UC employees, students protest in support of contracted valet workers

By Sharon (Yu Chun) Zhen

About 500 University of California workers and students protested the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center’s treatment of contracted valet service workers outside the medical center Friday.

Valet service workers, who help park visitor and guest vehicles at the medical center, are contracted through ABM, a facility management company. Beginning in August, however, the hospital will no longer be contracting out valet services, said hospital spokesperson Tami Dennis. Instead, it will offer in-sourced full-time, part-time and student positions.

Dennis said current valet employees can apply to the new positions.

John de los Angeles, communications director of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, the UC’s largest union, said the medical center would only offer 30 positions for the in-sourced program, even though the program currently employs 80 workers.

Several students and workers said they think the hospital will carry out the layoffs because the contract workers received a pay raise.

In 2015, the UC introduced the Fair Wage/Fair Work Plan, which requires that employees who work at least 20 hours a week, including contracted workers, be paid at least $15 per hour.

De los Angeles said the valet workers were not paid the amount guaranteed in the Fair Wage/Fair Work Plan for about a year.

“About a year ago, after pushing back, (contracted employees) finally got retroactive pay,” De los Angeles said.

De los Angeles added he thinks UCLA is in-sourcing employees because it was no longer cost-effective to hire contracted workers after their wages were raised. He said subcontracting usually helps the university save on overhead costs.

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[Source]: Daily Bruin