Cents and Sensibility

Students fight and win on living wage at campuses nationwide.

By Kim Teplitzky, Temple University

As wages straggle along behind inflation and universities become increasingly corporatized, the lowest paid university workers around the country are living with poverty level wages and stingy benefits from even the wealthiest schools.

In response, students have joined the movement for a living wage, pressuring their administrations for just labor policies. On campuses from Harvard to Georgetown to Mary Washington College to the University of Tennessee and on to Vanderbilt, Stanford, Washington University in St. Louis and Swarthmore, students have embarked on campaigns to win fair, livable wages and reasonable health and childcare benefits for their employees.

Students are in a unique position to advocate for a living wage on campus – students are both the lifeblood of the universities and the consumers of their $30,000 a year product – and that gives them a voice in supporting workers, many of whom may be temporary or part-time or without union representation and stand to lose much more. These campaigns have used sit-ins, hunger strikes, petitions and coalition building with labor groups, community organizations, unions, faculty and staff to succeed. And they are producing a new generation of young labor leaders, promoting a progressive economic vision on campus and winning justice for workers.

Washington University in St. Louis

After a 19-day sit-in, a five-day hunger strike and an outpouring of student support, Washington University’s Student Worker Alliance (SWA) won dedicated money from their school to support a living wage and benefits for its employees. They began organizing around the issue after talking to workers and learning many were making as little as $6.50-7.50 per hour, which still put full-time employees below the federal poverty line and well below St. Louis’s living wage of $9.79 per hour. In a classic stall tactic, Chancellor Mark Wrighton convened a task-force, which made recommendations endorsing a living wage and non-discrimination policies for all university employees. While accepting the committee’s recommendations in regards to harassment and discrimination policies, the Chancellor ignored the living wage recommendations for five months and refused to talk to students about it.

So SWA stepped up. Their first order of business was walking through the cafeterias with cell phones getting students to call the Chancellor’s office until they filled his voicemail box. This got no response from his office. “So we decided we needed to step it up and started planning the sit-in,” said SWA member Meredith Davis ’07. On April 3, 2004, they headed to the Chancellor’s office and got their butts on the floor “as fast as possible.” The sit-in and the accompanying media interviews and on and off meetings with administration representatives lasted for a week and a half until the Chancellor sent an e-mail to the student body saying he gave an offer, minus a living wage, and that was the best he could do.

Not nearly satisfied and after three warnings to the Chancellor, the sitting students started their hunger strike. This spurred the Chancellor to set up meetings, at which point the students ate, but remained in place. At a Saturday night meeting the Chancellor and students went back and forth with proposals, and then finally, on April 2, the Dean of Students entered the office to announce the Chancellor had signed the student’s living wage proposal.

“I didn’t even wait to shake hands, I just ran outside to hug my friends who were at our rally. I saw other students jumping out of the window because they had been inside that room for 19 days,” said Davis. The administration pledged $500,000 as of July 1 and a million dollars the following year and each year thereafter to devote to wages and benefits for university workers. Additionally, they joined the Worker’s Rights Consortium promising sweatshop-free university products and the hiring of an ombudsperson to communicate between workers and the administration. For students interested in running a wage campaign Davis advises, “Know it’s going to be an uphill battle. Know there will be opposition, but don’t expect anything about how it will come. And don’t take it personally.”

Stanford

The Stanford Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) has been working since 1999 on a range of labor and wage issues which have come together in their proposed Code of Conduct for the university. “We’re trying to change the whole attitude about labor on campus,” said SLAC member Matt Seriff-Cullick ’08. He described the climax of the campaign two years ago when the students held a hunger strike forcing the creation of a Presidential Advisory Committee on Workplace Policies (PAC). After a year of stalling and waiting, the committee produced a 111-page document with recommendations to President John Hennessy. Besides ensuring a living wage for all employees, the PAC guidelines included stipulations ensuring wage parity for all workers, the right to organize, educational opportunities for employees and a commitment to making the costs of wage changes public immediately.

President Hennessy responded by proposing his own living wage and benefit guidelines that didn’t seem to take into account the recommendations made by the committee, which included a number of professors and faculty. Students said his proposal was “watered down” and drafted behind closed doors without the participation of students or those employees who would be affected by the policy changes. It excludes temporary workers and those in unions and doesn’t even apply to workers in Stanford’s hospitals and clinics. Furthermore, the students claim it could further jeopardize wages by setting an arbitrary wage standard for subcontracted workers that could undercut the bargaining power and wage security of directly hired workers.

In the face of this opposition, SLAC is preparing for the coming school year with plans for a major outreach and education campaign to increase awareness and interest in labor issues on campus and hope to see concrete movement and momentum toward passing and implementing their Code of Conduct over the next two years. Seriff-Cullick says their success stems from having “a group of really dedicated activists with excellent dynamics and energy.” Their recommendations to other campuses interested in a wage campaign? “Communicate with other groups who have done this before, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

Swarthmore

Students in the Swarthmore Living Wage and Democracy Campaign and workers won big last fall when a proposal passed to provide campus workers with a living wage of $10.38 per hour, plus an extra $1 per hour towards either wages or healthcare benefits for partners or children.

The campaign, which began in 2001, started with the formation of a committee of students, faculty, staff and administrators to research what a living wage really is and how it could be implemented. After several years, they presented a proposal to the president which recommended a living wage of $10.72 per hour tied to inflation, a childcare subsidy benefit and guaranteed healthcare for employees making the lowest wages and their families. The President countered with a different proposal that offered spousal healthcare, but not healthcare coverage for employees’ children, nor a wage raise.

But students didn’t give up and began their grassroots assault targeted at their Board of Managers. Their message was a morally driven one. “The message we used was that it’s the right thing to do versus the economic message, because we can’t win that,” said student activist Sarah Robert ’08. Editorials showed up in the newspaper, flyers were distributed all over campus, faculty members signed a petition and banners with slogans such as “Health Care Alone is Not a Living Wage” were dropped around campus coinciding with strategic moments like University Board meetings.

At the December 4, 2004, Board meeting everything climaxed with a student-organized rally. The sweet taste of victory came during the meeting when an official stepped out to announce the wage and healthcare plan had passed, bringing the four-year-long campaign to a conclusion.

Robert’s advice to other student groups: “Beware of committees, you don’t want things to get stuck in committees for years. Also, be sure to talk to staff directly – prioritize staff and faculty. And keep in mind you’re working with people who really are affected by this.”

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

The Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) at UT Knoxville has partnered with the faculty union, United Campus Workers-Communication Workers of America (UCW-CWA), over the years to fight for a range of fair labor policies. Examples of recent victories include campaigns for a bonus raise for the lowest-paid UT workers and securing back pay for furloughed employees. Currently, their focus is on a $1,200 flat raise for all university employees, ditching the idea of percentage raises, which they say unfairly benefit those employees who already make the most money.

“A loaf of bread or a tank of gas costs the same for everyone. A raise of $100/month, or $1,200 for the year, is a good, decent raise that accelerates the move away from poverty-wage jobs for state and university employees,” says Dr. George White, Assistant Professor in the UT History department. They say this would help address the problem of the numerous UT workers who still make poverty wages, but advocate it should not come at the expense of students. A campaign poster asserts “UT raises money for all sorts of projects; UT could raise funds to provide annual cost-of-living adjustments and adequate raises for all their workers.”

Additionally, PSA is promoting a Worker’s Bill of Rights that features a living wage and adequate benefits as well as job protection and the right to organize for all university workers.

Get Involved!

The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), a project of Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, has local and regional offices around the country that offer support to student organizers. Their staff has experience and can give advice, help with training and hook up students to the larger national labor movement through campaigns such as the National Student Labor Week of Action.
(202.393.1044 ex. 221)

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) is well known nationwide for organizing students around labor issues. They are student run and operated with regional coordinators and a national office that offer support, tools, and even a campus organizing manual. You can affiliate your campus group with USAS or volunteer on one of their national campaigns. For campaigns such as Swarthmore’s they set up national e-mail action alerts to fill the inboxes of uncooperative administrators with encouraging messages from students around the country.
(202.NO.SWEAT )

Check out the rest of our coverage on the minimum wage and living wage issues:

Five Minutes With: Morgan Spurlock
The living wage, relationship problems, the red state/blue state divide and loving bacon.

Campus Debate Crib Sheet: Living Wage
Right-Wingers tell you why it can’t work. We tell you why they’re wrong.