UC employees picket regent’s office

  DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Protest leader
David Trujillo directs protesters out of the way
of oncoming traffic on Wilshire Boulevard Wednesday. Police arrived
shortly after the protest began to keep the protesters off the
street.

By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Contributor

With pots banging, horns honking and whistles wheezing, a dozen
cars and curbside protesters mustered a lunchtime cacophony to
protest UC labor practices on Wednesday.

Members of the University Professional and Technical Employees
and Coalition of University Employees unions congregated and drove
circles around the Westwood office building used by UC Regent
Gerald Parsky.

The union members said the university is offering insufficient
pay increases despite recent state appropriations specifically for
staff salary increases. They said progress has been slow in
contract negotiations.

“We asked, and the legislature asked them to speed it
up,” said Cliff Fried, executive vice president of UPTE.
“We’re here to press this particular regent, and other
regents, to move because they’re the decision
makers.”

Dan Kier, UC employee relations and communications coordinator,
said that the university has been using a lot of resources to bring
wages up and meet union demands at the bargaining table.

A $19 million state budget augmentation for salary increases
given to lower-paid employees cannot be distributed until union
negotiations are settled, he said.

“We’re trying,” said Kier. “The
university knows that some of the lower-paid employees are not paid
at the market averages.”

The protest was peaceful and ended after an hour, when a
representative of the building’s management accepted an
information packet on behalf of Parsky, who was out of town.

What the representative would not accept was a
foot-and-a-half-tall piñata in the form of a robot.

“They’re robots,” Fried said, referring to the
UC Board of Regents.

“They don’t think about people,” he added.
“We put peanuts in the piñata ““ peanuts for
wages.”

A man in a suit, with sunglasses and a walkie-talkie, monitored
the demonstration from across the street, and a handful of police
stopped by midway through the demonstration.

No arrests were made, though a siren wailing through a megaphone
was directed to be turned off.

A few union members donned Caltrans-style blazers to direct
traffic as the convoy of honking cars made its rounds past the
building’s entrance.

One of the vehicles, an old Chevrolet which looked like it had
seen a lot of miles, stalled for a while at the intersection.

At one point, an MTA bus came to a stop at the intersection,
waiting for the light to turn green. The driver, whose union
recently settled some labor issues of its own, began honking when
she saw the demonstrating workers, and even summoned one of them to
her window for a high five.

Kathy Kasten, statewide representative of CUE, said that the
demonstration was partially to educate workers to stand up for
themselves.

“Secretaries are not used to this ““ they really
aren’t,” Kasten said. “They’re
afraid.”

Another reason for the demonstration was concern over changes in
the university’s $53 billion investment fund.

Parsky, chair of the regents’ investment advisory
committee, recommended changes in the fund, including the hiring of
an outside consultant for the regents.

“They made the decision to take it out of the hands of the
regents and into the hands of the consultant,” Fried said.
“As soon as you make the pension fund independent, you have a
problem with fiduciary responsibility.”

Trey Davis, a UC spokesman, said that no money is being managed
by Parsky or by Wilshire Associates, the regents’
consultant.

“All of these changes are designed to increase the
accountability of the investment decisions of the regents,”
Davis said.

At the close of the protest, the union members gathered close by
the entrance of the office building.

Fried gave a short talk, saying that “the regents need to
take some leadership.” Then, the union members were asked by
the building’s management to clear away from the entrance to
let employees through.

“We have to go back to work anyway,” said one of
those gathered round the entrance. “We do want to
work.”