On Wednesday, February 29, the Living Wage Campaign ended a 13-day hunger strike involving 26 students, more than 100 solidarity strikers and the support of thousands of students, faculty and community members.
Despite the fact that both contract and direct employees were threatened with retaliation for even speaking with us, a number of employees were willing to risk speaking out at rallies and to the press.
The fact that more were not, when so many support our campaign, should be a shameful wake-up call to those who tout the University's secure labor atmosphere. To those employees who spoke out, and to others who have been threatened: Our campaign stands with you in absolute solidarity, and we will use all tools at our disposal, including legal action, to defend workers who are disciplined for exercising their free speech rights. If you have concerns or would like to speak with us confidentially, you can contact us at livingwageatuva@gmail.com.
To the low-wage employees of our University: On behalf of all students and faculty of good conscience, we extend our deepest thanks for the hard work which you do here every day. We recognize that the University would not function without those of you who feed us, construct and clean our buildings, tend our Grounds and keep us healthy, safe and comfortable. We humbly apologize to you that our proud institution, with billions of dollars at its disposal, does not see fit to pay you the wages you so unquestionably deserve - wages sufficient to live in the community you make possible. We are proud of Mr. Jefferson's University in many ways, but we are deeply ashamed at the historic and ongoing way it has treated its most vulnerable employees. We will continue to do everything we can to pressure the administration to do what is right, for both direct and contract employees.
The campaign began considering the hunger strike after years of living wage activism on Grounds. It was a difficult and controversial tactic, and one which no one involved with the campaign wanted to employ. Our decision to go ahead with the strike was based on the fact that this campaign has tried nearly everything else. In the past three years, we have held teach-ins, rallies, marches, speaker series, class presentations, debates and more.
In 2006, 17 students and one professor - Wende Marshall - were arrested during a sit-in in Madison Hall. Prof. Marshall, a gifted intellectual and teacher and an inspiration to the campaign, subsequently lost her job. For the last fourteen years, we have done everything possible to make the case in a respectful and rule-abiding manner, and we spent much of last year in meetings with top administrators, including two meetings with President Teresa Sullivan. None of it achieved a living wage.
To those who think the hunger strike was too extreme or that it didn't respect the University's traditions, we say: We need to wake up to the reality that the people who make our lives possible are suffering every day. Realize the common humanity of the people serving our food and cleaning our bathrooms.
Recognize that too many of them work second and third jobs, rarely see their children, live in public housing or eat at food banks. The tactic of a hunger strike may be extreme, but the situation facing employees is an ongoing emergency, and it deserves an extreme response. It deserves our outrage.
We are no longer willing to limit ourselves to teach-ins, meetings and rallies. We are proud of the work we have done and make no apologies for our actions. We would do it again. We might do it again.
To the entire community, we invite you to inform yourself regarding the issue of a living wage at the University. Regardless of your eventual position, take the time to read our research document, "Keeping Our Promises," at livingwageatuva.org. Read the statements from the University. Talk to administrators. For our part, we welcome the scrutiny and the critical dialogue our action has inspired. But let us be clear: This campaign is not about a particular tactic, or press coverage, or inspiring or winning debates. It is about real people: the low-wage employees who make this institution possible. It is about a moral choice which the university makes to pay abjectly low wages. It is about taking responsibility for all the members of our caring community, not just the convenient and visible ones. Before she became president of the University, Sullivan wrote a book explicitly endorsing a 'living wage' for all workers. We call on her to summon the moral courage to realize that vision.
David Flood is a student in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
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