The lack of public support for the strike is striking in that the union is arguably the state’s most sympathetic public employee union. The union says that 99 percent of its food workers, custodians and respiratory therapists are income-eligible for some form of public assistance, which it contrasts with the bloated salaries and lavish benefits provided to top UC administrators.

Despite the clear income inequality among the 190,000 faculty and staff at the University of California, a majority of Democrat elected officials have failed to publicly comment on the upcoming strike.

High-paid BART employees undermined low-paid UC workers

Since last summer’s strike by Bay Area transit workers, Democrat politicians have become fickle friends of organized labor.

Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “among the best-off in the country,” the 2,300 BART mechanics, custodians, station agents, train operators and clerical staff earned an average base salary of $71,000 per year plus $11,000 in overtime pay. That was before the union received a 15.38 percent pay increase over four years in exchange for increased pension contributions. Previously, BART paid both the employee and employer pension contributions.

Several Democrat leaders, including Assembly candidate Steve Glazer, publicly opposed the strike, signaling an intraparty split on labor issues.

“The prospect that well-paid Bay Area Rapid Transit system workers with lavish benefits and little-known perks might inconvenience rich white-collar liberals in the San Francisco area,” wrote CalWatchdog’s Chris Reed, “has finally triggered an intraparty battle of the kind that California Democrats have somehow managed to avoid for decades.”

Field Poll: Public sours on unions

Following that bruising battle at BART, for the first time, Californians have a negative view of organized labor. Last December, a Field Poll found that a plurality of registered voters said that unions “do more harm than good.” Forty five percent of those surveyed viewed unions negatively, a 16-point swing in just two years.

Union approval has even fallen among union households. Thirty one percent of union households have a negative view of unions, a huge increase from the 18 percent result reported in March 2011.

“It seems like they keep winning the battles,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said back in December when the poll was released. “The question becomes, ‘Are they moving the public in the direction where they may lose the war?’”

That first casualty in the war against unions are the low-paid service workers at the University of California. Earlier this month, AFSCME 3299 released a  list of elected officials throughout California who “have united in support of AFSCME 3299’s pursuit of a fair contract settlement with UC.” Just eight state legislators were included on the list.

Even former union members are jettisoning their union credentials. State Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, who recently launched her third campaign in three years, wasn’t among the small group of state legislators to publicly back the lowest-paid workers at the University of California. Her absence was noticeable given that she’s a former member of AFSCME. Since being elected to the Legislature, Torres has distanced herself from the union by omitting her union activities from her official biography.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez stands with UC workers

Not all Democrats are shunning labor unions out of political expediency. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, a former secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, has repeatedly offered support for UC’s lowest-paid workers.

“UC continues to disregard the well-being of its lowest wage workers,” said Gonzalez, one of the eight Democrat legislators to publicly stand up for UC workers. “It makes no sense for the Legislature to continue to write the UC system a blank check while they continue to increase the wages of those at the very top, while leaving our service workers to be subsidized by taxpayers through safety net programs.”

She added, “All work is dignified and all workers should be accorded respect by our public university system.”

In addition to Gonzalez, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who serves on the UC Board of Regents, has voiced his support for AFSCME 3299 on various social networks. The union adds that more members are silently with them.

“Whether on picket lines, phone lines, in letters or in statements to the press, the overwhelming majority of the state Legislature’s Democratic Caucus has stood shoulder to shoulder with AFSCME 3299 members throughout their struggle for fairness and dignity at the University of California, and we are deeply grateful for their support,” AFSCME 3299 said in a statement. “We are equally grateful to the members of the GOP Caucus who have stood with us.  Our fight is not a matter of right and left, but right and wrong.”

96 percent of UC service workers and patient care workers voted in favor of the strike authorization. AFSCME 3299 represents 8,300 service workers and 13,000 patient care technical workers.

The eight legislators who publicly back AFSCME 3299

• State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett
• Assembly member Marc Levine
• Assembly member Paul Fong
• Assembly member Jimmy Gomez
• Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez
• Assembly member Shirley Weber, Ph.D.
• Assembly member Rob Bonta
• Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer

“UC’s newest wage and staffing proposals are a welcome sign, but they still fall far short of what they’ve granted to other UC workers and perpetuate an ever widening income gap at California’s premier public university,” said AFSCME 3299 President and UC Service Worker Kathryn Lybarger. “Now that UC has finally acknowledged its second class treatment of our members, we are hopeful that its negotiating team will work to reach a settlement by addressing the inequities at the heart of this dispute.”

AFSCME 3299’s unique strike message

AFSCME 3299, a statewide chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has adopted a unique strike message. Armed with white papers and payroll data, the UC’s lowest-paid workers are building a broad-based coalition that is centered on the best interests of taxpayers. And, surprisingly, AFSCME 3299’s primary target is the lavish salaries and pension benefits for UC’s top administrators.

“There are 7,000 UC employees that make more than the governor of California,” Todd Stenhouse, a union spokesman, told CalNewsroom.com. “It’s the sweetest deal in all of California, and you have to be a UC executive to get it.”

Stenhouse, who quickly rattles off UC payroll figures, points out that those high salaries for administrators hit taxpayers now and later when those highly paid administrators collect their pensions. That’s the case with former UC President Mark G. Yudof, who was the eighth-highest paid public education executive in 2012, according to a recent study by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Yudof made $847,000 in total compensation and can expect a sizable pension now that he’s retired. Yudof isn’t alone.

“2,000 UC retirees have +$100k pensions,” Stenhouse said. “Not one is one of our members.”

Union White Paper: How taxpayers fund UC’s executive excess

The union has assembled a detailed white paper, titled, “Runaway Inequality at the University of California: How Sudents, Workers & Taxpayers Fund UC’s Executive Excess.” The bullet points read like those from a taxpayer group or pension reform association:

• “Between 2008 and 2011, UC’s overall workforce grew by 2%, while the number of managers grew by 9%. Almost a third of new hires were managers. Since 1991, the ranks of managers at UC have grown 252% while total staff has increased by 51%.
• “Similarly, individuals making more than $200,000 in base pay have skyrocketed by 77% since 2008, swelling payroll costs by an additional $286 million for less than 2,000 individuals.
• “An increase in high earners has been accompanied by rising executive entitlements. Perks doled out to approximately 300 executives in 2012 totaled $24 million, a 50% increase from $16 million in 2008.”

It even quotes the San Francisco Chronicle’s lone conservative columnist. “UC has a fundamental problem: Administrators apparently believe that they can work in academia for a state university subsidized by state taxpayers and get paid like the top 1.5 percent,” Debra Saunders wrote. “They have no obligation to pinch pennies, no duty to be careful with Other People’s Money.”

The only time UC administrators pinch pennies is when it comes to the janitors and groundskeepers that maintain the university’s world-famous campuses. Stenhouse’s members earn an average salary of just $36,000 per year — with 99 percent of the union’s members being income-eligible for some form of public assistance.

UC Administration: Strike is not productive

The UC President’s Office said that negotiations with AFSCME are ongoing and more bargaining sessions are set for later this month.

“As we’ve said all along, we believe a strike is not productive and hurts our patients and students,” said Shelly Meron, a spokeswoman for the University of California Office of the President. “These issues need to be resolved at the bargaining table.”

No doubt the UC President’s office is speaking metaphorically. It’s AFSCME 3299 members that are responsible for cleaning those bargaining tables every night at the swanky UC offices. In some cases, they’re cleaning approximately 50,600 square feet in one eight-hour shift.

“UC has reached five new contracts with six bargaining units in the past three months,” Meron added. “As UC President Janet Napolitano said in her remarks to the UC Regents , the university is committed to reaching long-term, multi-year agreements with all of our labor groups.”

AFSCME’s president notes the irony that Napolitano, the former secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, is leading the fight against workers. Napolitano earns $570,000 a year, more than the $400,000 a year made by President Obama. And much of it is paid for by the students. Since 2008, UC tuition has increased by $5,556, or 84 percent.

“It is sadly ironic that at a time when her old boss, President Obama, is working to address the problem of inequity across America, Janet Napolitano seems to be working just as hard to perpetuate it at the University of California,” said Lybarger.

UC’s growing administration, shrinking staff

In recent years, the University of California has grown top heavy.

“In the early ’90s, lawmakers and UC administrators began a 20-year ‘holiday’ during which they stopped making contributions to the UC Retirement Plan, hoping that the Internet-fueled stock-market craze would maintain adequate funding for retirees, who now face a $10 billion shortfall,” explained State Senator Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, in an op-ed in the Merced Sun-Star. “During those same 20 years, UC brought on far more administrators and middlemen than professors, teachers, or support staff – creating a high-priced bureaucracy that doesn’t benefit students, their parents or UC hospital patients.”

The numbers are astounding. The University of California has more than 9,000 senior administrators, according to the Sacramento Bee. That’s “more senior administrators than full-time, tenure-track faculty,” and up from 5,400 a decade ago. Stenhouse says that those numbers are growing, not shrinking.

Meanwhile, the number of support staff — the people who guarantee UC hospitals are providing safe care — is shrinking. AFSCME 3299 traces the spike in workplace injuries and growing numbers of fines against UC hospitals for patient safety deficiencies as a result of unsafe staffing levels.

“It takes a whole team to take care of the patient,” said Shirley Toy, a registered nurse at UC Davis Medical Center. “While the nurses were able to win a great contract, we recognize that AFSCME Service and Patient Care workers are an important part of the team, and they deserve that same fair contract too.”