Dani Gagnon
Features Editor
Last week, the Living Wage Campaign held a panel discussion composed of a researcher, faculty, student and a former employee of the College who all spoke to the role of a living wage on a national and local level. Despite a year of strong campaign efforts, basic questions concerning the foundational reasoning of a living wage still circulate on campus.
In effort to bring the campus community onto the same page, The Wooster Voice interviewed Dylan Hamilton ’17, Makenzie Adkins ’17 and Stephen Lumetta ’18, who are student leaders of the Living Wage Campaign, to once more address these questions so that this fall the conversation can move forward.
WV: Many people have asked: why jump to raising wages to $15 rather than starting with $10?
DH: Pinning the living wage in Wayne County to a precise number is a hard task, because the living wage inherently depends on one’s family composition. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, in Wayne County a living wage can vary anywhere between $9.04/hr for a single adult to $20.70/hr for two adults and two children, with one adult working and the other staying home to provide childcare. The number increases further for other family compositions, such as single parent households. A $10/hr living wage would thus only be sufficient for a single person or a two-earner couple with no dependents. Given that the College must decide on some wage floor regardless of family composition, the Living Wage Campaign has decided to fight for a wage floor of $15/hr as a reasonable compromise between the two extremes and to complement the national movement for a minimum wage of $15/hr.
WV: There are many concerns that if a living wage is implemented that tuition will rise. What is the Living Wage Campaign’s response?
DH: Tuition increases are absolutely a concern of the Living Wage’s Campaign. In our proposal, we stress that the implementation of a living wage is a collective responsibility for all members of the campus community, including faculty, administration and students. As such, the financial burden is a collective one that should be borne by all, not solely students. We also emphasize that, in the case of a small tuition increase to cover some of the costs, the financial aid of students who simply cannot afford any sort of increase should increase accordingly. While the Living Wage Campaign cannot guarantee that students wouldn’t [be] burdened with excess costs, as we do not set school policy or tuition increases, we consider that it would be wrong and, indeed, prove the lack of a strong community if students were to have to pay an excess share of the costs.
Regarding the most recent 4.1 percent increase, it is very unlikely that the increase in a minimum wage caused anything more than a very small fraction of the increase. Although we have so far been unable to gain access to even the most basic recent budgetary information, we have been able to make a couple of calculations based on information supplied by HR in the fall of 2013. Based on this information, if the College minimum wage were increased to $11/hr and the costs for the increase were borne only by the students, the increase per student would be approximately $21 per year, or less than 1 percent of the tuition increases. If the College minimum wage were increased to $12/hr, again borne solely by the students, the increase per student per year would be approximately $81, or 3.5 percent of the tuition increases. If the College were to move overnight to a living wage of $15/hr, again paying for it solely through tuition (explicitly against our proposal), each student would have to pay approximately $729, about a third of the most recent increase.
Until an increase in the minimum wage at the College is announced, there is no reason to believe that a living wage had a significant impact on the [recent] increase in tuition. It seems most probable, therefore, that the tuition increases are dominated by other factors mentioned by Ellen Falduto [Chief Information and Planning Officer in the President’s Cabinet], such as “residence hall renovations, improving social spaces for students, [and] new programming related to diversity on campus” rather than because of minimum wage increases.
WV: Wages are one component to the Living Wage Campaign, but respect is also vital to the Campaign’s mission. Why is there this two pronged strategy? How are they connected?
MA: Wages and respect are interconnected in the way that through adequate wages, we are showing that we value each individual and their work as an essential part of the Wooster community. Through providing a living wage to employees, we show that their work is vital to making Wooster our home. It is important to respect the staff in many ways such as cleaning up after yourself in Lowry, or cleaning your hair out of the shower drain, but it is also essential to show that we care about the financial wellbeing of all College employees. It is not enough to say that we value the help of every employee while they are cleaning our dorms or making food for us in Lowry, we must also make sure that they are able to provide for themselves. The respect does not stop when a person goes home. We must respect the entire individual by giving them a wage that is worthy of the essential work that they do on this campus.
The College of Wooster staff are here for the students. I have learned of this care and concern from interactions with the staff. Many members of staff that I have talked to have told me about how meaningful it is for them to provide a safe and comfortable space for the students. They want to provide us with security and the ability to devote ourselves to this campus. For the most part, I get the feeling that students respect the staff but that this does not always play out in our day-to-day lives. I do not think that students are purposely disrespectful to the staff, but that some students just get busy. We forget that there is a person who comes in and cleans all of the paper towels off of the bathroom floor and that the piles of trash that you set in the hallway need to be taken out by someone. We need to remember the faces of the jobs that are done. As member of the Wooster community, we need to make this a safe space for the people that make this campus our home.
WV: Have other universities/institutions successfully implemented living wages for their staff?
SL: Yes. Duquesne University has a minimum wage for its employees of $16 an hour (It is important to note that this wage is for its employees. Like most colleges, Duquesne has outsourced its dining services and bookstore so these wages do not apply to those workers). Duquesne has been steadily raising its minimum wage for the last few years, and because Duquesne is a Catholic university, its president cited Catholic values for deciding to increase the minimum wage. Also of note with Duquesne: it has about 10,000 students, including graduate students, but its endowment is smaller than ours. Endowments are sometimes measured on a per student basis, which really makes Duquesne’s endowment look much smaller than ours. Undergraduate tuition for liberal arts at Duquesne this year is less than our tuition, but they make it work.
Georgetown has a living wage policy; like Duquesne, Georgetown cites its Catholic values as to why it pays a living wage.
These are just a couple of the schools that have living wages. Duke recently raised its minimum wage as well.
I would advise anyone interested in learning about LWC to read our philosophy, which can be obtained by speaking to any of us.