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I find it very interesting that Sharon Hayden, assistant director of labor relations at the UC Office of the President, did not even try to dispute the figures offered by the Coalition of University Employees' economist, ("Union Alleges Funds For Raises Withheld," Oct. 31, 2001).
According to Hayden, the question is not whether the university can afford to pay the raise requested by the union. The real question is whether the university "has made a fair offer to the employees."
Of course, Hayden is absolutely right about this. The university has never claimed that it lacks the funds to pay the raise requested by the union. It simply says that raising clerical staff salaries is not a priority.
Furthermore, the university's own financial reports indicate that the raise would be an insignificant expense in the university's budget. Thus, there is no doubt that the university can afford to pay higher salaries, and the real question, as Hayden suggests, is whether university salaries are fair.
So, I would like to hear Hayden's answer to the real question. Why does she think university salaries are fair and to whom are they fair?
As far as I can see, they are hardly fair to clerical and library employees. According to the university's own comparative studies, staff salaries for library assistants average about 25 percent less than the salaries of other workers in the state with comparable skills and titles.
Does Hayden think that it is fair that skilled workers at the largest and most prestigious university library on the West Coast are significantly underpaid?
Perhaps Hayden is not concerned about fairness to university employees. Perhaps she thinks the university has a higher mission to serve university students and the taxpayers of California regardless of the welfare of university staff. But does Hayden really think it is fair that students, whose hard academic work has brought them to this university, face a deteriorating intellectual environment because the university increasingly relies on underpaid and overworked graduate students and adjunct professors to teach the bulk of its classes?
Does Hayden consider it fair that students and faculty confront an understaffed and overworked bureaucracy because the university actually counts on high turnover among its clerical staff to reduce costs?
Finally, does Hayden think it is fair to the taxpayers of California that the current managers of the university seem to be more interested in funneling resources into unexpended budget surpluses rather than in accomplishing the educational mission for which the university was created?
I'm glad that a university representative finally is asking the right question, but I am still waiting to hear the answers.
John Wenzler
UC Berkeley employee
(See original letter on The Daily Cal's website.)