UCLA health care employees rallied for higher wages on Thursday outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
Among them was Jacob Niles Creer, a UCLA health care worker who helped lead the protest.
“I’m going to drive today one hundred miles round trip, and this is my normal commute here to UCLA Medical Center because I can’t afford to live where I work,” Creer said. “So we’ve been demanding access to fair housing, and access ... to our low cost loans and our low cost housing options, and that’s things that they already offer our top paid executives.”
This protest comes on the heels of a vote last month in which UC Regents decided to give a nearly 30 percent wage increase to UC presidents and chancellors across their ten campuses.
The move upset people like Liz Pearlman, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 3299, the University of California’s largest labor union, which organized this week’s protests.
“We’re talking giving an additional, on average, two hundred thousand a year to people who already make seven hundred- to eight hundred thousand a year,” Perlman said. “And at the same time, we have members who are sleeping in their cars.”
The UC Office of the President said in a statement that it has been bargaining in good faith with the union since January, trying to address the union’s requests, including wage increases of 26 percent over five years.
The UC system is facing a substantial drop in funding next year, expected to be around $270 million.