Wednesday, January 21, 2009

UCLA Catering Sucks!

I find myself torn on an issue of what I reckon great injustice: UCLA Catering touts itself as the highest paying job on campus at $8.42 /hour which is what they will grant to their own poor, starving students, who not knowing any better take this very hard job, where they are worked 8 to 12 hour days. The kids get excited when they get the chance to work overtime, because they think that it is going to be big money for them.
Yet, what they don’t realize is that because UCLA is chronically understaffed (probably because the work is so hard) they have to outsource to a number of private catering-staffing companies, whose employees are paid $11 an hour to do the exact same work as the UCLA students.
Which sucks.
What sucks more is that UCLA pays these companies $22 per hour per staff member (who, if you’ll remember only get $11, which is three bucks more than the poor students!)
What sucks even more than that is that UCLA bills their clients (most of whom are UCLA Alumni members getting married or having reunions or whatnot) a whopping $60 per hour per staff member!
On top of which, when there is a call for overtime, which UCLA always assumes there will be, the client is billed an additional $20 per hour per server, despite the fact that California State Employment Law only allows for payment of time and a half after 8 hours of work, which turns into double time beyond 10 hours of work. As far as the students wages are affected, time and a half is $12.63 and double time is $16.84, which means that any way you look at it, UCLA Catering is both overcharging the clients (grossly) and underpaying the student workers (grotesquely, shamefully).
Yet, my conundrum is whether I ought to make a fuss and uncover this great injustice, that is, “rock this boat.”
There is the old adage “Don’t rock the boat, especially if you’re sitting in it...”
I have a year left at UCLA.
I probably won’t go to grad school here.
So, I have no vested interest in remaining within then good graces of the Powers that Be, yet at the same time, since I’m so close to graduating, do I really want to risk getting kicked out or otherwise blaze unnecessarily difficult exit paths?

Maybe publishing this will offer enough catharsis for me without probing the possibilities of making a short documentary ala HBO Undercover.

Maybe not. Either way: they still SUCK!!!!

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