The Northwestern Living Wage Campaign needs a reality check.
Although buried in diplomatic language, University President Morton O. Schapiro’s intentions are clear: He is not going to adopt a living wage policy. In his extensively developed opinion, establishing an elevated minimum wage for Northwestern’s subcontracted workers is simply “bad economics.”
This reality, however, does not mean the student activists’ efforts are in vain. Schapiro’s administration recently implemented “community benefits,” one of the campaign’s requests, and he promised to take a closer look at companies vying for new outsourcing contracts instead of choosing the lowest bidder.
What this reality does mean is the NLWC needs a new strategy and possibly a new name to obtain its desired result, better wages for NU’s outsourced laborers. That a group of undergraduates might convince an internationally renowned labor economist to change his mind on a subject that is literally his life’s work seems improbable at best. Even the campaign’s attempt to shift the debate from economics to moral responsibility is ultimately futile because, for Schapiro, the two are inseparable.
To succeed, the students can take two apparent routes. They could focus the campaign’s efforts on lobbying the administration as each contract comes up, creating a de facto living wage in which workers earn what they need without NU making an explicit statement.
Or they could do what students did at the only three schools that have adopted comprehensive living wage policies: rebel. At Georgetown University, activists went on a 10-day hunger strike, shedding a combined 270 pounds. At Harvard University, they occupied the president’s office for three weeks before the administration caved. Years later at Stanford University, they organized a “Solidarity Fast,” which lasted nine days.
These diametrically opposed courses of action are obviously imperfect. But one thing is clear, even through the polysyllabic jargon of an economist and tight-lipped bureaucracy of a major research university: The campaign has not moved an inch closer to getting Schapiro’s signature on a living wage policy.
A LIVING HISTORY
The term “living wage” first appeared in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum” and became a central tenet of the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to absolutist communism and unrestricted capitalism during the 20th century.
The concept entered American politics in 1994, when Baltimore adopted a living wage policy that the Maryland state legislature would eventually mirror. Like most of the nearly 200 laws in cities and states nationwide that would follow its blueprint, the Baltimore ordinance limited the increased pay requirement to city-contracted services. A notable exception occurred in 2005, when Santa Fe, N.M. amended its 2003 ordinance to include all municipally licensed businesses. Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed a living wage resolution for Chicago in 2006.
According to the NLWC website, a living wage is “how much a family of a certain composition in a given place must earn to adequately meet their basic needs.” Often called a self-sufficiency standard, this figure is $13.23 per hour plus medical benefits in northern Cook County, according to the nonprofit organization Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.
Although only 50 of NU’s roughly 5,000 employees earn less than this amount, the students are striving to make living wages a reality for the University’s hundreds of outsourced laborers who receive their paychecks from subcontractors such as Sodexo and Aramark. About 90 percent of these workers earn less than a living wage, according to union officials.
Many NLWC organizers said they joined the campaign because they felt a moral obligation to the workers.
“I do have very personal relationships with people in my dining hall,” said Weinberg sophomore Hayley Altabef, NLWC research coordinator. “To know that we’re not taking care of them in the same way is distressing.”
The campaign began in November, when students from Northwestern Community Development Corps circulated a petition that would eventually amass about 1,300 signatures, including dozens of faculty members. They paired it with a letter to Schapiro, barely two months into his first year. By the end of Fall Quarter, they had a meeting with the president, who said he would look into the issue.
Along with the numerous student groups that have endorsed it, the NLWC hosted an array of events this year including an informational session for prospective students in April and a “teach-in” two weeks ago. The students wrote Valentine’s Day cards to Schapiro reading, “Have a heart, President Schapiro.”
In late February, more than 370 members of the NU community marched in an NLWC-organized demonstration along Sheridan Road to the Rebecca Crown Center, which houses Schapiro’s office. The protesters shouted, “We will rally, rant and rage, ‘til we see a living wage,” and carried signs with phrases like “This is for my family members who didn’t make it to college” and “Schapiro, be a hero.”
The rally drew little reaction from the administration aside from a noncommittal FAQ about employment at NU and the costs of implementing a living wage policy. University spokesman Al Cubbage e-mailed the document to The Daily as the event was taking place.
The campaign achieved its only tangible victory to date when the administration promised in April to provide subcontracted workers with “community benefits,” such as access to University parking lots and WildCARD privileges.
The students lobbied for these benefits by arguing that outsourced laborers are as much a part of the NU community as the directly employed staff, a pivotal contention for similar campaigns at other schools. The president’s approval of an NLWC plan was viewed by many as the first crack in the administration’s slowly crumbling opposition to a student movement gaining momentum.
But Schapiro told The Daily in January, in his first interview after being introduced to the budding campaign, that he recognized subcontracted laborers as part of the NU community. He even thanked the students for bringing the workers’ exclusion to his attention. A closer look at the president’s words throughout the year reveals that his resistance to a living wage policy remains as strong as ever.
THE SCHAPIRO FACTOR
Putting aside the merit of its conclusion, Schapiro’s argument is nuanced, multifaceted and well structured. In interviews with The Daily, he quickly fires off retorts to every counterargument, provides hypothetical and empirical examples with complex math he computes in his head and even preempts further challenges before shooting them down.
And based on the attacks many NLWC-supporting students (notably not those actively involved in the campaign) use to criticize the administration, his position is also largely unknown. Stereotypical depictions of money-hungry Wall Street-types, a widespread view of the University administration, have proved detrimental to dialogue with a president who boasts a lengthy résumé of development work in some of the world’s poorest countries.
“As someone who has devoted his life to social justice, it bothers me a little to get some nasty e-mails about if I cared about the world from a 20-year-old who’s never done anything besides protest outside my window,” Schapiro infamously said in an interview with The Daily following the February demonstration.
In short, the president’s main contention rests on a premise taught universally in introductory economics classes: the elasticity of the labor demand curve. When an employer is forced to pay higher wages, he argues, the business sometimes cannot afford to employ as many workers.
This principle often enters public dialogue when the federal government considers raising the minimum wage. Based on interviews with economists from various top institutions, academia is more or less split on the is
sue. Conservatives typically apply the labor demand curve to argue that a wage increase will cause unemployment and restrict free-market growth; Liberals say the unemployment forecasts are often overstated, contending the increase will be a bottom-up surge for the economy.
Here’s the curveball: Schapiro is a liberal in this regard. Increasing the minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour to about $9 per hour, he argues, will result in minimal job loss because current data show that “there’s not that much flatness (in the curve) over that range.” But jumping the minimum wage beyond that, to $13.23 per hour for example, is likely to cause higher unemployment, he said.
Schapiro also questions the solvency of instituting living wage policies by arguing that any intervention into the union-subcontractor negotiation process will take a historically valuable bargaining chip away from workers: lower wages.
“Should I say, in order to look better, that ‘I’m sorry. You’re not going to be able to negotiate for limited coinsurance or monthly payments for health care or vacations or job security or pensions,’ just so we can say the wage is higher so people say, ‘Oh, we’re getting a living wage?'” Schapiro said in a March interview. “The answer is no.”
For Schapiro, low wages for NU’s outsourced laborers are a reason the University laid off fewer workers during the recent economic downturn than other schools did.
“The vast majority of colleges and universities had a lot of layoffs over the last two years in this terrible recession,” Schapiro said. “I don’t think we did. I don’t think we did directly, and I don’t think they did through the contractors. So clearly, doesn’t that indicate to you that people sacrifice wages for job security?”
The only available example from one of the three schools that have committed to the living wage appears to support the president’s argument. One union at Stanford, which enacted its policy three years ago, saw a decline from about 1,500 workers to about 1,250 workers when its contract was renewed last year, a union official said. Stanford only attributed about 50 of those lost jobs to recessionary layoffs, meaning the rest were eliminated in negotiations when the line between financial constraints and power struggles often blurs.
“They tried to cut a percentage of the budget, and the end result was bodies,” said Ron Edwards, a Service Employees International Union Local 2007 official. “They did eliminate some departments. Some people left here. Their positions won’t be rebuilt.”
Information from the other schools is highly guarded. All three adopted their living wage policies in the past decade, and the topic remains highly politicized on those campuses. Sharing a nonsensically mutual fear that the same number could be detrimental to both sides, neither the unions nor outsourcing companies disclose the post-policy adoption totals of subcontracted workers. This trepidation highlights the confusion that often surrounds muddled debates regarding living wages at schools, municipalities and other institutions.
If the NLWC organizers do not know the ins and outs of Schapiro’s argument, it should come as no surprise. The president has not sat down with the students since their December appointment, although the campaigners say they have made several requests for another meeting.
“We’ve continually asked him to be part of this conversation,” NLWC coordinator Matthew Fischler said. “He’s delegated this issue to (Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene) Sunshine. He’s deferred it all.”
Schapiro denied receiving an invitation from the campaign.
“I’m unaware of any attempt by anybody to meet with me, but I know that Gene continues to meet with the group,” the president said, weeks after Fischler’s comment. “I think they’re working pretty productively with the leadership and that group. I don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t continue.”
While the campaigners agree their meetings with Sunshine are productive, Fischler expressed frustration with Schapiro’s delegating the issue because it prevents the NLWC from engaging the only person with the power to approve a living wage policy. Schapiro, who is overall remarkably accessible for a president of a major university, regularly comments on the issue to The Daily. He even agreed to a lengthy and unplanned one-on-one interview for this article, an unheard-of event during Henry Bienen’s administration.
For Fischler, Schapiro’s vocal presence in campus media and comparative silence to the NLWC itself results in a bizarrely distant mutual awareness.
“That’s the most interesting dynamic: to have a more candid conversation in public than we are over e-mail or in our one meeting,” said Fischler, a Weinberg senior.
LOST IN THE SHUFFLE
While macroeconomics lecture notes counter cries for compassion on comment threads and the University spits out multimillion dollar price tags to NLWC propositions, one group’s perspective appears to have been taken for granted: the workers.
Although subcontractors cannot penalize their employees for being interviewed during breaks or outside work, most declined to comment anyway, fearing indirect consequences of having their names appear in print. The only individuals who agreed to speak without anonymity were union organizers or workers who saw their leaders being interviewed. Most, however, offered opinions off the record.
NU’s subcontracted workers overwhelmingly said they support the NLWC’s efforts. But upon further pressing, many admitted they are more enthusiastic to see students fighting for them than ideologically tied to the adoption of a living wage policy.
“We did not give a figure,” said Maurice Nix, union steward for Norris University Center’s Sodexo workers, referring to the campaign’s proposed NU minimum wage of $13.23 per hour. “We were thrown a figure, and we were told that this is what we’re going to push for.”
A boisterous and quotable personality who has become somewhat of a symbol on campus during the campaign’s first year, Nix said he admires the students’ desire to help workers at all.
“The shade of a needle is better than a hot sun shining down on you,” Nix said.
Phillip Smith, a grill cook at Willard Residential College, has worked at NU for more than three years. If he does not get a wage increase soon, he plans to quit.
“I need a raise terribly,” said Smith, who earns $10.20 per hour.
Fighting the administration is a pointless endeavor in Smith’s view. A more productive strategy, he said, would focus on the upcoming Sodexo contract, which will be negotiated next summer.
“Schapiro’s not going to budge; Sodexo’s not going to budge,” Smith said.
NLWC organizers say they are open to re-evaluating the $13.23 figure or using a different organization to calculate the number. Accepting a plan that lacks a specific minimum wage, however, is out of the question for them.
“Without a number in the final policy agreement, there’s no accountability,” Fischler said. “We’re completely open to negotiating that number.”
But Schapiro is unlikely to be convinced by an argument that rests on the need for his administration to be accountable to a policy he does not support in the first place. Once again, the NLWC hits a dead end in the effort to win over Schapiro by dialogue alone.
THE ROAD AHEAD
In the past decade, dozens of collegiate living wage campaigns made waves on campuses, challenged administrations and eventually lost momentum. A vast majority still exist as student groups past their prime, a few activists fighting to regain the popularity their causes once held. Others have withered away completely.
But three have succeeded. After contacting students from Harvard, Georgetown and Stanford, NLWC organizers are confident in their progress and the direction of the campaign.
“The campaign is sustainable,” said coordinator Michael Alperin, a SESP junior. “The capacity is there to take whatever step is necessary based on discussions wi
th the University.”
Still, the students are well aware of the extreme measures taken by students at these schools.
“That might have to happen,” Fischler said.
Schapiro, who said the University has a “contingency plan” should such a demonstration take place but declined to comment on its specifics, knows the danger.
“If they really want a certain agenda, there’s a certain productive way to do it and a not productive way,” he said in April. “So if it’s really about the issue, civil behavior is the key to getting anything thought about seriously.”
So will the campaign continue to fight its uphill battle with words alone? Or will doing so risk fading into the background of the historically apathetic NU conscience?
At the end of the day, the Northwestern Living Wage Campaign’s biggest mistake may have been choosing its name. The students have already caused the administration to provide outsourced workers with peripheral benefits. They even got the president to admit that subcontractors’ wages would be off his radar were it not for their efforts. And at the very least, they have ensured upcoming contracts will face intense scrutiny from the entire University community.
NU’s subcontracted workers will be undeniably better off thanks to the NLWC.
But by pigeonholing themselves with one ultimate goal, the campaign set itself up to be viewed as a failure if the University does not codify the words “living wage.” And given Schapiro’s unwavering opposition and the history of similar campaigns, it is unlikely they will achieve this without taking a step toward radicalism, a step no one seems to support.
