NU Living Wage Campaign expresses frustration and continued resolve
The student run Northwestern University Living Wage Campaign held a small press conference on Monday night to encourage the community to put pressure on the administration to establish a living wage for all Northwestern employees.
The campaign’s main priority is to convince the university to provide all campus workers a minimum of $13.23 an hour and health care coverage. According to the campaign, many Northwestern employees are not receiving sufficient compensation to provide economic security for themselves and their families. Just last year, an employee in one of the campus dining halls was discovered to be homeless.
The press conference gave the outcome of the campaign’s third meeting with Eugene Sunshine, the university’s Senior Vice President of Business and Finance. Matthew Fischler, a Weinberg senior and a National Policy Strategist in the Equal Justice Center of Roosevelt Institute, said that the two parties had yet to reach a concrete solution.
In the meeting, Sunshine said that the campaign failed to take into account certain employee benefits. He also suggested that requiring their staffing contractor to raise wages would mean that some employees would necessarily be laid off. They also discussed the technical impediment that students are not in the position to negotiate with the workers’ union.
However, Fischler remains optimistic as to the feasibility of implementing a living wage. According to him, the proposed increase would translate into an additional “two to five million dollar increase annually, which would be a small portion of Northwestern University’s yearly discretionary endowment.”
Adam Yalowitz, a campaign member and Weinberg junior, pointed out that a living wage would be a fulfillment of the commitments that the university has already made. “[President] Schapiro himself said that ‘no university financial budget should be balanced on the backs of any of our employees’. But we need to stop his words from just being empty rhetoric to actually impact workers’ salaries.”
Northwestern University Living Wage Campaign will hold an open organizational meeting on Thursday in Swift Hall 107.
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Lolwut?!
Do you know how much research you can fund with 2-5 million dollars? The school does not need to be spending extra money on janitors just because a bunch of communist hippy students want some living wage crap. Do you see the employees protesting? No. Why is this? Perhaps because they know that the wages they already makes are perfectly competitive. If they weren’t then these people could just as easily work elsewhere
tl;dr
Quit your communist bitchin’ and do something worthwhile with your time. Oh wait, you can’t. You’re a comp lit major.
lolwut
February 2, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Is it really worth raising the salaries of some of the workers so that other workers can get laid off? I’m sure the ones who get fired will have a few choice words for this campaign.
Kim
February 2, 2010 at 6:37 pm
you think NU will just kick in 2-5 million to pay workers who don’t work for NU? How much more will it cost in tuition and food? I’m not sure if I’ll be able to come back this fall anyway depending on my aid and whether my dad gets a job. but hey, go ahead and fight for the low paid sodexo workers. the ones that get fired can join my dad at the unemployment office.
MP
February 2, 2010 at 10:20 pm
I don’t consider myself a communist, but I am a financial aid recipient that supports this cause. I’m not asking students to cover the cost with tuition rises or giving up their aid. What I’m asking the university to do is pay people higher wages for the work that they do, not for Sodexo, LBR, or any other company contracted out to, but for us, the students, faculty, staff and administration of Northwestern University. Their paychecks may not say NU, but it’s NU that they serve. They don’t deserve to live in fear of not be able to pay for food or rent. They deserve a living wage.
Arianna H.
February 2, 2010 at 11:28 pm
But they do deserve to live in fear of being laid off, I take it.
Kim
February 3, 2010 at 12:09 am
Arianna,
If you arent going to ask students to cover it with tuition raises, then where are we going to cut from the budget 2-5 million dollars?
ed
February 5, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Found your blog while googling. Enjoyed reading it , consider me as frequent visitor
prognosis autism
February 7, 2010 at 12:45 am
The administration could work with the development office to raise funds for a living wage. Why doesn’t the administration pursue all options to give people who work for Northwestern decent pay?
Development Office
February 24, 2010 at 5:05 pm
why doesn’t the administration pursue all options to lower our tuition? funds are limited, and they have to be allocated to many different areas of the university. like ed said, where do these living wage people propose this money comes from?
these people are paid competitive wages, and they are certainly not forced to work here.
Sam
February 24, 2010 at 6:06 pm