Across the country, Democrats are scratching their heads and wringing their hands about the results of the November elections. Why did millions of working-class voters abandon the party that has for decades proclaimed itself their voice in politics? Have workers by the millions lost their minds? Have they been deluded by a demagogue of unique abilities? Or are they responding to an economy that is growing but leaving working people’s wages terribly behind, while their supposed friends in politics turn a blind eye to their struggles?
For clues, one need look no further than deep-blue California, where the crisis of wealth inequality and declining middle-class income has reached the greatest proportions in our nation. Earlier this month, thousands of workers went on strike at the University of California, a great public institution that is also the third largest employer in the state. And it is led by a politician whose impeccable Democratic credentials ought to make her a natural ally of these workers.
UC President Janet Napolitano is a leading light of the Democratic Party, having served as a governor and a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. Napolitano has shown bold leadership at UC on important progressive issues, such as immigrant rights, sexual harassment and the environment.
But when it comes to the bread-and-butter issues facing workers — in fact, the very workers who make UC work every day? Not so much.
Time was, the University of California was an engine of the California economy, creating good middle-class jobs in our communities. Those days are gone, as UC has become part of the overall problem of income inequality. Those at the top at UC are doing great: executive compensation has increased 58 percent — an average of $121,000 per executive — over the past 10 years.
But those holding jobs that traditionally were part of the middle class in our country — administrative assistants, collection representatives, preschool teachers, police dispatchers — are struggling to survive and provide for their families. Among administrative support workers at UC, real income — after adjusting for inflation and cost of benefits — is down a whopping 24 percent over the past two decades, to the point where 92 percent are paid too little to afford the basic necessities of life, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, skilled trades workers have not received a raise in as many as four years, and are paid as much as $10 an hour below prevailing wage.
As a result of low wages, a stunning 70 percent of these UC administrative support workers suffer from hunger or food insecurity, per a recent study. You read that right. Thousands of people who work full-time for one of the richest universities in the country, in what used to be solid middle-class jobs, literally go hungry. It’s a situation that is, by any measure, untenable and unacceptable — not to mention bad for our economy.
Enter Democratic leader Napolitano, with a real opportunity to do something to fix the problem and support middle-class workers, since the UC system is in negotiations with the Teamsters Union over wages. As a leader in the party that stands for working families, one would think she would take this bull by the horns. Not yet.
Instead, under Napolitano’s leadership, UC has not only failed to address the problem, it has made it clear that the institution has no interest in doing so. University negotiators have explicitly stated that UC has no concern over whether workers are paid enough to live. “We look at cost of labor, not cost of living,” they declare. UC has refused to offer the workers anything more than inflation-level wage increases, which would cement the inequality and near-poverty wages plaguing UC’s workers.
Make no mistake, this is a failure of will, not an inability to afford fair increases. UC is the sixth wealthiest university in the country, and the last decade has been good to UC financially. Total operating revenue is up 80 percent, to nearly $27 billion. Annual medical center operating revenue has climbed to over $10 billion. UC can afford to provide leadership in addressing the crisis facing working people.
Instead, UC appears intent on squeezing working families from both sides by driving down workers’ real income, while also raising tuition on working-class students. No wonder working people are increasingly skeptical of some of their supposed friends in politics.
If Democratic leaders hope to win back the support of working people, the time has come to take real action to increase stagnant wages so that working-class jobs can once again support a decent living and a dignified retirement. In this way, Democrats may distinguish themselves in practice from the Trumps of the world, who for all their talk about creating jobs, oppose any policies that would support increased wages.
Paying workers enough to live is the right thing to do, it’s good policy and it’s good politics. All that’s needed is the willingness — and the courage — to lead.
Jason Rabinowitz is principal officer of Teamsters Local 2010, representing 14,000 administrative support and skilled trades workers throughout the University of California system.
