The Student Government Senate passed a resolution urging LSU to increase the minimum wage for on-campus workers at their Wednesday, Oct. 12 meeting.
The resolution passed with 29 in favor, seven against and five abstaining.
The resolution calls for an increased minimum wage of $20 an hour. SG is willing to negotiate, explaining that $16.25 is the lowest they will go, according to international trade and finance junior Cooper Ferguson, a senator for the University Center for Freshman Year.
Ferguson said the $20 number came from the assumption that the wage won’t get increased for some time after this proposed increase. According to Ferguson, accounting for future inflation by the time the wage gets increased, the minimum living wage will be $20.
“The resolution is basically raising wages for workers on campus so they can live with dignity and respect from a university that has been exploiting them for years on end,” Ferguson said.
Political science sophomore Landon Zeringue, a UCFY senator, said that a similar resolution was passed in the spring of 2021, calling for a $15 minimum wage. Zeringue said that it started a dialogue with administration that went up to the Board of Supervisors, where it was dropped.
Geography graduate student Adam Dohrenwend, a senator for LSU’s Graduate School and co-author of the resolution, said the $20 number is partially to provoke administration, to get their attention to keep the discussion going.
“This resolution is to say that we still care about this issue, this is an issue that is still pertinent to you, and going forward with the passing of this resolution me and the other co-authors will be starting on getting more research done,” Zeringue said.
Political science senior Lizzie Shaw, the student-body president, asked the resolution’s authors at the meeting for data concerning how many dollars per fiscal year departments will have to take on per worker. She also asked what the average rate of pay per worker is. The authors were lacking this data, but Zeringue said they are interested in getting it.
Zeringue said the resolution is operating largely as a form of outreach, to show the university SG still cares about this issue. He said they will be gathering more data so that they can better work with administration to get the minimum wage raised.
Dohrenwend said the wage was determined by the MIT living wage calculator, which looked at the price of living in different metropolitan areas and determines what a living wage should be.
The current minimum wage at LSU is $7.25 an hour, in line with the federal minimum wage. Zeringue said that it is hard for the university to employ student workers since many are seeking higher paying jobs off-campus.
“If LSU can’t afford to pay its workers the wages that are required for them to live in the community, then maybe LSU should look into its personal finances,” said Dohrenwend.
Mechanical engineering senior Colin Raby, senator for the College of Engineering, said he opposed the resolution. He said he supports an increase to the minimum wage but felt a resolution calling for $20 hurts the potential for the minimum wage to be increased, calling the ask unreasonable.
He said that calling for a minimum wage based on future inflation is a bad idea and should have been based on the current economic state, adding that he felt that the authors of the resolution didn’t address many of the challenges to increasing the minimum wage to $20.
“I think all they’re doing is generating more laughs from administration,” Raby said.
