Chase Birkeland, AFSCME 3299, San Diego, CA
If you thought autumn would bring milder temperatures, you’re mistaken—the class struggle is just heating up as students come back to campuses across the University of California.
My union’s contract expires in a month, and UC has thrown up their hands about a desperately-needed immediate pay increase. The state budget is tight this year, we’re told. They’re cutting down the library’s hours, reducing the frequency of trash removal services, and are supposedly unable to hire at our permanently understaffed campuses.
Clearly the state is in dire straits and can’t afford to provide the standard expected from a University of California, a public institution in the fifth largest economy in the world.
Reading the bourgeois media headlines, you’d be forgiven for thinking the exact opposite is true. There we find our villainous, strike-breaking Chancellor Khosla just got a 78% raise, bringing his annual salary to over $1.1 million a year.
At the last UC Board of Regents meeting, they approved an increase in campus police budgets to acquire weapons classified as “military equipment” under California law. They are worried about the potential revival of the student-led Palestine solidarity movement on the campuses.
The President of the UC system has ordered all chancellors to strictly enforce an effective ban on all demonstrations, and require anyone on campus to identify themselves when asked by campus authorities. Far from the supposed bastions of free speech, free assembly, and free inquiry—these so-called public institutions are capitalist enterprises, investing their multi-billion dollar endowments in weapons manufacturers who are reaping big profits and bumps to their stock prices.
The only way to make these schools truly public is for the workers and students to democratically plan and run our campuses. We call for books not bombs! Kick the war-profiteers off campus! For militant student-worker action!