Feb 20, 2014

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a SUC D W i n t e r 20 1 4 El e c t i o n s

Voting will end on Friday, Feb. 21 at 8 a.m. Cast your vote at elections.ucdavis.edu

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

VOLUME 133, ISSUE 17 | THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2014

SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915

MISHA VELASQUEZ | AGGIE Students sit on the floor during a midterm in Wellman 106.

UC StudentWorker Union files unfair labor practice claim UC Office of the President to review charges by late February GABRIELLA HAMLETT city@theaggie.org

The UC Student-Worker Union (UAW Local 2865) bargaining team filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the UC Office

of the President in late January. The charge will be reviewed toward the end of February. The charge was filed by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). According to the PERB website, the state-run administrative agency aids in “bargaining statutes.” They support employees of California’s public schools, colleges and universities, among employees of other public agencies. UAW Local 2865 believed they were being treated unfairly by the UC Management in their working conditions. Specifically, the UC Management bargaining representatives have refused to bargain about the 18-quarter limit for Teaching Assistants (TAs). They have also refused to bargain over the issue of studentto-TA ratios. In addition to filing the complaint, the bargaining team met with UC Management for a bargaining session on Feb. 10 and 11 at UC Davis. After a long break since their first bargaining session was cancelled in November 2013, the Union has regrouped. Their demands included gender neutral bathrooms, more undocumented student-worker rights and smaller class sizes. union on 3

Campus organizations hold Idea Fair

R A I S E T H E WA G E DAV I S H O S T S K I C K- O F F C A M PA I G N

Grassroots group aims to raise minimum wage to $15 per hour SYDNEY COHEN city@theaggie.org

Raise the Wage Davis, a grassroots campaign, kicked off their initiative to raise the minimum wage in Davis to $15 per hour on Jan. 31. The group has submitted their initiative to the City of Davis to get it on the November 2014 ballot. The next step, according to Neil Ruud, communications director of the campaign, is to collect signatures to ensure the measure’s place on the ballot. “$15 per hour is just enough to be self-sufficient to the point where you wouldn’t have to take assistance,” said Bernie Goldsmith, the campaign co-chair. Goldsmith said that the cost of living in Davis is at a point at which $15 per hour isn’t even enough for a family with one child. Goldsmith and Ruud said that movements to raise the minimum wage in cities across America were their inspiration for bringing a movement to Davis. “We’re not political experts, but we know what it’s like to be working poor,” Goldsmith said. The way the bill is structured is similar to others of its kind in different cities in that is adjusts the minimum wage over time. If the bill were to pass in November of 2014, the minimum wage would go up to $11 per hour in December 2014, $13 per hour the following July and to $15 per hour in January 2016. “This will win because it is for everyone and if the people vote then they will win,” Goldsmith said. Sean Rycraft, campaign co-chair, said that

Vancey Le | Aggie

people could expect the prices to go up if the minimum wage were to be raised. He said that when San Francisco raised the minimum wage, prices increased by three percent. “But that’s not different than any other year. Are you going to notice if [the price] of your burrito goes from $5 to $5.15?” Rycraft said. According to research from the Fiscal Policy Institute, small businesses actually grew 29 percent faster on average in states with higher minimum wages than the federal minimum between 1998 and 2003. “What’s interesting for Davis [is] it’s very small and the restaurant population is highly independent. More than half are doing annual sales of less than $500,000 and most are making profit margins of 1 to 5 percent on average; this could devastate the restaurant community in Davis,” said Angie Pappas, spokeswoman for the California Restaurant Association. According to Pappas, on average, labor takes up one-third of a restaurant’s costs. If that cost were to almost double many restaurants would likely go under. “If it’s a small independent mom and pop it’s going to be really difficult for them to keep their doors open and that’s the reality of the situation in Davis,” Pappas said. Brandon Kuhens, who works two minimum wage jobs, one being a cook for the UC Davis Dining Commons and the other as a cook for Original Steve’s Pizza, said that he has to work two minimum wage jobs just to get by. Kuhens said that it has been increasingly difficult for him to be able to live in Davis because of the rising rent prices. “It’s tough to be able to afford rent in this town, it’s ridiculous really,” Kuhens said. Although Kuhens said he does think the minimum wage needs to be raised he doesn’t think that it has to be raised to $15 per hour. wage on 3

Students collaborate, turn ideas into reality at local hackathons CHAD DAVIS features@theaggie.org

Last summer, Mike Eidlin, a fourth-year Japanese and economics double major, had an idea for an iPhone app. He presented his idea to the Hacker Lab competition in Sacramento, where he recruited a team to build the app and won third place in their hackathon. Currently, the UC Davis Computer Science Club is running a similar event: the Idea Fair. The event is co-hosted by on-campus organizations: The Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Engineering and Technology Entrepreneurship Club and Pixel, the graphic design club. The Idea Fair consists of three separate events: Pitch Week, the Idea Mixer and the Idea Hack. During Pitch Week, students presented their ideas to computer science officers for consultation. Then, the Idea Mixer allowed these students to present their ideas to other students, in the hopes of recruiting them to their team. “The goal is to facilitate collaboration, make ideas happen and even make them come true,” said Charlyn Gonda, a fourth-year computer science major and president of the Computer Science Club. Finally, from Feb. 21 at 9 p.m. to Feb. 22 at 12 p.m., the teams will have 12 consecutive hours to build their ideas at the Idea Hack: a hackathon similar to the event attended by Eidlin. A ‘hackathon’ has become a general term to mean any continuous amount of time where teams can code, program software, create business models, design graphics and do whatever else they must to create a product within the time limit. “We want to put people who do have ideas together with people who can make those ideas happen,” Gonda said. Gonda said the Idea Fair is one way to give students real-world experience. On one hand, she said the event can give computer science majors a chance to apply their knowledge. On the other hand, Kevin Liu, a fourth-year computer science major and chair of the Computer Science Club’s professional development committee, said students of all backgrounds and majors have a chance to let their ideas be heard. “If you find some sort of problem in the world, it doesn’t matter what background you come from,” Liu said. “As long as you have an idea, you can try to solve it.” Liu said students in business, economics, design and even philosophy hackathon on 2


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Feb 20, 2014 by The California Aggie - Issuu