| Coalition of University Employees (CUE) | 2855 Telegraph Ave., Suite #302, Berkeley, CA 94705 Contact CUE (510) 845-2221 (phone), (510) 845-7444 (FAX) |
| Write Letters |
April, 2002
Dear President Atkinson and Chancellors,
As heads of the various branches of the UC system, you are to blame for clerical low wages, lack of respect in the UC system, sagging morale and a clerical exit rate of 54% a year. As the captain of your particular branch of UC, the buck stops with you.
I'm making LESS this year than last year as my medical insurance payments for my family have increased by $40 a month, my parking has increased while my salary has stayed stagnant! I have one son at UCSD and another daughter who has applied to 4 schools in the UC system for September 2002. Paying workers less than the year previous is bad business!
I graduated in the top 10% of my university, I have received outstanding performance evaluations during my tenure and I work hard. I work at a research lab at UCSD, and I do whatever needs to be done so that the doctors and researchers can concentrate on research and patient care. My job is important. I want you to recognize this and compensate clericals as you compensate the other UC employees. Otherwise, good employees like myself will leave. I'll put in my 5 years; you'll still have lots of potential clerical workers but they will not have the experience or the training.
I appeal to your sense of fairness. To bring to the table a 1% increase and no merit raises is unfair. My fellow lab workers are MDs, PhDs and lab techs who all have the opportunity to move up in their present positions. The lab techs that join the lab at level 1 are eligible and do move up to levels 2, 3 and 4. The PhDs, who are classified as research scientists, also move up each year if they perform well. The physicians move up as well. As a clerical worker, I cannot move up. I am an Administrative Assistant II and my fellow AAII and I have been told that we will never be reclassified to a higher position. The pink collar ghetto that is the clerical system forces clericals who want to move up to change jobs. The ONLY way we can increase our salary is the access to merit raises, and that's for a limited number of years.
DO THE RIGHT THING. Show your respect, grudging as it may be, for those who labor under the plethora of paperwork that is the UC system. Imagine for a moment that you don't have your special parking permit that allows you to park almost anywhere, you don't travel, have meals paid for by the University, and you are stripped of the perks and the high salary of your current office and you work in a cubicle, staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day at a job that expects you to park your caboose at your desk all day, 5 days a week, 12 months a year. We do what you ask of us. We ask that you treat us fairly.
Anonymous - UCSD