BECAUSE of the rapid activist response to racial slurs and graffiti, it is clear that the University community will not tolerate this sort of bigotry. We have responded appropriately, as we must. However, we have expressed no such unified outrage to the working conditions of University employees, whose low pay is as serious a threat to an inclusive community as yelled insults. Currently, many University employees do not earn enough money to pay for child care or health care because the University administration refuses to set a minimum "living wage" for all direct and contract University employees. Because the staff receiving these poverty wages is disproportionately black and female, according to the University's own studies such as the Muddy Floor Report (which addresses racial income disparities) and current University employment data, this represents structural, de facto bigotry.
It is exceedingly easy to lambaste those who yell racial slurs, and doing so requires no real commitment to civil rights principles. But until the University administration commits itself to a living wage for all staff, such rhetoric will remain hypocritically empty.
The University administration is not ignorant to the needs of many of its employees. Carmen Comsti, President of the CIO Workers and Students United, told me that the student Living Wage Campaign, in coordination with the Charlottesville-based Virginia Organizing Project, has educated the administration about the decline in the real value of many workers' salaries since the University set an $8.19 wage floor in 2000, which at the time represented a living wage.
Former Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore has said in a legal opinion that the University cannot require a living wage for contracted employees. Regardless of Kilgore's ideological callousness, the administration should set a living wage; if the AG's office wishes to take us to court, it may. It is shameful for President John T. Casteen, III to hide behind Kilgore's antipathy to working class employees of the University.
A living wage represents the minimum income necessary to purchase housing, food, health care, transportation and other essentials. Because the cost of living varies in different communities, each has a different living wage. In Charlottesville, the living wage is $10.72 per hour for a family of four with both parents working full time, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Starting in 1998, the worker- and student-led Labor Action Group campaigned for living wage, then about eight dollars per hour. Richelle Burress, a hospital employee, was suspended by her manager when she wore a button in support of the living wage. After community outcry and demonstrations on Burress's behalf, a publicly embarrassed University reinstated her, though not after effectively communicating the type of treatment workers would receive if they tried to claim what was rightfully theirs. Given this history of workplace intimidation, it is not surprising to find that no University employees feel comfortable discussing their wages with me. I would not risk losing my job either.
Fortunately, some University employees now have the Staff Union of U.Va. (SUUVA) to represent their interests. Jan Cornell, president of the Union, told me that the current wages are ludicrously low and that all employees, union or not, do need a living wage that reflects the increase in the cost of living in the past few years. The cost of housing has gone up particularly rapidly in the Charlottesville area, as have gas prices.
Lest we reduce the living wage to the realm of cold formulas, we would honor the University by remembering why the living wage matters. This public University exists so qualified students of any income level can achieve a world class education. The existence of the public University is a daily affirmation of our universal human rights irrespective of socio-economic class. If public higher education is a legitimate public good, then we cannot legitimately deny that education based on skin color. It is hypocritical to assert the humanity of students of all colors while using a pay system in which different skin colors correlate to different pay rates.
In this context, poverty wages are not only tragic but also perverse; in denying some employees health care or child care we deny that they are as human as people who had better connections or education, even as our public University pretends to acknowledge our universal rights regardless of class. A University administration committed to racial equity must pay a living wage, in light of the organization of the work force along racial lines.
The denial of a living wage is a daily assault upon the civil rights of U.Va. employees, and the University administration cannot whitewash this travesty like we can paint over the graffiti on Beta Bridge.
Zack Fields' column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at zfields@cavalierdaily.com.
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