"“When are you kids gonna start getting radical?” The question was posed by an elderly woman during a meeting on fair wages for U.Va. employees. To the woman, it was as if we, the students, did not care about the issue. Indeed, very few students were even present at the meeting.

As she spoke, sitting in a St. Paul’s Memorial Church pew ten feet to the right of the altar, her prayer of petition held the feet of the few university students in attendance to the fire: Where were the energized legions camping out in protest on Carr’s Hill? Where were the informed university community members speaking up for justice? Where was the collective youthful spirit, the only force with the power to bring about real change at the university?

This wage-oriented meeting—University of the Poor, The Persistence of Poverty: Four Community Discussions—honed in on a startling fact, unmentioned in Frommer’s ranking of Charlottesville as the best place to live in the US: one in four city residents live in poverty. This, the third University of the Poor conversation, held January 31 in St. Paul’s—an Episcopalian church across the street from the Rotunda—focused on employment, wages and the unrepented sins of U.Va.

The University of Virginia employs 17,000 people, making it the largest employer in Albermarle County. As Jan Cornell, one of the University of the Poor discussion facilitators and president of the Staff Union at the University of Virginia (SUUVA), put it, “U.Va. doesn’t really care if their employees are underpaid. Being the biggest employer in town they figure they can always get people to work for them. They are really the only game in town. And they are very aware of that.”

Students at U.Va., led by the CIO Living Wage (LW), have been speaking up for the workers. LW member Kevin Simowitz said that the living wage is calculated to “take into account housing, food, childcare, transportation, healthcare, other necessities (utilities), and taxes.’” The momentum generated next week by LW will, in large part, determine the course of wage policies at U.Va. To create change, the organization has requested that students call and email President John T. Casteen III, attend their large group meeting next Monday night, and be on the steps of the Rotunda for a press conference at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 21.

Simowitz added that, while “the campaign isn’t addressing it explicitly, there are other worker issues that are definitely tied” into the work LW does. According to Simowitz, some of these issues include U.Va. bullying its employees (e.g. by scaring them away from joining SUUVA) and outsourcing short-term, costly jobs to non-Charlottesville workers.

The university restricts the career paths of its workers, making it harder for them to earn more over time. By not actively promoting advancement from within, employees are typically stuck in jobs with little or no opportunity for upward mobility.

“U.Va. wants to keep employees ‘in their place.’ U.Va. is a plantation. Minorities are washing the dishes and cleaning toilets and serving food. It is just horrific. But if you do kiss ass and get along with your supervisor you can usually get a raise here and there,” Cornell said.

As discussed during the University of the Poor meeting, the university will create a two-tier pay scale system as part of the charter bill by July 2006. Workers hired after that date will have a completely different pay scale, which may pit employees working the same job for different salaries against one another. According to Cornell, if U.Va. has its way, the university will be able to lower the pay scale of the new group so that in ten years everyone will earn lower wages with worse benefits.

Part of the problem for U.Va. employees is that few are unionized: only 3% have of staff are SUUVA members, Cornell noted. She cites many reasons for this low membership rate. First, U.Va. restricts SUUVA leaders from making presentations about the union on university property. Few workers hear about ways to join SUUVA or the benefits the union offers because they cannot organize at their workplace.

“This is the South. Many folks in the area are not familiar with labor unions or the labor movement,” Cornell said.

Furthermore, she notes that employees are afraid of the consequences of banding together: “the fear factor is high.” Managers perpetuate the myth that joining a union is illegal and threaten their employees with being fired if they join.

Since U.Va. employs 13% of the Charlottesville community, one might think that the school would feel more responsible for the city’s prosperity on all socio-economic levels. Instead it has tried to cut costs by outsourcing, especially for construction projects. For example, the construction of John Paul Jones Arena utilized outsourced labor from Pennsylvania. By not employing workers from the community, U.Va. ignores Charlottesville’s high rate of poverty, which is due largely to unemployment. In a Daily Progress article last year, Board of Visitors member Warren M. Thompson was quoted as suggesting that the university should consider outsourcing long term university positions like “housekeeping and grounds care.”

The amount of money the university wastes on expensive glamour projects, overpaid administrators and coaches demonstrates that the university cares little about building a better Charlottesville economy. U.Va. frivolously spent $7,000,000 to move Varsity Hall 200 ft. and $600,000 for a new kitchen on President Casteen’s Carr’s Hill estate. In attempts to improve the university’s image, U.Va. has built a new cafeteria, an art museum, a basketball stadium, a nanotechnology building, a performing arts center, a nurses’ building and an extension of Cabell out into the JPA parking lot. Describing every powerful administrator’s desire for construction, one participant in the University of the Poor conversation made the analogy that “it’s as if every pharaoh needs his own temple.” Yet, the university does not try to improve its image as an employer that supports the community through fair employment practices and just compensation.

The issue students are most rallying around is the idea of underpaid university workers not receiving a living wage. Employees have an entrance salary of only $8.88 per hour according to recent data released under the auspices of a FOIA request made by interested parties. The current living wage, which factors in the cost of living as a measurement of the costs of food, clothing, transportation and housing, is $10.72 per hour plus benefits such as healthcare for full-time employees.

Hoping to have employee salaries reflect this living wage limit, LW is beginning to escalate its campaign. For the past few weeks, LW has been collecting signatures for their petition to the administration. The CIO has collected over seven hundred signatures and has been endorsed by twenty-three student groups. Over the next week, the group will make its strongest push yet for a living wage with other events such as a press conference with local media on the steps of the Rotunda.

From his work with LW, Simowitz predicted what will happen if the university does not listen to the student voices: “[LW is] prepared to move beyond rhetoric if asking nicely does not work. We recognize that this injustice is an incredibly important and essential issue and we will take steps to make the university prioritize it.”" (Colquhoun Trepagnier, The Declaration, February 20, 2006)