All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup

[lunatica]

6. One of my jobs is a major speedup.

I work in two departments in UC Berkeley mostly processing travel reimbursements and other types of reimbursements. A couple of years ago the administrations of all the Research Departments were shut down and the work was consolidated under one department. All the staff were laid off and the Research Services Enterprise hired back a few to do the work each department's old staff used to do. It used to be that over 65 departments had their own staff to do the work. Now 6 people where I work do the same work for the 65 departments. It is brutal. The work never ends and it never slows down or has a down time. They also pay me less than the 1 unit does. Go figure.

The other department I work for is academic. So I go from working for 65 units to working for 1 unit every day. I'm constantly reminded of the difference. Now they're talking about doing the same sort of thing in the academic departments.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I got laid off, but I was rehired because of my experience and knowledge of UC Policy. I'm one of those people who has 'institutional memory' and we're becoming a dying breed. Yet at least on a weekly basis people come to me for information about something regarding UC Policy. And that includes managers and supervisors I work under.

edited to correct the number of departments.

edited for the same reason