Paying the Minimum Minimum

Throughout California, local governments have been implementing municipal minimum wage ordinances that raise the pay of hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers — but these laws are already running up against jurisdictional limits, leaving thousands of workers behind. For example, the City of Berkeley's decision to increase its minimum wage to $10 an hour this year and to $12.53 an hour by 2016 is being ignored by the city's largest employer: the University of California.

On October 1, Berkeley's minimum wage rose from the state-mandated level of $9 per hour to $10 per hour under the new city law. But UC Berkeley is paying several hundred student employees between $9 and $9.50 per hour, or about 5 to 10 percent below the city's required minimum wage. These students are employed through the campus' work-study program and work for UC Berkeley. All of the jobs appear to be for campus security monitors and academic center assistants. Security monitors work between the hours of 6 p.m. and 2 a.m., keeping the campus safe for the 8,000 Berkeley undergraduate students who reside in dorms. Academic center assistants help run the campuses study halls. A UC Berkeley website advertising these low-paying jobs recently showed that there were 93 positions currently open...

Ellen Topp, UC Berkeley's director of communications for student affairs, stated in an email that the university is knowingly flouting the city's minimum wage, because she said "the UC system's constitutional autonomy exempts it from municipal wage laws." Topp was referring to the university's status as an autonomous branch of state government. In other words, UC isn't bound by certain city and county laws, and therefore follows the state-mandated minimum wage of $9 per hour...

Full story at http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/cal-refuses-to-pay-berkeley-minimum-wage/Content

Who could ask for anything more?

This article may throw oil on the fire

Death in Long Beach, back in the day

The fossil fuel divestment fire, that is.

A major threat to fossil fuel companies has suddenly moved from the fringe to center stage with a dramatic announcement by Germany’s biggest power company and an intriguing letter from the Bank of England...

The concept gaining traction from Wall Street to the City of London is simple. Limits on emissions of carbon dioxide will be necessary to hold temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, the maximum climate scientists say is advisable. Without technologies to capture the waste gases from combusting fossil fuels, a majority of known oil, gas and coal deposits would have to stay underground. Once that point is reached, they become stranded...

Even as oil prices have dropped sharply, some operators and regulators are taking note of the risks from exposure to fossil fuels. EON SE, Germany’s biggest utility and second-largest polluter, said yesterday it will spin off its fleet of dirty, aging power stations and oil fields to focus on renewable energy.  Hours later, a letter emerged from Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to a committee in Parliament stating that he had instructed his staff to review whether sizable losses from stranded coal, oil and gas reserves could hurt banks, investors, insurance companies and the rest of the financial system...

Institutions opting to divest now include Stanford University in California and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, built with profits from Standard Oil Co...

At the University of California, Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Baccher is reviewing the investment strategy for the school’s $91 billion portfolio, which is about 10 percent invested in fossil fuels. He hasn’t yet ruled divestment in or out, and is considering wider strategies to invest in carbon-cutting technologies...

Full story at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-02/oil-investors-may-be-running-off-a-cliff-they-can-t-see.html  

Moxie

The president pro-tem of the California state senate, Kevin de León, seems to want to sidestep a confrontation with UC and leave the contest to the governor:

"Janet Napolitano has a lot of moxie for doing what she did, a direct challenge to the executive branch, not to the legislative branch,” De León  told reporters...

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-new-california-senators-take-oath-of-office-bills-introduced-20141201-story.html

But, on the other hand, the Senate doesn't want tuition increases:

Tuition at the University of California would stay flat, Cal State students would get paid to finish faster and California’s two university systems would expand the number of students they enroll under a plan Democrats in the state Senate unveiled Tuesday. The multi-faceted higher education funding proposal from Senate leader Kevin de León comes weeks after UC President Janet Napolitano threatened to raise tuition at the state’s premier university system if the state doesn’t give UC more money. UC’s governing board voted last month to hike tuition by 5 percent a year for each of the next five years unless lawmakers come through with bigger funding increases than previously promised. The Senate Democrats’ plan does that – and then some – through a 17 percent increase on the tuition students from outside of California would pay to attend UC, a $156 million boost in general fund spending on higher education and shifting money for a scholarship program for middle class students that was a signature accomplishment of former Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, a political rival of de León’s who was recently appointed to the UC Board of Regents... Napolitano issued a statement Tuesday calling the Senate Democrats' plan a "promising first step toward making sure that public higher education benefits Californians today and for generations to come"... 

Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article4242343.html

Again, dear readers, a reminder.  THE budget will be passed in June.  Until then, everything is a proposal.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article4242343.html#storylink=cpy

  

Round 2

The Regents had their opportunity to vent in mid-November when their tuition/funding proposal was aired and approved.  Now the legislature (which is back in business) has its turn in Round 2. The governor will have three opportunities for Round 3: the inauguration address, the state of the state address, and - especially - the budget proposal, all in early January. 

News reports suggest the legislature is not pleased to be challenged by the Regents and Napolitano.  See, for example, http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article4230419.html

If you think of the Regents' action as the first round of a negotiation process - the view taken by yours truly - ultimately, legislative leaders can't have a plethora of conflicting budgetary bills calling on UC to do X or Y or Z and not A or B or C.  In the end, there is only one budget and only one deal.  At the moment, the legislative leadership seems to be threatening to call UCOP officials to a multitude of hearings on a multitude of things.  Such an approach buys some time to come up with a more cohesive approach.  Presumably, eventually the legislature will also notice the CSU strategy of threatening enrollment cuts.  There are lots more students at CSU than UC and thus a lot more potential enrollees who could be adversely affected.

Meanwhile, there are moves among student governments at UC to vote "no confidence" in the Regents and Napolitano, including at UCLA: http://dailybruin.com/2014/12/02/usac-to-vote-on-resolution-voicing-no-confidence-in-napolitano-regents/.  It might be more strategic at this point for students to focus on the legislature.  So far, the Academic Senate hasn't really taken a position beyond a general (and longstanding) complaint of long-term state underfunding. 

One suspects that with the governor offering a plan to have some kind of joint committee, there will be discussions behind the scenes.  The original plan just called for a committee to look at the governor's issues - but he didn't exclude other issues from the agenda.  Gov. Brown has, to some extent, been undoing his small-is-beautiful stance from his first iteration as governor when - in sharp contrast to his dad - he eschewed grand projects.  This time around he has his rail and water projects - big ticket items of the type his dad (Gov. Pat Brown) liked.  But dad was also famous for pushing for the Master Plan on Higher Education - a committee product.  So doing something along those lines between now and next June when the budget is really due, could be something the older-and-wiser Jerry Brown might entertain. 

It may well be that the side in this conflict that can keep its cool will come out best in the end.  Sometimes not shouting is the best strategy:

What Do You Think of That?

The December poll of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has been released.  It deals with a variety of issues not directly connected to UC and its tuition/funding budget proposal such as general attitudes about where California is going, health care, and inequality.  However, there are some questions about public higher ed finance.  Not surprisingly, folks don't like tuition increases and they don't like tax increases but, on the other hand, they think higher ed is underfunded.  (On the tax side, there is support for "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages and - maybe - extension of the Prop 30 tax increases.)  Opinion polls tend to have contradictory results and are (very) sensitive to how questions are framed.

It's unclear whether the people who do the PPIC poll had an inkling of what the UC/Regents tuition/funding budget proposal would be.  But they would have known that both UC and CSU would need to come up with 2015-16 budget proposals at their November meetings.  It might be noted that the UC proposal was not tied to any particular tax increase.  To the extent the Regents raised the tax issue, it was in the context of not getting a fair share of Prop 30 revenues (rather than seeking new tax revenues from voters or the legislature).

Anyhow, the basic results on higher ed funding are summarized in the two charts below.  The full report from PPIC is http://ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_1214MBS.pdf.

 

 Click on images to enlarge.

One or Two Points of Difference

George Ade

George Ade wrote a series of "fables" around the turn of the last century.  One was entitled "The One or Two Points of Difference Between Learning and Learning How."  You can find the text at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13543/13543-h/13543-h.htm#page26 or listen to it at the link below.

There couldn't possibly be any truth to it, could there?

UC Tuition/Funding at Inaugural (Along with other issues)

A vision of Sacramento Bee cartoonist Jack Ohman.  Oh Man!

Whatever happens, Inauguration Day is unlikely to be like this: