USC workers deserve higher wage, regular hours


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Hundreds of USC students and local activists gathered around Tommy Trojan last Thursday to rally for higher wages for USC workers. The rally, which took place just after the upload of a YouTube video that shows a USC worker confronting President C. L. Max Nikias about her wages, mobilized the local community around the issue of paying workers the wages they deserve.

Certainly, the issue is not limited to USC’s campus. In a long-awaited move, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently proposed increasing the minimum wage to $13.25 per hour by 2017, and others have proposed a hike to $15.25 per hour by 2019.

And yet, during negotiations between council members and labor unions in Los Angeles and between the UNITE HERE Local 11 union and USC administration, the economic lens of the minimum wage has overshadowed the human aspect of paying workers a living wage.

The personal aspect, then, explains precisely why the YouTube video, which has now garnered more than 7,000 views, has pulled on the heartstrings of so many. In the video, USC hospitality worker Abigail Lopez explains to an at-a-loss Nikias the difficulties of covering bills when making only $11 an hour.

Nikias’ reaction is on some level understandable — his reality is removed from that of earning $11 an hour. And it is so easy for policymakers and administrators to turn to macroeconomics to guide their wage choices — increasing wages from $11 to $15 an hour for every worker throughout the university surely poses a significant cost.

But if administrators like numbers so much, then perhaps they should look at the microeconomics — they should consider that the cost of living in Los Angeles is 40.9 percent greater than the national average. They should consider the cost of refusing to allow a consistent 40-hour work week. They should consider the loyalty of workers who have been serving at USC for 30 or 40 years and yet still receive $11 an hour. And as Los Angeles’ largest private employer, they should consider the thousands of workers’ lives they impact, and perhaps, as a rally saying goes, they should put people over profit.

USC’s refusal to pay workers a living wage seems particularly ironic when considering the family-oriented nature of the university.

“We talk about Trojan family all the time, but we don’t see that when we treat our workers with disrespect by paying them poverty wages,” said Chanelle Ya, a member of the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation.

As a premier private academic institution, USC appeals to the masses because of its emphasis on personal relationships. Small class sizes prize individualized attention, remarkable advising services foster personal and professional growth, and a remarkably caring faculty ensures that each student receives the benefits of careful commitment. And yet, workers, though they are committed to working every day to improve the lives of students, are only lost among a sea of bureaucratic calculations and exempt from the Trojan family.

Wages are not purely an economic issue, and they should not only be discussed by those who wield the power to determine them. It is an intrinsic human right that workers’ wages allow them to feed their families. And it is the social responsibility of the university, as a global citizen wielding incredible influence, to set a precedent to pay its workers a decent wage.

Part of USC’s influence lies in its prestige as an academic institution that other institutions look up to, and part of it lies in the students that soak up the reputation and practices of USC itself. The thousands of young entrepreneurs and managers and future venture capitalists that now study here may very well run their own corporations one day, and they look to this institution for guidance. And if not for our sake, for theirs we cannot afford to perpetuate the cruel view of workers as just cogs in the machine.

It is at times easy to forget that though it may operate like a business, USC is a not-for-profit university. Perhaps it should start acting like one.

3 replies
    • USCPlumber
      USCPlumber says:

      At upwards of $50,000.00 per Student and $1,500.00 per bed I think USC can more then afford to pay all “Workers” a salary far above a living wage. University standards call for a 2.5% pay increase per year for all full time employees. That being said we here at USC got a paltry .025% pay raise this year which equals a whopping .80/hour. Meanwhile, Faculty members got a 10% pay increase along with a per diem raise and a cost of living adjustment. Excuse me but my living costs increased over the past year and I don’t live on campus in apartments or dorms that are paid for by the University. And I still have to pay for my meals every day that aren’t covered by USC. Lucky for me I can almost buy an extra tank of gas to get to work per week.
      I know the next statement and yes im grateful to have a job, but the point is how can a not for profit University which depends on people like us to keep this University running refuse to pay their employees a better then average salary. Shame on this President and the other clueless Administration suits to call for a 6% reduction of staff in all departments in this Presidents first year in office and then turn around and authorize spending 32 million dollars that we know of on the Presidents University residence at Mudd Estate while employees are needlessly thrown into the street like a piece of trash.

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