The Spiral Begins

Well, the votes are in, and Sac State's staff voted 359-69 in favor of furloughs. Statewide the elections showed 82% in favor of this option, which is a pretty clear majority. Now the bargaining team will go to work with the chancellor's office to determine exactly how this will play out. Of course, reducing all of our pay by 10% means we'll all be tightening our belts - again - just like we do every year when we find out that we're not getting even a decent cost of living adjustment, to say nothing of getting a regular raise.

Maybe I should have been an administrator. And by tightening our belts, obviously, we're going to spend less and less money in the private sector, which means more businesses will lay off workers or fold completely, which means the state will have even less and less tax revenue, which means the problem will continue to worsen. And so the downward spiral begins. Or rather, continues.

As a side note, the elections on our campus were a joke. I've seen better organization with high school prom queen voting than what took place here yesterday. It was a mass of confusion. No signs were posted indicating that folks should be in different lines depending on which unit they were in. No one was really watching to ballot box closely to make sure that those who were putting in votes had actually checked in. And as for checking in - no one even checked ID! We did get periodically yelled at, to the effect of, "Don't just drop off your ballot without checking in! If you don't check in, your ballot won't count!". 

Not that the ballots had anyone's name on them. So, really, there's no way to verify if any particular ballots belonged to someone who checked in or not. Or whether they belonged to someone who checked in two or three times as someone else. Or whether they just dropped off a ballot and weren't even a union member. Gotta love the state system. Sigh.