EXCLUSIVE Video Interview with UCMeP’s Head Honchos!!

For your viewing pleasure, here is an exclusive video interview UCMeP recently gave to the Daily Cal.

You’re welcome.

Professional Protestors Should be Furloughed

The following is a letter UCMeP recently sent to the the creme de la creme of the University of California administration. The short memo presents a number of concerns raised by recent revelations (intrepidly broken by CBS 5) that UC Berkeley employs a professional-managerial class of protestors.

Dear Recently-Resigned President Mark Yudof, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and Executive Vice President Nathan “Let’s Mortgage the UC” Brostrom,

Recently, the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization (UCMeP) came across a disturbing story from CBS news that reports “Professional Protestors” are among those involved in campus activism at UC Berkeley:

While we maintain 110% confidence in each of your abilities to do your part to efficiently dismantle public education in the state of California, news of this professional-managerial class of protestors employed by UC Berkeley has raised some eyebrows among even your most loyal constituents. In what follows, we present what UCMeP finds to be three of the most pressing questions this revelation brings to mind. We look forward to your responses.

Question #1:

What types of compensation packages do these Professional Protestors receive annually from the University of California? Do they receive healthcare benefits? And what about pension plans? We have asked various members of the UC administration for more details about the compensation of these employees, but everyone remains very tight-lipped. Since we – like yourselves – are by no means advocates of budget transparency, we fully understand if you prefer not to share these employment details. We assume the lack of publicly available information on these employees is probably due to the fact that they are outside contractors. While we concur with CBS news that it is simply immoral for non-students to participate in protests to defend public education, we certainly value the UC administration’s continued practice to contract out work that could be done much more cheaply by existing employees. As always, we respect the administration’s decisions to screw over union employees to the fullest extent possible. On this note, might we recommend that in order to cut costs (and get the most out employees) the UC consider instituting a furlough policy for Professional Protestors comparable to that of other campus employees?

Question #2:

Why does the University of California deem it necessary to pay people to protest on campus?