Campus Events | News
WUGWU and SWA members rally, march for a living wage
The Washington University Graduate Workers Union and Student Worker Alliance rallied in partnership with “Fight for $15” this Saturday to advocate for all hourly and salaried individuals on campus to earn a living wage.
At noon, approximately 30 protesters marched to the gates of Francis Field, where participants chanted and passed out pamphlets on wage equality to those who went to the football game on Alumni Day.
“We feel that as…grad workers, custodial workers, food staff, undergraduate workers working at one of the wealthiest universities in the country in terms of endowments, [we] should be able to pay our bills and support our families and ourselves on the wage that Wash. U. pays us,” Washington University Graduate Workers Union (WUGWU) member and third-year Ph.D. candidate Grace Ward said. “That is not a reality for many different workers.”
According to Ward, graduate students are paid $24,000 per year on average. The estimated living wage for individuals living in St. Louis County, according to a living wage calculator developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is $31,000.
“We’re taking the guide from universities like Harvard, where there is an established living wage,” Ward said. “[They have] a floor wage and no campus worker makes less than that. It’s set at a middle-class income so on-campus workers are able to actually support themselves off of their wages.”
Fight for $15 is a global advocacy network that provides support for campaigns aimed at establishing a living hourly wage for employees. The group is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—the same group that WUGWU tried to unionize with last fall.
Student Worker Alliance (SWA) partnered with SEIU in the past for previous unionization efforts and with WUGWU in their fight for better benefits and higher graduate student pay. SWA was particularly involved with Fight for $15 coordinators as they organized around undergraduate students, graduate students and campus workers alike.
According to graduate student Christian Ralph, it was important for SWA and WUGWU to come together on this issue.
“This is an issue that affects the entire community—undergrad and graduate students,” Ralph said. “Right now, many members of SWA are also student workers and on this campus students make at or a little less than $10…We were talking about students who are expected to pay up to $70,000 inclusive to all costs to a school like Washington University, [which has] an endowment of $7.5 billion dollars, and are trying to survive to pay those basic necessities.”
Provost Holden Thorp said that the University has the highest minimum wages in the region.
“I know that there’s a Fight for $15 effort that’s been around for a while and we continue to raise the minimum wage that we have at Wash. U.,” Thorp said. “We’ll continue to do better and better on that over time.”
Ralph believes that SWA will continue to team up with WUGWU in future demonstrations for better pay.
“The Wash. U. grad students and Student Worker Alliance are going to be working together to bring attention to the University about this cause and we are going to use the same tactics that we have used in the past to make sure the University will pay attention to this cause,” Ralph said.
Ward said that WUGWU will continue to plan demonstrations at events where there will be an administrative presence and where they believe they can “apply the most pressure.”
“We’re asking Wash. U….to really put their money where their mouth is in terms of talking about community, about supporting St. Louis,” Ward said. “This would be the opportunity for the administration to reconsider pay scale.”
When asked about future demonstrations, Ward explained that WUGWU is not planning on filing for a union vote with the National Labor Relations Board.
“We will continue to identify as a union, as unionization and reaching a collective bargaining agreement with the University is our ultimate goal,” Ward wrote in a statement to Student Life. “As I understand it, there are currently no legal barriers to Thorp or other members of admin meeting with us.”
Thorp said that as long as WUGWU identifies themselves as a union organization, the University cannot meet with them, citing rules restricting communications between employers and members of minority unions.
“We believe that Wash. U. and other private universities around the country have shown that they’re extremely unwilling to meet the grad workers at the bargaining table,” Ward said. “We believe that our efforts as organizers are better served with a direct-action campaign like the living wage instead of fighting through years with the [National Labor Relations Board] and against the University’s extremely well-paid lawyers.”