Brown has chance to increase workers' wages (This ran in Projo, October 13, 2006)
Brown University's public relations machine loves to tout Brown's status as the Providence metropolitan area's third-largest employer -- doing so helps make the university an A-list power broker, justifies its tax-exempt status, and means that the well-being of the whole state is wrapped up in the University's drive to expand and acquire new property.
The university does, of course, play an important role in our community, and to the extent to which it provides good jobs, the broader population of Providence and Rhode Island can benefit. But the sad fact of the matter is that while Brown has succeeded in branding itself as the lefty, freewheelin', socially concious Ivy, its business practices frequently resemble those of corporate America's worst offenders: paying wages that make it impossible to raise a family on just one job, stringing workers along as long-term temps; requiring some workers to pay half or even all of their health insurance costs; and consistently giving workers only 28 or 29 hours of work per week, keeping them just below the 1300 hours per year threshhold that would afford them full-time status, pay, and benefits.
This week, union contracts governing Brown's relationships with hundreds of its dining services and facilities employees are up. The university is in the midst of a highly successful fundraising effort -- and with an endowment now topping $1.9 billion. Meanwhile, many Brown employees have to work two jobs in order to make ends meet, leaving them little time to spend with their families.
Brown could do a lot to demonstrate good faith to its workers (and the rest of Providence) by rewarding their hard work through wages that reflect the prosperity of the university, and that make it possible for workers to meet their families' basic needs while working only one job.
Unfortunately, the university's current proposal to its dining workers includes 2.5% yearly wage increases that would be mitigated by pushing more of the health care costs onto the workers, and increased health-care copays, and would be easily outpaced by the 4.5% inflation rate. Over the course of the 3-year contract that's now expiring, dining workers' wages lost 4.2% of their real value. (The university's investments increased in value by 50% over the same period, and President Ruth Simmons' compensation in fiscal year 2005 was $684,000, up 19% from the previous year.)
At present, more than one-third of dining service workers don't have access to affordable health care. Many of them end up spending a quarter or more of their wages just to pay for the 50% to 100% of their insurance premiums that the university won't cover. The remedy is simple -- guarantee employees 32 hours of work a week over the 41 week year, so that they qualify for full benefits.
It's a hopeful sign that students -- many of whose financial aid plans have them working alongside cafeteria workers -- have joined in the fight for fair contracts for those who cook and serve their food. Dozens joined a rally of 150 people this week outside of University Hall, that was followed by a delegation to the Simmons' office.
To many of those concerned students, there must have been a palpable irony: While countless Brown student class hours are dedicated to researching the causes of Providence's housing affordability crisis and deplorable 41 percent child poverty rate, swift action by the University to address its employees' plight could be the most powerful lesson of all.
Simmons said it best herself, upon her November 2000 election as Brown's president:
"I was recently asked whether universities should teach values. My response was that universities, whether implicitly or otherwise, always, always teach values. They teach values in the way they hire and treat employees."
Her words were prescient, and true of not just universities, but all employers. As the contracts' deadlines pass, one hopes that Simmons and her administration remember them.