OPINION & EDITORIAL
Support referendum to ensure workers earn living wage
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by Guest Columnist
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Anybody who has a job — even a "good" job — knows that they do not have much control over their own working conditions. Workers do not determine how much money they make, what time they have to show up for work or whether they get health care or even lunch breaks. In our hierarchical economic system, unless you are a union member or protected by government regulations, these matters are for bosses to decide. And we all love our bosses, right?
Fortunately, we students next week will be able to determine for ourselves the most important issue of any job: how much our work is valued in dollars. On the ballot of the ASM elections March 28-30, the Living Wage Initiative would guarantee that all student and non-student workers funded by non-allocable student segregated fees receive a raise up to $10.23 per hour. This "living wage," which is equal to 110 percent of the federal poverty line for a family of four, would directly help hundreds of student workers and more older workers at the Memorial Union, Union South, Recreational Sports and University Health Services. But the real impact of the initiative is far greater.
This vote impacts all students because it is our money that pays for these facilities and their operations. Just as the City of Madison and Dane County both passed ordinances to ensure that public money does not pay for poverty-level jobs, the Living Wage Initiative will ensure that student fees support jobs that allow people to make a decent living. No one is going to get rich off of 10 bucks an hour, but they will more easily be able to pay their tuition or support their family.
A living wage is about more than economics, however. It is about our moral priorities. Would we rather have a student working 30 hours per week at Recreational Sports making low wages in order to pay off his loans, or would we have him working 20 hours per week at a higher wage and using that extra 10 hours to actually be a student and do some studying? Do we want a janitor at Memorial Union to be forced to work two extra jobs just to have enough money to raise her kids, or do we want her to make a better wage at the Union so that she can actually have time to spend with those kids?
A vast majority of UW students answered the latter to both questions in the fall when they voted 2-1 in favor of a similar referendum. Although the Student Judiciary overturned students' opinion on a questionable technicality, over 2,500 students signed a petition this semester to get the living-wage question back on the ballot through the initiative process. An initiative is the most democratic way to make a decision, and students should be proud to have voted in favor of workers' rights in the fall and to do so again this spring.
Unfortunately, the other referendum to be voted upon next week has not learned the lesson of listening to students' electoral decisions. Despite being voted down by students last year, the Wisconsin Union has again placed a referendum on the ballot that would increase student segregated fees by almost $200 per year for the next 30 years. These millions of dollars of additional student fees are for renovating Memorial Union and tearing down and rebuilding Union South, we are told. The referendum's real agenda, however, is to take more student money and put in the hands of the UW administration and their corporate partners to build parking lots and private research centers. Very little will actually benefit students. WUFIP, as the proposal is known, might better be described as the Wisconsin Union Financial Usurpation for Corporate Kickbacks — I will let you figure out that acronym yourself.
In this environment where there is a big push to improve the physical structure of the student unions and other campus buildings, we need to improve something else first — the lives of the many people who toil for poverty wages inside those buildings. The Living Wage Initiative will undoubtedly have a ripple effect beyond the workers at the four facilities that it directly impacts, as other campus employers will feel a need to raise their wages to keep up with the prevailing market. If the UW campus is ever to be a community in reality and not just in name, then we must take care of all of those who often work the hardest for us and receive the least.
So the vote next week should be easy. If you work at the Union, Rec Sports or UHS, vote YES to the Living Wage Initiative and give yourself a raise. If you do not work at one of those places, then vote a raise for your friends and classmates; if not for altruistic reasons, then because maybe you will be working one of them next year. And while you're at it, vote NO to the student-fee increase for Union "renovation."
All currently enrolled UW-Madison students can vote online at www.vote.asm.wisc.edu between March 28-30.
Josh Healey is a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 12:49am):
I love you Josh!
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 7:44am):
Your acronym is better than their acronym.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 9:38am):
Of course there will be fewer jobs, but then this kind of economic hoo-rah never does address that aspect of artificially raising unit labor costs.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 9:48am):
"This "living wage," which is equal to 110 percent of the federal poverty line for a family of four, would directly help hundreds of student workers and more older workers ..."
I understand the desire to pay a "fair" wage to older workers with families, but what does this magic number have to do with students, who likely are not supporting a family of four?
If passed, how much will student fees be increased every year? If a student worker only has to work 20 hrs/wk instead of 30 like you claim, then we have to hire another student to work those missing 10 hours. Will that not raise labor costs by 50%?
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 9:54am):
Why would the Union build parking lots and research centers?
People who believe this are completely off the wall. How would the Wisconsin Union benefit from those things?
The Wisconsin Union is one of the ONLY things on campus that is built specifically to benefit students. Thus, it is partially funded by students.
It's absolutely ludicrous to think that somehow this is what WUFIP stands for.
Clearly SLAC has their heads way too far up in the clouds to understand facts and truth. SLAC can't bear to think that perhaps the Union is actually doing a GOOD thing. The Union has budgeted for the conversion of 9 LTEs for next year. WUFIP includes improving working conditions for the workers and the new additions to the south campus union could provide MORE JOBS to the campus area.
**Please explain to me how the Union benefits froma parking lot and a research center.** I'd love to know because I thought that the Union only flourishes when it's buildings and delis are filled with students, faculty, staff and alum.
The Union was voted by this very student body as the best building on campus. How would the Union, then, benefit from using WUFIP to build a parking lot instead of a cherished building??
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 9:58am):
SLAC IS SO OFF BASE. THEY DON'T EVEN COMPREHEND THAT THEIR INITIATIVE IS ILLEGAL. STATE LAW WILL NOT PERMIT THIS TO GO THROUGH. EVEN IF THE STUDENTS PASS THE SLAC INITIATIVE, THE UNIVERSITY CANNOT ABIDE BECAUSE THE STATE HAS REGULATIONS THAT CONTRADICT THIS STUDENT INITIATIVE.
The State requires that LTEs pay cannot exceed the minimum of FTEs. 10.23 violates that. SLAC has been told this numerous times, but for some reason--they still think it's a good idea.
I know that earning 10.23 an hour sounds pretty cool if you're a student. HOnestly though, think about the repercussions about this raise. This would only make segregated fees and other products more expensive because someone's got to the increase! Rec. Sports [SERF, Nat and the Shell], Housing and the Union would all go broke with this initiative.
A living wage is important. But this initiative is illegal and clumps student workers in with LTEs.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 10:32am):
Josh
Who pays for the increased wages? I'll tell you who, students, through either increased tuition or seg fees. You criticize the Union for increasing fees when you're doing the same thing. Go away hypocrite
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 11:09am):
SLAC embarrasses me. They think that they have a mandate from campus simply because they received a vote of 2 to 1 last Fall.
Too bad their procedure was illegal. Too bad their proposal isn't feasible due to State restrictions and impossible financial strains to UHS, Rec. Sports, the Union and the Residence HAlls.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 1:31pm):
Residence halls? Where were residence halls mentioned? The initiative says nothing about residence halls, since they are not funded through seg fees.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 2:38pm):
The Unions don't just benefit students. Departments and faculty/staff have meetings there all the time. Alumni make a beeline for the Unions when they come. When MU was built in the '20s, there was no base of generous alums. Now there is. Get off your ass, do the hard work and solicit the majority of the renovation funds from alumni (esp. rich alumni). If the education building can get $30 million from one alumnus to renovate, how much could the Union (that most alums from all the majors offered on campus remember fondly) get? Enough to not raise seg fees, that's how much.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 4:38pm):
"Residence halls?"
Don't nobody work there? Don't all those workers need a raise too?
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 6:58pm):
The whole "state law" thing is hogwash... it's like Walmart making it illegal for their workers to have healthcare or rights in general. Or like the south saying that slaves can't vote.
And Mark Guthier has said that the 9 LTE positions won't be transfered until after this bogus "LTE Taskforce" finishes meeting. The fact is, many LTEs aren't even paid the state rate max's (that's the min classified wage), and most unionized workers aren't able to make a living wage because the state refuses to acknowledge workers as anything but a cost that can be minimized.
Most of the increased wages would in fact come from state funds, not seg fees.
"WUFIP" is just trying to hide the fact that most of the increased fees for their referendum will go towards projects that should be paid for by the university or state. It's ridiculous to say that students are responsible for bringing these buildings up to fire codes, that's something UW should have taken care of years ago. And why should we be funding capital projects that won't actually benefit students period, much less while many of us are still students?
It's all fabrications from WUD, but it's all orders handed down from administrators. Student-run my ass.
Anonymous (March 21, 2006 @ 11:36pm):
Most of the increased wages would in fact come from state funds, not seg fees
The Union gets zero dollars from the state or university, so how do you figure thats where the wages would come from?
"WUFIP" is just trying to hide the fact that most of the increased fees for their referendum will go towards projects that should be paid for by the university or state. It's ridiculous to say that students are responsible for bringing these buildings up to fire codes, that's something UW should have taken care of years ago."
Again, the Union derives all its money from retail sales and seg fees, and gets zero dollars from the university.
"And why should we be funding capital projects that won't actually benefit students period, much less while many of us are still students? "
How exactly doesn't this benefit students again? And the fact that fee isn't even going to be instituted until 07-08 and the project will be done in 09-10 makes that statement false. Benefits will be seen fairly quickly actually
