University of California’s 7,000 service employees make wages far below their counterparts at community colleges across the state and the Kaiser Permanente health care system, according to a report released Tuesday.

According to the study, titled “High Ideals, Low Pay: A Wage Analysis of UC Service Workers,” 93 percent of the system’s service workers, 2,500 of whom are employed at UCLA, don’t earn enough money to meet the basic needs of households with a single parent and one child.

Most UC service workers also qualify for some or all of the benefits offered within the state’s nine welfare programs, the study states.

“The University of California is known as a system of high ideals and providing opportunities for all Californians,” said Tim Lohrentz, senior program specialist with the Oakland-based National Economic Development & Law Center, and co-author of the study. “We think those high ideals should extend to the service workers on the UC campuses.”

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents the food service workers, janitors, bus drivers, security guards, parking attendants, housekeepers and other workers, commissioned the study.

Local 3299, which represents workers across the state, is in a bitter dispute with the nine-campus UC system over wages, mandatory employee-paid fees and promotional opportunities.

Workers’ three-year contract expired June 30, 2004, but the agreement was later extended to Jan. 30 of this year. The workers are expected to take a strike authorization vote within a month if serious progress is not made, union officials said.

The study highlighted janitors’ pay, which is lower on UC campuses than at all other community colleges in the nine counties where a UC school exists, the study said.

Locally, the biggest wage differential saw UCLA janitors making $9.75 to $12.51 per hour, while janitors the Santa Clarita Community College District earning $14.68 to $19.94 per hour.

UC officials acknowledged that their service workers are underpaid. But they said the state’s budget crisis makes achieving parity impossible.

“The major sticking point with the impasse is that the union is demanding that wage (increases) are guaranteed,” Noel Van Nyhuis, a UC spokesman. “Salary funding is dependant upon state funds because it is a permanent expense and state funds are the only reliable source of funds that are recurring.”