Millions of workers each year — disproportionately low-wage, non-white workers who can least afford losses in income — face some form of wage theft. These workers often lack access to legal or union representation to help enforce their rights against employers who cheat them out of pay.
Sadly, such is the case for many employees who work for companies under contract with the University of California to deliver custodial, parking, food service and health-care services. The university spends hundreds of millions of public dollars on such contracts each year — paying hundreds of companies who employ thousands of non-UC workers.
UC’s service contracting practices have long faced well-justified scrutiny. That has come not just from labor unions representing the UC employees who would normally perform this work for higher wages and better benefits, but by the California State Auditor, who found that the UC was often laying off its own employees and hiring with contractors, and was not following or enforcing its own contracting policies. The auditor found that the non-union, non-UC employees working under these arrangements were being paid $3.86 less per hour on average than UC employees performing the same jobs at the same locations.
In late 2019, the UC Board of Regents enacted a new “Equal Pay for Equal Work” policy requiring its service or patient care contract vendors to pay their UC-assigned workers a rate equivalent to the wages and benefits that would otherwise be paid to...
Accusing Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan of falsely claiming that he met K.H. Mohammed Hussain, an accused in the MDMA case, only after he was injured in the police action during the Left Democratic...