University of California stiffs its working stiffs
The University of California is cheating its lowest paid workers. Connoisseurs of liberal hypocrisy have few more tempting targets than the upper reaches of the higher education industry, where liberal condescension and two-faced compassion prevail.
Consider the astounding actions of the University of California, a $30-billion-a-year operation (roughly the size of 3M or Time Warner) in telling workers that it cheated out of full pay, "Tough luck!" The editorial board of the UCLA Daily Bruin spotted the hypocrisy.
The University of California has some homework to do when it comes to treating its laborers better. And it can start by not undercutting its employees' paychecks and blaming it on glitches in its payroll system.
The UC reached an agreement May with the U.S. Department of Labor to repay $1.3 million to workers after a federal investigation found it underpaid more than 13,700 nonacademic employees during payroll system update from 2014 to 2016. The University agreed to provide compensation to those underpaid by at least $20, coming out to an average of just under $100 per worker, but will not pay back the nearly $100,000 it still owes laborers underpaid by less than $20 [emphasis added].
When you earn six figures, have a comfortable retirement income guaranteed, and work in a comfy skyscraper office (the University of California just signed a lease on 130,000 square feet of class A office space, becoming the anchor tenant of a brand new office tower), twenty bucks is lunch money. But for a laborer, it represents probably an hour or so of unpleasant labor. That's part of your life that you sold to someone, and that you will never get back.
AFSCME, the ultra-political union that is virtually an organic part of the Democratic Party, but which also legally represents the workers, praised the agreement but tried to have it both ways:
AFSCME Local 3299, which represents about 24,000 custodians, cooks, technicians and other laborers, praised the settlement for making workers "whole." But it criticized the university for leaving out of the deal nearly $100,000 in back wages for employees who were owed less than $20.
Statistically speaking, it is likely that the administrators who approved this decision are liberals. They think of themselves as champions of the oppressed, define themselves as the good guys, compared to caricatures of Republicans and conservatives they buy into. But money talks, and BS walks. The little guys aren't worth the trouble it would take to identify them, write the checks, and get them paid.
Beneath all the compassionate rhetoric liberals spew about the victims of society, when it comes to institutions run by them, there is a level of contempt that is startling when it comes into perspective.