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UVA MUST DO MORE ON WORKER PAY-LETTER TO THE EDITOR, THE DAILY PROGRESS

Posted: Friday July 20, 2007

UVa Must Do More on Worker Pay

July 19, 2007

On July 1, The Daily Progress published an editorial as a follow-up to a story detailing the economic impact of the University of Virginia on the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

The author of the editorial concluded her or his reflection on the original article by stating that “most of us intuitively know that UVa is a constructive contributor to our community.”

As a student at the university, I do not possess this same, supposedly intuitive, knowledge.

Since reading the editorial, I have been unable to determine how UVa’s contribution to the university can be so blindly described as “constructive.”

For all the positive contributions the university makes to the community, the poverty that the University of Virginia creates by paying its workers less than a living wage for the area is an inexcusable and undeniable drain on the local economy.

The editorial states that “knowledge is a powerful economic engine even if it can’t be fully measured,” which strikes me as condescending when I think about UVa employees forced to make decisions between affording health care or providing food for a family. Knowledge may not be able to be measured, but a living wage can be.

For a newspaper which purports to represent an entire community, it is shortsighted of The Daily Progress to declare as positive the impact of an institution which inflicts poverty upon its lowest-paid workers and drastic economic stratification upon the community in which it is located.

It is time for the university to take a simple, tangible step towards improving the local economy – it’s time for the University of Virginia to pay its workers a living wage.

Kevin Simowitz

Charlottesville