The Berkeley Daily Planet: Walkout, Rally Hailed as Rebirth of UC Activism
Hundreds of University of California employees, including both faculty and hourly employees, have vowed a work stoppage today (Thursday) to protest low pay for campus workers and higher fees for students.
And, on a deeper level, many of the activists say they’re fighting the privatization of the public university system and the corporate values which, they say, favor profits over people.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California, walkouts
Daily Californian: Crowds Flood UC Berkeley in Protest
Amid shouts of “Whose university? Our university!” and “Lay off Yudof!” thousands of protesters demonstrated on the UC Berkeley campus yesterday against the university administration’s handling of the budget crisis.
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Posted in Protests
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California, walkouts
Inside Higher Ed: Walkouts Across U. of California
A broad coalition at the University of California formed a united front Thursday, joining in a protest that participants say will be the first of many opposing budget cuts across the 10-campus system. Students, faculty, staff and unionized labor workers on a one-day strike participated in organized class walkouts, picketing and teach-ins. Jorge Serrato, a senior at the Riverside campus, had declared the Riverside campus’s walkout a success by mid-afternoon. “The whole [protest] spot was completely flooded by students,” said Serrato, raising his voice over bongo drums and bullhorns in the background. Participants in the Riverside protest estimated that as many as 500 to 1,000 protesters attended rallies at peak times. Davis campus officials used a Web site to communicate the impact of the walkout, indicating that some professors had canceled classes and e-mailed students syllabuses and assignments. Officials at the University of California president’s office said the protests had caused “minimal” disruptions to classes. The demonstrations came in response to the university regents’ approach to filling an $813 million budget gap, which they have addressed with a combination of furloughs and tuition hikes. If regents approve another tuition increase in November, tuition could go up by as much as 45 percent in a two-year period.
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Posted in Protests
Tagged Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California, walkouts
Daily Californian: Live-Blog: UPTE Union Strike and Faculty Walkout
This is a live-blog outlining the reporter’s observations of today’s events.
At least two teach-ins took place in front of the Valley Life Science Building this morning on the UC Berkeley campus.
French Professor Ann Smock was one of several speakers who spoke about the budget crisis with about 20 students for an hour on the front steps leading up to the entrance of the building. The teach-in concluded at about 10:40 a.m.
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Tagged live-blog, Protests, U of California, walkouts
Inside Higher Ed: ’60s Tactics, New Cause
Few think the clock will be turned back to the Berkeley of the 1960s, but the protests planned across the University of California today mark a return to the tactics of another era. This time, however, the cause isn’t free speech or an end to war, but instead a response to the university administration’s budget-cutting proposals.
Today will be the first day of classes for 8 of the 10 campuses in the California system, and protest organizers plan to send an early message that the budget cuts besetting the university have been inappropriately addressed by system leaders. The centerpiece of the planned action is a walkout, which has been supported by systemwide student and technical employee organizations…
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Media, Protests
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Protests, Students, U of California
The Chronicle: In U. of California Budget Crisis, Some Faculty Members See a Cover-Up
The University of California is dealing with its worst financial crisis in decades and a very uncertain financial future. But its leadership has another problem: convincing many of its employees that the situation really is as bad as it looks.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, coverup, U of California
BUDGET CUTS AFFECT US ALL!
600 UA JOBS LOST ALREADY!
Join a group of concerned faculty, students and staff to learn about how budget cuts will affect us and help plan a university-wide day of action to let state law makers and university administration know we won’t stand by as higher education is dismantled.
When: Friday, Sept 18 @ 2:00pm
Where: Old Main Fountain
Goals: (1) Establish a unified voice amongst those concerned about budget cuts to higher education at the UofA. (2) Plan a university-wide day of action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of the UC system, who are staging a walkout on September 24th.
more info:
> At the University of Arizona we are facing the most dramatic budget
> cuts and restructuring of the University in a generation. These cuts
> will affect every aspect of the University system – from the quality
> of education available to students, to the conditions of our labor as
> researchers, teachers, administrators and staff.
>
> The administration is pursuing a strategy designed to weaken our
> capacity for collective action, our ability to protect our interests
> and participate in the budget and restructuring process.
>
> In some departments, Graduate Teaching Assistants, already working for
> poverty wages, have seen their salaries slashed. In others, course
> loads have been expanded overnight, with little explanation and no
> accountability. Faculty have been furloughed in a way that minimizes
> disruption to teaching, and maximizes the possibility that they will
> continue working without pay. Hiring freezes and layoffs are
> undermining the integrity and functioning of departments and spreading
> work around to already over-burdened faculty and staff. And the
> decisions about whose budget is cut, by how much and why have been
> anything but transparent and accountable, let alone “participatory”.
> All of this while new fees and “tuition surcharges” reduce access to
> and affordability of higher education, redistributing the burden of
> budget shortfalls onto the backs of students.
>
> The UA budget has been cut as much as possible under the current
> stimulus
 package. If it is cut any more, we will lose our
> stimulus funding. The 2010 state budget will not include any stimulus
> money, and state
 revenues are already coming in under
> projection. We will have no protection from further dramatic cuts after
this fiscal year.
>
> By subjecting the budgetary restructuring to an arbitrary and
> subjective process whose impact is felt differentially, we remain
> divided and pitted against each other, rather than capable of uniting
> around our common interests. As long as we remain divided in our
> individual colleges and departments we will have no power or voice as
> our colleagues lose their jobs, as the conditions of our labor and the
> quality of our institution deteriorates, and as the legislature and
> administration continue to pull the rug out from under our feet.
>
> For these reasons, we invite graduate assistants, faculty and staff to
> a meeting on Friday September 18 at 2pm on the fountain in front of
> Old Main organize an action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and
> students of the UC system.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Job cuts, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of Arizona, U of California
San Francisco Chronicle: Walkout called over UC budget cuts
The protest is intended to disrupt classes to call attention to the deep impact of millions of dollars of budget cuts on the quality of education throughout the UC system.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/15/BAKV19N5S5.DTL#ixzz0RktcbDLy
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
To the UC Faculty:
We at the Rouge Forum applaud, admire, and support your efforts to respond to tuition hikes, enrollment cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and increased class sizes, which are indeed, complicit with the privatization of public education.
The Rouge Forum is a group of 4500 educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned with questions like: How can we teach against racism, nationalism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals AND teach? Whose interests do schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring those into practice. (http://www.rougeforum.org/, http://www.therougeforum.blogspot.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouge_Forum).
In the German Ideology, Marx submits, “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”
The connection and simultaneous control of this material and mental production comes into ever-sharper relief anytime we are confronted by our corporate media. The level of discourse is less than satisfying. And, frankly, frightening. Pick the issue: health care, immigration, worker’s rights, war, education. While all of the issues are truly critical, the last is particularly problematic since control of schools is a final domino to fall in the imperial quest to completely (re)fashion our reality. Remove critical thinking, make children compete against each other for perceived scarce resources (standardized tests), use the results to reify hierarchies based on social constructions like race and gender and class status, make teachers compete against one another for perceived scarce resources (merit pay), boil dissent down to participation in (mostly) corrupt unions, excuse and/or cover-up the school to military and prison pipelines, monitor and make impotent our schools of education through if-it-wasn’t-so-sinister-it-would-be-comical accrediting bodies like NCATE, and regulate truth. This has been the agenda. And, it has already buried itself deep into our educational psyche.
Your willingness to confront this reality on September 24 is an illustration of the work we will all have to do to protect public education toward the creation of a more whole and healthy society. Where Rouge Forum members are affiliated with the UC system, we have encouraged them to join you. Where Rouge Forum members are unaffiliated with the UC system, we have encouraged them to take part in campus wide discussions relative to the status of higher education, academic freedom, and the importance of public education.
We stand in solidarity with you and offer the graphic, created by Rouge Forum member, Bryan Reinholdt, an elementary performing arts teacher in Louisville, Ky.
Sincerely,
the Rouge Forum Steering Committee
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Rouge Forum, Solidarity, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California
California Chronicle: University Administrators Fight to Line Their Own Pockets
SACRAMENTO – University of California and California State University administrators have killed a bill that would have limited executive pay raises during bad budget years.
Despite the fact that the Senate Appropriations Committee found no costs to the bill and the Assembly Appropriations Committee´s analysis estimated a significant cost-savings, the Assembly Appropriations Committee today held the bill on their suspense file without allowing a vote. Normally, the suspense file is used to kill bills that have a significant cost to the state.
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Posted in Administration, Government, Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged California, California State U, U of California
San Francisco Chronicle: UC workers deliver no-confidence vote to Yudof
The top brass at the University of California say it’s “nothing more than a publicity stunt” and a “tantrum” – and they might be right.
But when labor unions representing about 70,000 UC employees said Thursday that 96 percent of staff and faculty at all 10 campuses had signed a vote of no confidence in UC President Mark Yudof, the message was clear: Employees at the public university are angry.
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Posted in Administration, Unions
Tagged no confidence vote, U of California, University presidents
AP: University leader warns of more steep budget cuts
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—University of California President Mark Yudof warned Thursday that more budget cuts were in store for the 10-campus system when federal stimulus money runs out next year.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, U of California
San Francisco Chronicle: UC to lend state millions to kick-start plans
The cash-strapped University of California – forced to lay off employees, cut pay and offer fewer classes because of deep cuts in state funding – has now agreed to lend the state nearly $200 million.
Seriously.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, capital projects, loans, U of California
Union Tribune: Proposal to shutter some UCs hits nerve
UCSD profs’ letter says not all campuses equal
Online: To see a copy of the letter on budget cuts from UCSD professors, go to uniontrib.com/more/documents
SACRAMENTO – As it confronts an unprecedented financial crisis, the University of California is crackling with debate over some provocative proposals – such as closing one or more campuses – outlined in a letter signed by 21 UC San Diego department heads.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Los Angeles Times: UC panel approves 11 to 26 furlough days for employees
The furloughs would affect as many as 140,000 faculty and staff at the 10 university campuses, with higher-paid employees taking larger pay cuts. Unions would have to approve the plan, officials say.
Reporting from San Francisco — A University of California Regents panel approved an emergency plan Wednesday for most faculty and staff to take 11 to 26 unpaid furlough days next school year to offset deep cuts in state funding.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Budgets & Funding, furloughs, U of California
San Francisco Chronicle: UC chief lays out ‘draconian’ budget cut plan
Facing a loss of $813 million from the state, University of California President Mark Yudof is proposing widespread cuts for UC, including imposing unpaid days off on employees, eliminating jobs and killing out courses.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, California, furloughs, U of California
Mercury News: Unionized workers rally outside UC president’s Oakland home to protest proposed cuts
OAKLAND — Unionized employees of the University of California rallied outside the North Oakland home of UC President Mark Yudof on Sunday morning to deliver what they called a “wake-up call” about his proposed cuts to the university system’s budget.
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Posted in Protests
Tagged Budget cuts, Budgets & Funding, furloughs, Protests, U of California, Unions
Inside Higher Ed: Tarnished Jewel
There’s blood in the water, and Vicki Ruiz knows everyone can smell it.
“The privates have come calling,” says Ruiz, dean of the University of California at Irvine’s School of Humanities. “I’ve lost very valued faculty members to Yale, to Northwestern, to Penn, to Pomona, to Scripps, as well as to even.… ”
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
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U. of California Cuts: a Faculty Member’s Dispatch From the Front Lines
The Chronicle: U. of California Cuts: a Faculty Member’s Dispatch From the Front Lines
By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Budget cuts at the University of California have generated a lot of attention, especially after a plan of across-the-board salary cuts, combined with mandatory furlough days, was recently announced. How will such drastic financial measures threaten the strengths of that system and other large public universities? Are certain fields of study in the humanities and social sciences especially vulnerable to state cuts because those areas of inquiry—even when dealing with topics of broad importance—rarely get large infusions of national, foundation, or corporate monies of the sort that routinely support work done in areas such as engineering and medicine?
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budget cuts, Budgets & Funding, Commentary, U of California