The campus-wide Living Wages campaign debate escalated Monday night as students gathered in Broussard Hall to discuss the ongoing and controversial issue of granting a “livable wage” to Facility Services workers earning a salary below the poverty level.
Residential Life invited Laura Lynn Grantham, spokeswoman for Living Wages and English sophomore, to debate living wages with Doug Schwalm, assistant economics professor, and Kathleen Bratton, assistant political science professor, who discussed the economic and political ramifications.
The Student Equality Commission began the Living Wages campaign about two months ago with the goal of raising the minimum wage of any Facility Services worker to $8.50 per hour, giving workers a salary that matches the poverty level of $18,500.
A living wage is defined as a salary above the poverty level.
The Department of State Civil Service mandates that entry-level custodians earn between $5.47 per hour and $9.75 per hour. The University pays entry-level custodians $6.25 per hour.
“If we want to keep these workers, who are an essential part of our campus community, we need to give them a living wage,” Grantham said.
While Grantham said the University argues they are paying custodians a “competitive” wage by market standards, she thinks that at a flagship institution they should be looking to compare themselves to more prestigious universities that have set a precedent by implementing higher wages for their lowest paid workers.
“Harvard implemented living wages in 1997,” Grantham said. “We’re almost a decade behind.”
Grantham said students often “look at [custodians and food service workers] as background characters” and fail to realize that they are “real people barely making ends meet.”
Schwalm said because the University would only have to adjust the wages of about 200 workers on campus making below the poverty level, the effects would be fairly inconsequential for the economy.
“The [Living Wages] proposal will not have a lot of side effects because of the narrow population it targets,” Schwalm said.
He also said the consequences would be limited because the workers are state employees and not employed by the private sector.
“I agree that an efficient, well-working system is one thing, and social justice is another, but we have to find a balance between the two,” Schwalm said.
But Schwalm said that on a larger scale, granting living wages or raising the minimum wage could have adverse effects on the economy.
He stressed that increasing the minimum wage would increase unemployment.
“If the price of steel goes up, people are going to try to do what they do without as much steel,” Schwalm said. “If the price of unskilled labor goes up, then the people are going to try to function without as much unskilled labor.”
Raising the minimum wage, he said, would have the largest impact, increasing the number of unemployed teens.
Therefore, people making minimum wage would be hurt the most by an increase, Schwan said.
He said an “unobvious consequence” of raising minimum wage is the transfer of money to the rich because of the demographic earning minimum wage.
He said the majority of people being affected by minimum wage are teenagers who live with families making 300 percent above the poverty level.
Only 20 percent of people earning minimum wage were living at the poverty level in 1990, he said.
Grantham said the University has an endowment of $262 million, and the amount to raise the wages of the 200 affected workers would cost an estimated $2.6 million.
She said that because of this large endowment, the University should not have to raise tuition.
But some students still disagree with the logic of the Living Wages campaign.
One student who attended the discussion and preferred to remain anonymous said it is unreasonable to ask the University to make the Facility Services workers a priority in their limited budgets.
“We’re only allotted so much in funding,” he said. “As a flagship university, our first priority is for academic grants and research. When teachers are having problems making copies, and we don’t have enough money for supplies, where are we going to get $2.6 million? There’s a much larger issue, and it’s hard to hold people here responsible, and it’s hard to hold the chancellor responsible when it’s a state problem.”
He said that in the state Legislature, the first things being cut are health care and education, and after the current budget cuts from Hurricane Katrina, he called the campaign “futile.”
“They have constituents to please, and the chancellor is concerned with academics because that’s where his job security is,” he said.
Samori Camara, graduate student, responded that no one has ever won a battle in two months, and the fight may take years.
“We’ll be around until it happens,” Grantham said.
She said members of the National Living Wages Campaign are coming to speak at the University in the fall, and she feels confident that next year will bring more “freshmen willing to fight for social justice.”
 
Contact Rebekah Allen at [email protected]