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Students Sit-In for Living Wage
Posted on April 18, 2005
Have you seen Struggling to Survive? Teenagers from Eastern Kentucky explore the difficulties of living on a $5.15 hourly wage.
Students at Washington University in St Louis, MO began have been occupying the admissions office in Brookings Hall since April 4th. They began this sit-in to demand the university pay its workers a living wage. Thirteen students have since began a hunger strike on Monday.
The St Louis Board of Alderman has determined the hourly wage needed to survive in St Louis to be $10.05 per hour (with benefits), indexed annually for inflation. According to the Student-Worker Alliance (SWA), many janitorial, food service, and groundskeeping workers at the university make less than $8 per hour. SWA has proposed a Code of Conduct for contractor wages and working conditions.
This campaign has been endorsed by Washington U faculty, national AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, Danny Glover, and former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, among others.
What you can do:
1. Check out the Indyvoter website for more information.
2. Contact Chancellor Mark Wrighton and let him know you support a living wage for Wash U workers.
phone calls: 314.935.5100
email: wrighton@wustl.edu
3. Get media on this! If you have a blog, radio show, news column - interview the Student-Worker Alliance to get the story of their ongoing fight for worker's rights to the public.
SWA's media contact:
Ojiugo Uzoma: ouzoma@wustl.edu 314-680-8016
4. Check out the League's new Living Wage information section with resources on how to organize your own living wage campaign.