incorporates the values, and reflects the aspirations, of the university and the Davis community."

The release laid out the three phases of the construction plan, this being the first.

"As currently planned, the 130-acre Phase 1 includes 343 single-family homes for faculty and staff, apartment housing for up to 1,980 students and a village square surrounded by ground-floor commercial space and the Los Rios Community College District's new Davis Center.

In all, the plan for West Village comprises two phases for a combined 475 new homes for faculty and staff, and housing for 3,000 students. Many of the faculty and staff homes will include small cottages, like those at the 37-unit Aggie Village project adjacent to campus. Cottages will increase the population density and provide more student-housing options.

When the final phase is completed, planners estimate that West Village will be home to about 4,350 people -- including 500 faculty and staff members and their families, plus students. The plan calls for a generous open-space network that offers integrated bike and pedestrian connections to the campus. UNITRANS will provide frequent bus service to the neighborhood."

A key part of the plan is that this provides faculty and staff with below market price housing. The university is believes that this will "assist in recruiting and retaining top talent by enabling them to live locally and participate fully in the life of the campus and community."

"West Village will make this possible by adding to the Davis housing supply and selling the homes at below-market prices for the Davis area. The homes will also have certain resale price limitations to maintain affordability over time."

Commentary

One of the reasons I have long advocated for the university to help provide housing to students and faculty-staff is their ability to offer housing at below market value. I think the city of Davis needs to work closer in concert with the university toward these ends.

There are a number of very interesting and promising models out there for how to accomplish it. This is one model, but it appears from the last statement that there will not be full equity.

One of the models I would like to see leadership at the university and the city take a look at is what they have done in Stanford. I have mentioned this on the blog a number of times. The housing market in Palo Alto is prohibitive and Stanford found themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage in trying to get top-notch academic talent.

As a result, they developed an innovative program whereby they would help guarantee and finance the loans to faculty for new housing, the faculty members would own the house outright and retain full equity. I would be very interested in seeing how they do that.

In addition the issue of student housing needs to be addressed. UC Davis is the UC with the lowest percentage of on-campus housing. As is the case with faculty and staff housing, the campus can better provide housing at below market cost than the city. They also have available land to make it work.

As we discuss further the concept of internal housing needs, the university must be a part of this discussion. Too often the city and university have been at odds with each other on these projects.

There is one further issue that needs to be addressed now that the development at West Village is imminent. That is the issue of annexation. The models from both the University and the city show that the city is the entity that can best provide the necessary services to West Davis. In both cases, there is a net loss in terms of revenue. However, the project loses less when the city annexes it than when the University runs it on campus. That means it is in the interest of both sides to negotiate an appropriate agreement on how it is to be annexed and run.

There are a number of political issues however that would have been resolved in order for that to be accomplished including whether the annexation of West Village would count toward Davis' growth requirements.

From a personal standpoint as someone who frequently uses the path along Russell as it extends from Highway 113 out to Pedrick Road, I will be saddened with the lose of that beautiful open space as the path heads out west lined with trees and the feeling of serenity. I can only hope they do a good job of design and construction so that they do not turn that area into an eyesore.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UC Strike Moves On Today Despite Injunction

At the request of the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), a San Francisco Superior Court judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order which prohibits AFSCME from holding a five-day strike at UC facilities today.

Or maybe it doesn't... At least not according to AFSCME officials who dispute the interpretation of the ruling.

According to Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle:

"Judge Patrick Mahoney said in his ruling that the strike likely would cause irreparable injury to the university and the union was enjoined from "calling, engaging in, continuing, sanctioning, inducing, aiding, enticing, encouraging, abetting or assisting" employees from a strike or slowdown without adequate notice."

Furthermore, the ruling prevents the union from:

"engaging in any strike, walkout, slowdown or strike-related work stoppage of any nature against the University of California without adequate notice of the exact dates of the strike."

William Schlitz, spokesperson for AFSCME said:

"We are going on strike as planned. First and foremost, it is the workers' constitutional right to strike."

Mr. Schlitz told another news service:

"We're confident this strike is legal... The reason we're striking is because the university denies its moral responsibility to pay its workers."

The union does not believe that its action would be in violation of the restraining order since the order enjoins the workers from striking without adequate notice or without giving exact strike dates. The union says it provided this notice on July 10 when it called for the July 14 strike.

Lakesha Harrison, who is the president of AFSCME interprets the ruling to mean that the union has to notify the university of the strike dates, something that it has already done.

She told the Davis Enterprise in Sunday's paper:

"We're in compliance... It's our constitutional right to strike, and UC can't take that away from us."

On the other hand, the UC human relations communications coordinator, Nicole Savickas is under the impression that the ruling prohibits the union from striking until a week from Tuesday on July 22. The UC news release says that the university expects its employees to obey the order and report to work as scheduled.

However, the union is moving ahead with plans to strike starting at 7 am this morning, which ought to make for a pretty interesting day.

The Vanguard will be in the field and report on the latest happenings throughout the day. Log on for breaking news and other exclusive coverage.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

UC Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against AFSCME

The California Aggie yesterday reported that UC has filed an unfair labor practice charge against AFSCME 3299 for "violation of agreed-upon reasonable access policies."

According to the spokesperson for UC:

"Leaflet distribution is allowed, however, the union has agreed to abide by UC's access policies, and they violated that agreement."

According to the article, this is in violation of their access policy contract:

The specific clause that the union is being charged with violating is under general provision of Article 1 in the access policies contract which states "AFSCME will abide by the reasonable access rules and regulations promulgated at each campus/laboratory."

Meanwhile the union not surprisingly is questioning those charges and arguing that UC is attempting to violate their first amendment right to free speech.

Leticia Garcia-Prado, a UCD Med Center worker questioned the charge.

"AFSCME began leafleting on Jan. 15 and continued for three weeks with no problems until Feb. 5, when UCSF police told our leafleters that they would be arrested if they did not stop... On the same day, UCLA told our leafleters that they had to move to a location two buildings away from the Medical Center's front doors,"

Moreover she asserted that these actions constituted an infringement of the first amendment right to free speech.

"Our right to leaflet the public is a fundamental free speech right... [The leaflets contained] information regarding staff turnover in some medical center departments, use of temporary staff in some departments, high-stress work environments and low-morale caused by being paid wages that are less than at other area hospitals."

Does UC have a point here or are they merely trying to throw up roadblocks to the union at a time when they are stepping up their efforts to pressure UC on a campus-wide basis. The courts have been pretty consistent about ruling in favor of access for unions as a matter of freedom of speech and they have consistently held that unions have the right to gain access to their members at their place of work. A fundamental protection, without which, would make it extremely difficult for unions to organize workers.

Meanwhile, the impasse continues on UC contracts and yesterday marked a day with large rallies and protests in Sacramento in front of the UC Med Center.

According to a release from AFSCME 3299:

"The contracts for over 20,000 essential healthcare and service workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 have expired. The members of AFSCME Local 3299 are concerned with the ongoing direction of the University and how it is affecting their ability to provide the highest quality patient care and student services

AFSCME Local 3299 members believe that below-market wages, expensive benefits and the failure to implement a step system have created recruitment and retention problems, which have resulted in a less-expensive workforce, reliance on temporary workers in some departments and heavy workloads for essential patient care workers at UC’s five medical centers. Wages in many classifications are 25% to 30% below workers doing the same jobs at other leading hospitals in the state. On UC’s campuses, low wages and unaffordable benefits have led to service cuts for students and faculty and have created a workforce that struggles to make ends meet for their families."

On the UC Davis campus, roughly 30 workers and supporters rallied with picket signs and began to leaflet at the Memorial Union in an attempt to educate students and faculty on their struggle.

The fliers read:

"You can ensure quality student services and direct UC jobs and a fair contract for workers."

In the meantime it seems clear the university and UC will do whatever it can to throw up roadblocks to the efforts of workers who seek decent wages and affordable health care benefits. The fact that UC is a public agency makes their tactics all the more troubling. The insulation of UC which receives large quantities of public money is troubling. There is a lack of accountability to the taxpayers of California in terms of the policy directions they go.

In the meantime, it is our hope that UC will not continue to try to solve its budget problems on the backs of its lowest paid workers while executives and administrators receive $200,000 to $300,000 per year, sometimes higher.

---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

Sodexho Workers and Supporters Speak and Walk Out of the UC Regents Meeting at the Mondavi Center in Davis

During open comment period at the UC Regents meeting at the Mondavi Senator, a throng of at least 100 supporters of the Sodexho Food Workers came to support and a smaller group of perhaps 20 spoke during public comment. These individuals included food service workers, students, ASUCD Senators, community members, and members of the Davis Faith Community.

Ivan Carrillo an ASUCD senator spoke:

"Here on campus, workers are being exploited. There are over 500 Sodexho workers, predominantly students who are not being paid comparable wages nor given the benefits of employees hired directly by the university. The biggest discrepancy is in the cost of health insurance. A full-time employee hired by Sodexho is currently charged 18 times more than a food service employee of the university. In other words, Sodexho workers are paying 95 percent more for health insurance than university employees. I've met far too many people who do not have health insurance, for themselves or their families, because they cannot afford it. It comes down to justice. I want justice for these workers, the students want justice for these workers, workers want justice, professors want justice, elected state politicians want justice, please help us bring justice."

Christopher Cabaldon was supposed to speak, but according to his representative Robbie Abalon he got called away for an emergency meeting with the Mayor of Suisun City. He will speak on behalf of the Sodexho Workers tomorrow. Mr. Abalon spoke briefly in favor of the workers efforts to become full university employees.

Guy Turner from the St. James Gospel Justice group, which brought a number of community members with them to this event, spoke as well.

"I'm embarrassed, I'm saddened to be here. To find the situation with the Sodexho workers on campus as I've heard over the past two months. I would ask that the Chancellor would possibly come out after this meeting and meet with the workers and the support group that's here."

The supporters of Sodexho were joined in solidarity by students from across the UCs who were there in support of student diversity ahead of the release of the Diversity Report.

Following public comment, the meeting was interrupted first by a lone demonstrator who shouted from the crowd. The Sodexho Workers and their supporters then briefly interrupted the meeting with a chant as they exited.

To their credit, the Regent paused with their meeting until the students left and then continued.

After the meeting I spoke with a couple of Food Service Workers. Lydia is a cook at UC Davis and a current Sodexho worker. She spoke to me in Spanish and Maria, a former Sodexho worker at the UC Santa Cruz campus helped translate and spoke to me as well about her experience of switching from Sodexho to being a full-time university employee at UC Santa Cruz.

Maria translating for Lydia said:

"She said she's been working 7 years with Sodexho. She said there's a huge difference from what she hears from workers working with the university and what she's working with Sodexho. She has only seven hours per day and instead of eight hours. And also she saw a big difference with the insurance, because she has insurance, but that's only for her own not for her kids or even for her husband. So that one is so expensive that she can't even pay for what she's getting right now. And she hears that with the university, if she's going to have insurance, it's also going to cover the kids and the husband. So for the whole family, that's why she'd like to become a worker with the university. And also with the benefits and all the kind of things that come with being a university employee."

Maria then talks about her own experience in Santa Cruz:

"I was working also with Sodexho. Well, first I was working with Mario and Sodexho. Then Mario left and Sodexho was the only company there. And I was working around eight years and it was really bad, also like we didn't have the whole benefits, like right here. And also for us it was like so hard because they'd make us work like 40 hours for like three months, and then after three months they pull again like 20 hours because that way they keep from giving us the benefits like the law says. So it was really a huge change for us in Santa Cruz because I can see after we became employees I saw the family could take the kids to the dentist. If they need glasses, they can take them to these kind of things and it was a big big change, also we had the benefits. Also we had the sick hours [with the university, but] with Sodexho we didn't have any.

I think the more important thing for us also was the respect. After we [became employees] with the university, we could fight for the respect to the managers, to the workers. Before we [could not] say anything because if we say something, we were gonna get fired. So now we can have a way to fight back with them, you know. We just need to work and if they don't show us respect, we can say something back with the union. And before, if you don't have a union, you can't really say anything because you're gonna get fired. And that's the big change that we have with the university. So I'm here to support them, because it's really important that these workers can be with the university."

Maria drove up from Santa Cruz, waking up at four in the morning to support the workers in their fight for the university.

The strong showing at the UC Regents meet is meant to put pressure on UC Davis as the only University in all of UC to still outsource their workers to the notorious union-busting company Sodexho.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting