At a Sept. 22 public forum about living wage, Newcomb Hall's South Meeting Room quieted as fourth-year College student Greg Casar read aloud a statement from an anonymous University employee.
"The students don't really see," Casar read. "They all go back home for the holidays in the winter when we're up here at five or six o'clock in the morning chipping away at ice in 15-degree weather. We're essential workers; we make this place run, but we're at the bottom of the pay scale."
The forum was part of the University's ongoing "Class Matters" lecture series, an interdisciplinary venture exploring the intersection between economic issues and social justice. Casar is a student leader of Workers and Students United, an organization whose primary aim is to win a "living wage" - a wage package that meets area-specific living costs as well as expenses involved in supporting a family - for University employees.
"I'm what they call 'old school,'" the statement continued. "I don't have all the computer skills that new jobs require. This is my job; it's gonna be my job. And I've got to work this job all day because I've got a family."
As English Prof. Susan Fraiman, the panel historian for the Sept. 22 meeting, noted, the campaign for a living wage at the University is not new. The current effort led by WASU is the latest phase of a movement dating back to the 1998 founding of the Labor Action Group, which first began the living wage campaign at the University.
"Today's living wagers do not have to start from scratch or feel that they are bucking tradition," Fraiman said during her remarks at the forum. "There is, in fact, an honorable tradition of campus activism to build on - a history of activism that is, indeed, rather recent."
Fourth-year College student Erin Franey, another student leader of WASU, dated living wage activism at the University back even farther - to a 1969 protest at the Rotunda. Admission of women to the College was the protest's central issue, she said, but students also demonstrated for other causes, including a living wage.
More recently, the University's living wage activism brings to mind an April 15, 2006, sit-in at Madison Hall that led to the arrests of 17 students and an anthropology professor. The living wage movement was forced underground after the sit-in, Franey said.
This current phase of activism ignited in April, when WASU lobbied Charlottesville City Council to pass an ordinance urging the University to pay its employees a living wage of $11.44. Casar said the $11.44 figure comes from the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit Washington, D.C. think tank, and is specific to the cost of living in Charlottesville.
Although City Council did not pass a University-specific resolution at its May 3 meeting, it demonstrated its support for living wage by reaffirming a June 2000 resolution encouraging Charlottesville's employers to increase the amount they pay their workers.
"It's really nothing new," Councilor Kristin Szakos said during a May 4 interview with The Daily Progress. "We've been on record urging employers in the region to pay a living wage."
According to its May 3 minutes, the council decided to communicate support for living wage with a letter to the University, Charlottesville's largest employer.
The University's minimum wage for direct employees now stands at $10.14. Susan Carkeek, vice president and chief human resources officer at the University, said the University is not currently in a position to raise that number.
The University's appropriation from the state general fund has been cut by a total of $51.5 million since the 2007-08 fiscal year, and more cuts are expected, Carkeek said in an e-mail. Based on these circumstances, the University would not be able increase salary without decreasing employment, she explained.
"The University has a strong history of not laying people off during difficult financial times," she said. "While other universities around the state have laid off employees in both prior and the most recent budget crises, U.Va. has been steadfastly loyal to [its] employees, adhering to a policy of not using layoffs to balance the budget."
Carkeek noted that jobs at the University continue to be hotly vied for
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