People Before Profit blog

Victory for Wash U students in living wage

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 05:45:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS — Washington University here will commit at least $1 million over the next two years toward higher salaries and better benefits for low-paid contract employees as a result of a 19-day sit-in by students demanding a living wage for service workers. Wash U’s Student Worker Alliance (SWA) reached a groundbreaking agreement with campus officials April 22. “We won more in the last 19 days than we won in the last 18 months put together,” said SWA member Ojiugo Uzoma.

The new agreement is a significant step towards a living wage for campus service workers, who were making an average of $7.50 an hour. The university agreed to continue working towards a living wage and to form a joint student-university committee, with SWA representation, to improve university policy of freedom of association for all workers directly or indirectly employed by the university. Also, the university will join the Workers’ Rights Consortium, which ensures that factories producing university clothing and other goods respect workers’ rights.

The agreement includes amnesty for all students and faculty who participated in the sit-in. Several students had been threatened with legal sanctions during the campaign. Nearly 200 faculty publicly supported the living wage campaign and union recognition for the workers.

At the April 22 victory rally, Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) told SWA members, “You students risked a lot. But it was a worthwhile victory.”

Missouri state Rep. Maria Chappelle-Nadal told the World, “These courageous students fought their butts off. Never, for one moment, did they think about giving up.” During the last weekend of the sit-in, Chappelle-Nadal joined the students on the hunger strike and slept in the admissions office with the students.

Throughout the sit-in, community and labor support was strong. On April 7, Missouri AFL-CIO President Hugh McVey led a rally at Washington U in support of the students. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, sent a letter of support. Every day during the sit-in, labor and community groups, including the Missouri-Kansas Communist Party, brought the students lunch and dinner, and helped organize noon and 5 p.m. rallies. Throughout the hunger strike, religious leaders kept a 24-hour vigil outside of the admissions office.

“Nineteen days is a long time,” said Joan Suarez, a member of the Workers Rights Board and Jobs with Justice (JwJ). “Everyone talks about the courage of these students.” Suarez said that as the students were leaving the admissions office, workers walked up to them and told them, “Thank you.” Many had tears in their eyes, she said.

The Washington U victory comes just weeks after students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., went on a hunger strike and won living wages for campus employees there. “SWA learned from like-minded groups across the country,” said Danielle Christmas, an SWA member. “We saw other students take power into their own hands. We knew that if things were going to change here, we had to take power into our hands,”

“By becoming part of a coalition, like JwJ, we gained an opportunity to unite with others. We learned that SEIU, and others, have been fighting for living wages for a long time,” said Christmas.

Christmas said that students have a lot to learn from organized labor, which, she said, has always fought for working people.” By working together, college students and trade unions can take up workers’ rights and win,” she added. SWA is part of the Student Labor Action Project, a joint project of JwJ and the United States Student Association.

Michigan grad students win gains

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:31:00 +0000

Despite threats of retribution and tense negotiations that included a one-day walkout, graduate student instructors (GSI) at the University of Michigan claimed a major victory when their membership ratified a three-year contract with the university on April 3.

The union (GEO-AFT) demanded pay raises comparable to other faculty, freezing GSI contributions to health insurance and capping co-pays, expanded health care coverage, and an increase for the child care subsidy for members with kids. Non-economic demands included protections from discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgendered people and protections for immigrant members.

Until March the university simply failed to move on any issues. By mid-March, it offered a final package that did not address any of GSI’s demands. In fact, the university administration added a no-strike clause and the threat of sanctions against GSI members who walked out in support of any campus union. Sanctions included losing pay and benefits or being fired.

The university also wanted to move the contract expiration date from February to April so that they could drag negotiations into the summer when most of the union membership was away from campus.

The union described the “final offer” as unresponsive. The members of the bargaining team for the union “were surprised and deeply disappointed by the proposal’s lack of response to the issues raised by the union,” said an official statement.

GEO President Dave Dobbie said, “It looks like they’ve just been wasting our time at the table if this is their idea of an acceptable offer.”

After reading the university’s demands, the union overwhelmingly voted to hold a one-day walkout on March 24. In this walkout they were supported by members of other faculty unions, staff workers, and non-campus workers such as construction workers who refused to cross picket lines. One week later, the union received a new offer that included major improvements on key wage and benefit items.

The contract was ratified by the membership on April 3 by a large majority.

Service workers tell UC: Living wage now!

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:36:00 +0000

BERKELEY, Calif. — Hundreds of striking service workers, other campus workers, students and faculty gathered on the steps of International House on the University of California–Berkeley campus April 14 to greet incoming UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau with shouts of “Living wage now” and signs reading, “Strike for justice at UC.” Birgeneau, who was attending a faculty reception on the eve of his inauguration, has said he supports a living wage for the service workers. The service workers, whose wages have not been raised in two years, held their one-day walkout at a dozen UC facilities statewide.

AFSCME Local 3299, which represents some 7,300 UC janitors, food service workers, landscapers and bus drivers, said despite the university’s claims that the strike was illegal, almost all its members participated.

The service workers’ contract expired in June 2004, and was extended by mutual agreement to Jan. 31, 2005. Last month workers voted by 92 percent to authorize a strike.

Though union and university are far apart on wages, AFSCME spokesperson Faith Raider said the most urgent consideration is that a wage hike should be guaranteed and not be conditional on funding from the state.

“Most other workers — faculty, lecturers, librarians, graduate student instructors — got raises during the last two years, but the service workers did not,” said Raider.

“UC service workers’ wages are too low to cover the bare-bones costs of raising a family,” said a February 2005 report by the Oakland-based National Economic Development and Law Center (NEDLC). It noted that most workers were immigrants and people of color whose wage rates are “substantially lower” than those of other workers performing the same duties in the California State University system or the community colleges. Food service workers’ pay is so low they are income-eligible for nine major publicly funded welfare programs.

The union says other issues include a “chance to advance” with real opportunities and promotions, and “better rules to reduce discrimination and favoritism in hiring and promotions.”

Workers said favoritism is a major problem. “Performance evaluations should not be connected to wages,” said Peter Montoya, a longtime custodial worker at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on the Berkeley campus. Montoya and co-worker Yosef Gedela also said workloads are extremely heavy, undermining quality.

The clerical workers’ Coalition of University Employees urged its members not to cross the picket lines, while the UC Students Association, the Graduate Assembly and other student organizations also backed the workers. Labor councils supported the strike. In San Francisco, buses were re-routed to avoid the UCSF campus and hospital, while in Los Angeles, garbage collectors did not pick up trash at UCLA.

In Santa Cruz hundreds of students and strikers sat in at the main entrance for several hours, and the campus was at a standstill. At UC Irvine, some professors brought their classes to the picket line.

Labor, immigrant rights groups oppose Real ID Act

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 03:14:00 +0000

Labor and immigrant rights organizations assembled at San Jose’s State Building April 7 to kick off national days of action against the Bush administration’s virulently anti-immigrant Real ID Act, now pending in the Senate. They urged a flood of calls and faxes to California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, neither of whom have expressed a position on the measure.

“The Real ID Act challenges all the ideals that this country was founded on,” said Hong-An Tran, federal policy analyst at the San Jose-based SIREN (Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network). The act “bypasses our democratic legislative system, it undermines the American value of being the haven for asylum seekers, and it divides communities,” she added.

Joining Tran in the press conference were representatives of American Muslim Voice, African Refugee Community Services, the Asian Law Alliance, ACLU of Northern California, the South Bay Labor Council and Santa Clara Building and Construction Trades Council.

The bill, tacked onto a war-appropriations measure, passed the House in February. Similar legislation is working its way through the Senate and may be attached to appropriations for the Iraq war or for tsunami relief. The Bush administration claims the bill is necessary to protect national security. But at a town hall meeting on immigration in Oakland April 2, Congresswoman Barbara Lee called the Real ID Act “another example of playing on fear and scapegoating immigrants,” and urged its defeat in the Senate.

The bill would let government officials require applicants for asylum to get written confirmation for their claims from the same governments they are fleeing. It would expand the Patriot Act to permit lawful residents to be deported for providing nonviolent, humanitarian support to organizations later labeled “terrorist” by the government, even if such support was entirely legal when provided. The act would also require applicants for drivers’ licenses to verify citizenship or permanent resident status even when such a restriction violates state laws.