Readers at Miami University will no doubt be familiar with today's topic: the strike of food service and maintenance workers here, which has been going on since Friday, September 26. Others may not be so familiar. Well, these workers -- members of Local 209 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) -- went on strike to obtain what they call a "living wage," a wage that would be about 10% higher than what Miami pays them now. First I will offer some facts, then I will offer opinion.

The workers' contract expired in August and Local 209 lobbied Miami for a wage increase. Miami had an independent fact-finder from the state labor board come in to decide what should be done. The fact-finder found that dining and maintenance workers' wages were lower than they ought to be, and recommended a wage increase of 15% over the next three years. The university's Board of Trustees voted to reject the fact-finder's proposal and instead offered Local 209 employees a 4.25% wage increase.

Local 209, for its part, would be happy with a 6% wage increase. At the same time, though, the union has also requested that Miami become a "closed shop," meaning that employees who work in housing, dining, or maintenance must join the union to work here.

Let's go to the videotape

Never in a hundred bizillion years would Miami's Board of Trustees switch to a closed shop system. That would give the union far too much power, and the Board loves having power. It loves having power so much that it hired a pretty mediocre president -- James Garland -- so that it didn't have to wrangle with someone with actual leadership skills. And, in truth, the closed shop request is pretty silly. That's just Local 209 trying to get its foot in the door, which reeks of suspicion. Let the workers decide whether or not they want to join the union.

Now we come to the part about a "living wage." What does that mean? Miami Student columnist Josh Vogt suggested that Local 209 members wanted a "comfortable living wage," implying that they already have a living wage and now want some more money to be able to live comfortably. But what does that mean?

"Living wage" does not apply to individuals, but to families. In a letter to all Miami students, Vice President for Student Affairs Richard Nault notes, "Entry-level workers in the AFSCME unit, such as a staff member who may serve food, do grounds maintenance, handle trash disposal, etc., earn $8.14 per hour. The average worker in the bargaining unit makes $11.06 per hour." A clever way to determine the annual salary of an hourly-paid worker is to multiply the hourly wage by 2000, which reflects forty hours of work per week with two weeks of vacation per year. (40 hours/week x 50 weeks/year = 2000). This means that the lowest-paid AFSCME worker earns $16,280 per year. According to the 2000 Federal Poverty Guidelines, this is poverty-level living for a family of four (but not a family of one, two, or three).

One of my friends stands by the strictly economic argument that the university should not increase these workers' wages, since the market has determined that the optimum price for labor is at what it is currently at, and any attempts by the university to change this price would be inflationary, a "handout," wrong, or any number of evil things. But the world is more than mere economics. Is it ethical to pay workers with families low wages? The university is paying these workers a wage in which they can only just get by. If nothing terrible ever happened to them, they would be fine. If someone becomes ill or if the car breaks down, though, there will be major financial problems.

Then there's the personal responsibility argument, which says, "Why should we pay them more? They don't deserve it. If they didn't want to clean toilets, they should have gone to college." But not everyone can go to college, especially not while supporting a family (and many of these workers do have families to support).

My answer to all of these economic arguments is: can you support a family on $20,000 per year? To give these workers a wage where they do not have to live paycheck to paycheck is not anyone's duty or obligation; rather, it is something the university can do out of good will. Besides, starting in January, Miami will require all workers (faculty and staff) to contribute some money to health care, and a 4.25% raise would immediately be eaten by this new contribution. Give the workers a living wage, I say. Miami can afford it, and workers can't go anywhere else to get an equivalently-paid position. And, as I've always said, the monopoly that Miami University has on labor demand in Butler County could make the wage artificially low. In fact, if we followed strict economics, Miami would have to lower its wage so that there were fewer applicants for jobs at the university. The university is in a pretty priveleged position, and can essentially do whatever it wants, including rejecting the fact-finder's report, which no other university has ever done before.