A Lingering Hunger: New Livable Wage Contested

Published May 1, 2007

By Hazel Ryerson

Friday afternoon, after a meeting with president Fogel, the SLAP hunger strikers voted unanimously to end the hunger strike.

SLAP accepted Fogel’s verbal promise to set up a new task force, similar to last year’s Basic Needs Task Force except that it will be permanent and include continued student participation.

This new task force, which Fogel promised to set up “shortly” will be a venue for students to continue to dialogue with the administration about livable wage and the implementation of a Livable Wage policy for the University, as well as the yet unaddressed issue of implementing a livable wage for contracted employees (i.e. Sodexho workers).

The task force is the most important gain of the Livable Wage Campaign. The other important gain is Fogel’s commitment to “Transparency” in all union contract and wage negotiations.

On Thursday, the administration released a report from the Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) showing that UVM’s current wage floor (a result of SLAP’s past efforts) is actually quite close to a UVM-specific livable wage. The most up to date livable wage for a single person living in the Burlington area is $13.94/hour. UVM’s wage floor for all directly employed workers will be $10.75/hour starting this July. However the JFO factored in UVM’s employee benefits (including tuition remission, retirement and healthcare) at $2.94f/hour, totaling $13.69/hour, only 25 cents off from the livable wage.

Although the JFO is a non-partisan government body, the UVM specific livable wage is suspect for a two major reasons.

First, tuition remission is factored in at $1.21/hour, a benefit that, although valuable and important, is not something that all employees are able to utilize while working full time and also is not something that the Basic Needs Task Force included in their calculations of the UVM specific livable wage.

Secondly, it is unclear why the JFO agreed to calculate a UVM specific livable wage. It is unprecedented for the JFO to do institution specific livable wage calculations.

According to SGA president Kesha Ram, the “SGA and the Office of the President jointly asked for the JFO to weigh in” and calculate a UVM specific livable wage.

The new UVM-specific livable wage is currently undergoing scrutiny, as it appears erroneous on numerous counts.

The issue of contracted employees remains unaddressed. These employees, namely Sodexho workers make about $9.00/hour without the added UVM benefits. At Friday’s meeting Fogel said, “I have very little time to think about contracted workers.”

Maybe a 23rd Vice President is necessary to address the issue of contracted workers. Currently, UVM employs 22 vice presidents, provosts, assistant vice presidents and assistant provosts each earning over $115,000.

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