Imagine yourself a University of Colorado Boulder custodian cleaning a building. You are somewhat invisible in the swirl of campus life. You survive on a poverty wage and commute to work from a long distance early in the morning since you can’t afford to live in Boulder. One day, you come across the “Colorado Creed.”
Â
The creed is on display everywhere.
It’s part of an enormously expensive CU-contracted public relations “rebranding” effort called “Be Boulder.”
The text of the creed is framed in residence hall common areas. There are brass building plaques at locations such as Norlin Library, UMC, the Coors Events Center and Folsom Field. It’s in campus promotional literature such as admissions applications, course catalogs and email correspondence. There is a painting display of the creed in the rec center as well as embossed flagstone sidewalk slabs in key traffic areas.
Here is what the “Colorado Creed” says:
“Act with honor, integrity and accountability in my interactions with students, faculty, staff and neighbors.
“Respect the rights of others and accept our differences.
“Contribute to the greater good of this community.”
Every student, faculty and staff member is supposed to live by these principles.
Now imagine yourself an employee in CU’s Housing and Dining Services (the people who serve the food in the cafeterias and who are housekeepers in the dorms). You get a human resourcesapproved memo from Housing and Dining managers saying your pay is going up to nearly $15 an hour. Maybe the “Colorado Creed” isn’t just a bunch of empty platitudes designed to combat all of the bad publicity about CU being a big party school.
Unfortunately, CU’s Chief Financial Officer Kelly Fox vetoed the move and said the university would have to determine what the proper “market wage” is.
The Colorado WINS (Workers for Innovative and New Solutions) union protested. They represent state classified employees on campus. They want a living wage, not a “market wage.”
The union has started a petition campaign called “Kelly Fox: Live the Creed!” (petitions.moveon.org/sign/ kelly-fox-live-the-creed ) which calls on Fox to “contribute to the greater good of this community” by paying all CU Boulder employees $15 an hour.
Timothy Morrissey is paid $13.50 an hour at his full-time job at the University Bookstore’s warehouse on east campus. He graduated with honors from CU with a bachelor’s degree in English in 2012. He looked for work for a year but the “the pickings were slim,” and he finally got a minimum wage job at a sandwich shop. It paid less than the gas station attendant job he had before he attended college. He was $40,000 in debt for his undergraduate degree.
Three months later, Morrissey landed the bookstore job which pays better and has benefits. He’s married and has a 1-year-old son. He has had to work two or three jobs. At the moment, he and his wife have a small business working for several Boulder restaurants delivering meals to people in their homes.
Additionally, Morrissey is a full time graduate student in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D).
If that’s not enough, he’s also an active member of the Colorado WINS union. Morrissey says “unions provide an essential voice for workers. Wages are stagnating and a big reason is that unions are being destroyed.” He feels “a university should be a place of opportunity for students and staff. A university should invest in the community and in the people who need it most.”
Recently, WINS filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the state to get pay data on state classified employees throughout Colorado.
As a result, they found out that 2,586 full-time state workers currently earn below $15 an hour. They are disproportionately women and minorities.
The most common salary band is $11- 12 an hour and the most common low wage jobs are custodians, food service workers and childcare aides. Three agencies hire nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the low wage workers between them. They are the Department of Human Services, CU Boulder and Colorado State University.
At CU Boulder, 502 classified workers make less than $15 an hour. Some of them depend on food banks to feed their families. Many have multiple jobs in order to survive.
WINS Communications Coordinator Olga Robak says that while the union only represents classified workers, there are many other campus workers who are earning low wages and that their campaign is for them as well.
Robak says the cost of bringing Housing, Dining and Facilities Management workers to $15 an hour would be approximately $2.3 million. The university can definitely afford it. In 2015-16, CU Boulder’s total revenue is $1.5 billion.
Chancellor Philip DiStefano makes $441K a year ($212 an hour) and CFO Kelly Fox makes $304K a year. DiStefano has had two consecutive raises of more than $20K, which is more than the yearly salary of an entry level Housing and Dining employee.
The union notes that “it would take a dining worker earning $9.50 an hour more than 22 hours to earn what DiStefano earns per hour and more than 15 hours to earn what Fox does ($146 an hour).”
If you are outraged by this situation, there is a rally and march for CU Boulder’s low-wage workers on Thursday Nov. 5 at 3:30 p.m. outside Center for Community and Hallett Hall. Join us.
This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.
