Foot washes stress fair wages

Several local religious leaders used a Holy Thursday ritual of washing feet to raise awareness of what they say are low wages for UCI Medical Center employees.

The Rev. Sarah Halverson of Fairview Community Church and UCI religious organizer Jim McKenney were among the group of about six Christian leaders who knelt down on the grass outside the medical center and washed the feet of workers there.

Foot washing is a Christian ritual on Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, before Easter.

It is meant to represent when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples to demonstrate the importance of humility and service. The interfaith group Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice planned the event.

An audience of onlookers, mostly made up of service workers on their lunch breaks, took shelter from the hot sun under the shade of nearby trees to observe.

“The CEOs and heads of the university get top wages and big bonuses, but the lowest-paid workers here make less than $15 an hour,” said Gil Sanchez, a pharmacy technician, after getting his feet washed.

Event organizers said that despite recent contract negotiations, patient care and service workers’ salaries lag behind industry standards by as much as 25%.

Officials from the UC Office of the President said they have already offered union workers $16 million in salary increases, which the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has refused.

Nicole Savickas, a university spokeswoman, said the university commissioned a survey of wages at comparable institutions around the area and found that some positions were not paid average market rates, but the proposal they offered the unions a couple of weeks ago addresses these problems with wage increases of 3% to 15% across the board.

“If there’s a position that leads the market, that might be because we have difficulty finding people, whereas there are some positions that lag the market that we aren’t having any trouble finding workers to fill,” Savickas said.

Both sides will return to the bargaining table Tuesday with a mediator.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].