Two University of Wisconsin students sent a dissenting message to Chancellor John Wiley Monday, urging him to approve a controversial wage increase policy for UW workers.
Nick Limbeck and Ashok Kumar, both student government representatives on the Student Wage Committee — created to discuss increasing student workers' wages at University Health Services, Rec Sports and the Wisconsin Union — demanded Wiley comply with student elections or allow students to take part in bargaining for wages and benefits.
According to Kumar, the living wage referendum to increase employee wages passed on three consecutive Associated Students of Madison elections, which he said UW was legally bound to validate.
"We demand that the university comply with the statutory autonomy students have over segregated fees and shared governance laws set forth by case law and state statutes," the letter to Wiley said.
However, according to UW spokesperson John Lucas, UW administrators are not looking at the referendums as binding and because of state statutes they are not able to bargain with students over wages.
Kumar, though, pointed to the Student Union Initiative referendum — when students approved millions of dollars of segregated fee funding for the renovation of Memorial Union and a new Union South — as a counterexample of UW administrators taking the student vote into account.
"They don't have the authority," Kumar said. "There's no case law to back up which initiative they agree with and then pick that one."
With regard to the students' leverage with administrators, Lucas said UW System policy guarantees students an advisory role in the budgeting of non-allocable fees, but that the final decisions are at the discretion of the chancellor. The Board of Regents, meanwhile, has the final say in determining the budgeting of segregated university fees.
Last November, Wiley first responded to the student election and pointed out that the average pay of the 7,000 student hourly workers is $9.03. Wiley made the distinction between student workers and those looking to raise a family under the "living wage."
According to Tomas Garcia, human resource director for the Wisconsin Unions, Wiley then formed a committee to look at "fair market" wages around the area for students.
"The committee's charge was basically to talk about whether student wages should go up, and typically if they do, it would be what's happening in the market, like other vendors on State Street," said Garcia, who sat on the committee.
As a large employer of students on campus, Garcia said if the living wage were enacted, the Wisconsin Union would be forced to go against traditional staffing procedures and hire fewer students due to budget constraints.
Garcia said although he understands the student perspective, the language of living wage must be interpreted as someone raising a family and not attending school.
"I can understand why the students would want that wage, but unfortunately they are for families and not [for] a student," Garcia said. "Your main goal is to be there and get educated and not to make a lot of money."
