By Benjamin Parke Daily Bruin Contributor About 100 demonstrators marched to Murphy Hall on Friday evening making it known that they think UCLA is washing its hands of responsibility for the people who work in the hospital's laundry facility.
One of the people in the procession, which wound its way from Westwood Plaza to the building housing Chancellor Albert Carnesale's office, was 56-year-old Maria Martinez. She works at UCLA's laundry facility in Culver City, making $6.40 an hour with no benefits.
In addition to four grandchildren, Martinez has a daughter who is struggling financially to attend Mount St. Mary's College.
"It's very expensive and I have to tell her I can't do anything to help," said Martinez, who added that she was worried what would happen if UCLA goes through with its plans to close the laundry facility and subcontract the service to a private company.
"Now I'm an old lady and it's hard finding a job," Martinez said.
As they approached Murphy Hall, members of the procession cheered as a UCLA shuttle bus honked several times in recognition of the marchers.
They found the doors of the administration building locked, however, when after 6 p.m., they attempted to send in a delegation carrying petitions for the chancellor.
Keith Parker, assistant vice chancellor for government and community relations, was standing next to the demonstrators outside, and accepted their petitions on behalf of Carnesale.
Martinez is one of about 20 people working in the facility who are employed by a private agency contracted by the university. The rest about 40 workers are permanent employees of UCLA, and receive benefits and higher wages.
All of the workers stand to lose their jobs if the facility closes. The university has indicated that it wants to find jobs for the laundry workers in other areas of the university, with no loss in pay or benefits.
Mark Speare, senior associate director at the hospital's Patient Relations and Human Resources office, said the school is in continuing discussions with the union representing the workers the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees.
"We had a series of extensive meetings with AFSCME to try to find ways to minimize the effects of subcontracting," Speare said Friday afternoon. "We have every intention to find employment for them."
But those who lit candles in a vigil outside of Murphy Hall saw the university's plan to subcontract laundry services as an attempt to turn more and more good unionized jobs into what they called "junk jobs."
"We're supposed to be one big family, aren't we?" asked the Rev. Frank Wulf as he addressed the demonstrators. Wulf is the Methodist chaplain at UCLA, and sits on the Chancellor's Committee on Religion, Ethics and Values.
"How can you teach values when you don't respect them yourself? How can you teach people to be good citizens when you are not being a good corporate citizen yourself?" Wulf added.
He said he couldn't speak for everyone on the chancellor's committee, which is looking into the matter but hasn't yet taken a stance.
Joining laundry employees in the vigil were students, many representing an array of campus groups, as well as faculty members from departments such as anthropology, education, history and women's studies. One faculty member, Professor of Clinical Medicine Jerome Hoffman, works at the very place that utilizes the laundry facility's services the Emergency Medical Center.
"There are many people in the School of Medicine who believe that this type of attempt to turn many of the departments at UCLA into basically sweatshop conditions in the interest of money is antithetical to the fundamental principles of the university and the medical center," Hoffman said.
Campus groups represented by students at the vigil included Consciencia Libre, the Environmental Coalition, La Familia, and Youth Socialist Action.
Derek Seidman, a member of Youth Socialist Action, said that several organizations have formed an alliance called the Student-Labor Coalition, and that students could accomplish more by working together.
"There needs to be a body where different organizations come together and join up with labor, rather than doing things in a fragmentary way," said Seidman, a second-year history student.
Hoffman, the professor of clinical medicine, said that the hospital's goal is not only to provide health care, but care to the people of California, whether rich or poor.
"To be an institution of high ethics is in direct conflict with the belief that all that matters is the bottom line," Hoffman said.
"That's whether it is in the form of honoring a public figure who did everything he could to hurt this university and to limit access to health care for the most vulnerable members of our society or to deny basic rights to graduate student workers, or to break the unions that have long since served not only the workers on this campus, but all of us," he continued.
The protesters taped more than 60 human-shaped paper cut-outs one for each laundry worker to the entrance of Murphy Hall. Many were signed by the workers themselves, and contained messages that said how their families would be affected by the loss of their jobs.
The laundry workers are generally middle-aged, and many are immigrants from countries such as Mexico and El Salvador. Celia Canela, who has worked in the facility for 26 years, said pride was one reason her co-workers wanted to keep their jobs.
"They don't want to live off welfare," Canela said.