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End the wage war

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by Badger Herald Editorial Board

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

University of Wisconsin students Ashok Kumar and Nick Limbeck have presented Chancellor John Wiley with two choices, and they are "demand[ing]" he pick one of them. They want Mr. Wiley to grant raises to a particular segment of student employees or to allow the Associated Students of Madison to bargain on behalf of those students for better wages and benefits, according to an open letter released Monday.

Despite the threatening language, however, Mr. Wiley need not do either. Nor should he.

Much of the controversy is a direct result of ASM's election last semester, in which 6.59 percent of the student body turned out to approve the Living Wage Referendum. The initiative is designed to increase student hourly wages at the Wisconsin Union, Recreational Sports and University Health Services to a so-called "living wage."

At first glance, this may sound like a great idea, which is surely why it passed in the first place. But it's a proposal we have consistently rejected for a number of reasons — most notably because most students are not supporting a family of four, which is the underlying assumption in calculating what a living wage should be.

Moreover, we prefer to see more of a reliance on establishing wages based on free-market principles, and it would be a gross misappropriation of student-segregated fees to pay any of our classmates $10.23 an hour to swipe student ID cards at the SERF.

While the UW administration has made it clear from the start that they would not approve the initiative, Messrs. Kumar and Limbeck have long been among its most outspoken supporters. Accordingly, their notoriously obnoxious organization, the Student Labor Action Coalition, was the primary supporter of the initiative.

And in what can only be described as a good-will gesture from Mr. Wiley, he created a Student Wage Committee to review student hourly wage scales and to, among other things, "determine whether current rates are consistent with local market rates." Of course, it's a complete waste of time for any company to form a committee to ensure its wages are competitive enough in a free market, but maybe Mr. Wiley figured ASM needed proof. In any event, Mr. Wiley designated two committee seats and assigned ASM to occupy them at its discretion. Conveniently enough, ASM leadership selected none other than Messrs. Kumar and Limbeck.

Just two weeks after the committee's formation, though, they've already decided things aren't going the right way and are blasting the chancellor for violating students' shared-governance rights. But, unfortunately for ASM — and, ironically, fortunately for the students they purport to represent — shared governance in Wisconsin only guarantees a right to be a part of the conversation, and any decisions are ultimately made by the chancellor and the Board of Regents.

Not only should Mr. Wiley ignore the SLAC contingent, but the university as a whole should stop wasting its valuable time on a foolish proposal that was doomed from the beginning.

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Anonymous (April 11, 2007 @ 7:28am):

Completely laughable. I'm pretty sure more people voted for the Living Wage than voted for Eli Judge. Does that mean that he should no longer be seated as alder?

As I've mentioned many times here, the whole point of raising the student wage is so LTEs and FTEs don't get replaced en masse by low-wage student workers. A living wage is only good for workers with families if they can keep the job.

And about shared governance: it doesn't mean we're only allowed by the graces of Wiley to be "at the table." Really, what's the point. The wage committee, and any other SG committee for that matter, is stacked with administrators. I think the ratio in this case is 15 admins to 2 students, neither of whom are workers. What Nick and Ashok wanted to do (I'm neither) is allow workers to elect representatives to the committee, and ultimately allow students to bargain, eliminating the need for competitive pricing committees.

Anonymous (April 11, 2007 @ 10:14am):

The Badger Herald needs to be a lot more careful in how they define "Shared Governance".

How would they feel if ASM was included in a conversation, the Chancellor decided that ASM could no longer support advertising for student organizations in student papers?

Impossible you say, well the next time the Herald pulls it's nose out of the Chancellor's butt and writes something negative about him or his family, we'll see what happens.

Anonymous (April 11, 2007 @ 10:39am):

Go Ashok! Go Nick!

Anonymous (April 11, 2007 @ 3:19pm):

"[W]ell the next time the Herald pulls it's [sic] nose out of the Chancellor's butt and writes something negative about him or his family, we'll see what happens."

Uh, what?

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