SUUVA / CWA » Articles » WHY A LIVING WAGE? SETH CROFT-RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNIST, MAY 7, 2006

WHY A LIVING WAGE? SETH CROFT-RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNIST, MAY 7, 2006

Posted: Monday May 8, 2006

Why a Living Wage?:
Commitment to Jeffersonian Values Underlies Campaign

SETH CROFT
TIMES-DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNIST May 7, 2006

Charlottesville. On Wednesday, April 12, 17 students at the University of Virginia put their education into action and marched peacefully into the president’s office building and sat down, refusing to leave until UVa president John Casteen paid a living wage to all university employees. I am proud to say that I was among the 17.

Over the course of our time at the university, all 17 of us have been taught the Jeffersonian value of standing up for what is right. The university broke with this value when it asked us to remain silent about workers who clean our classrooms, serve us in the dining hall, and earn too little to support their families. Many of these employees, overwhelmingly women and people of color, must work a second or third job just to make ends meet. Since 1998 students at the university have been fighting to end this practice of institutional racism and sexism and to ensure that those who work directly or indirectly for the university can afford to live and raise their families in the Charlottesville community.

In the past year our campaign published a report detailing economic, legal, and moral aspects of a living wage; was threatened with arrest by a UVa administrator for passing out muffins to housekeepers before the workday started; organized rallies that several times included more than 300 concerned students, workers, and faculty; sent hundreds of e-mails to President Casteen; and collected roughly 2,000 individual endorsements for our resolution. We met with workers and recorded their anonymous testimonials, held press conferences to refute lies told by our administration, and had a meeting with President Casteen in which a university official said that “social justice has nothing to do with the mission of this university.”

No Choice but Peaceful Protest

By mid-April it was clear that our administration would not listen to reason or appeals to morality. Therefore, we had no choice but to dramatize the issue of poverty wages through nonviolent civil disobedience. Given the successful living-wage sit-ins at Harvard and other campuses, we put on suits and ties and sat peacefully in the lobby of the president’s office until he was ready to do business with us.

Casteen did eventually meet with us, but as in earlier meetings made no concrete wage changes and dismissed our concessions time and again. Amid what we thought were good-faith negotiations, on the fourth day we were arrested with force.

Since the sit-in the campaign has grown exponentially. We’ve received calls of support from people all over the country as well as endorsements from Delegate David Toscano and State Senator Creigh Deeds. Yet I am increasingly disappointed in our administration’s continued refusal to dignify the lives of our workers by paying them a living wage.

Casteen Skirted Issue

Casteen continues to muddle the debate by claiming the university’s lowest-paid employees earn $9.37 per hour ($1.35 less than our suggested living wage), while neglecting to mention all his part-time employees who earn dollars less and the hundreds of contracted workers who we can only hope make $5.15 per hour. In Charlottesville, where one in four residents lives in poverty, the president offered to introduce us to members of the General Assembly, which both skirts the issue of direct employees—whose wages he clearly controls, with approval from the Board of Visitors—and displaces responsibility onto the state. Certainly codifying at the state level the authority that the university currently possesses is part of the long-term vision of the campaign, but we have presented a variety of legal means for the president to move forward now with ensuring contractors pay a living wage to their employees. He has rejected these legal options and has even shot down, most recently last week, our proposal to form a committee to study the issue and to make non-binding recommendations.

Just as we were inspired by the actions of students at Georgetown and Harvard, we hope our campaign will encourage students to stand with workers at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Richmond, and across the state. We hope that President Casteen will accept the power he has to do the right thing before the end of the year—but we will be around as long as it takes.

A York County native, Seth Croft is a third-year student at UVa.

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WHY A LIVING WAGE? SETH CROFT-RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNIST, MAY 7, 2006

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