In Stephen Parsley's recent column ("The specter of wages," Apr. 19) he attempted to "articulate" for the rest of us the reasons why the Living Wage Campaign's position is fundamentally incoherent. Speaking as someone who is not involved with the Campaign in any way, I would still argue that Parsley's position is even less defensible than the one he attacks.
Parsley claims that there can be nothing wrong with paying low wages to workers who voluntarily perform unskilled labor. If Parsley means to say that unskilled workers choose low-wage jobs voluntarily because they need the money, then yes, he is right. If he means that they somehow turn down job skills and high wages, he couldn't be more wrong. Many of us, he says, have worked the same kinds of jobs as the low-wage workers at the University, and as someone who spent four years working in food service, I know this.
However, there is a fundamental difference between me and a food service worker at the University: I'm a college student, while the University employee has probably never had a chance to go to college and probably never will. In other words, food service, however degrading and exhausting it was for me, was just a simple detour on the road to a career. For low-wage workers with no job skills, the thankless work they perform is a reality, often an inescapable one.
Parsley also says that he visited the living wage Web site, where he found that $9.75 is the minimum wage paid to classified employees of the University. However, he overlooked the fact that many of the University's employees, especially the ones who do work like food service, are contracted. The Campaign says it does not know the wages of these contracted employees, but my guess is that one reason the University uses contractors is because it is cheaper than training and paying those employees directly, and so there is probably a chance that contracted workers are paid even less than $9.75 an hour.
As for the figure $9.75, Parsley seems not to have done his math on it, which is why he considers it ethical. A quick calculation will reveal that $9.75 x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks a year = $20,280. This is the figure, of course, before taxes are taken out and it also assumes that any sick, vacation, or family emergency days are not docked from a worker's pay. Despite the fact that $9.75 an hour sounds like a lot of money, $20,000 a year is a very low income, especially in a place like Charlottesville where rent is often $500-$1,000 a month and childcare is expensive. In addition, Parsley's assertion that people do not have a right to afford child-care and health care would be laughable if it were not so cruel and ignorant. Why do children have to suffer for their parent's lack of job skills? Since when did rich people deserve to survive cancer more than poor people? My guess is that Parsley has never worked in poverty without a financial safety net, and with a constant fear of losing his job because of getting sick or injured.
As for the Marx quote Parsley cited, to each, according to his need, he forgot the first part: from each, according to his ability. Considering how wealthy the University is, it is a shame that so many of its employees cannot afford health care or other basic necessities. By directing our attention towards other unjust situations, he attempts to ignore the University's responsibility for its employees.
By saying that the University's low-paid workers receive small paychecks voluntarily, he blames some of the most vulnerable members of our community for their own plight. If Parsley does not want to attend Living Wage rallies, then he shouldn't have to. But that still doesn't mean that problem of low wages at the University is not unconnected to the problem of poverty in the larger Charlottesville community, or that it is much different from wealth distribution problems around the world.
Emily Richardson
CLAS IV
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