Imagine for a moment that it's Friday. Pay-day. Another $250 to your name, before taxes of course. By the end of the year, you'll have made a cool $13,000. You can assume a nice portion of that will end up going back to the government, and at least another $10,000 or so will end up with your landlord. Your spouse pulls in about the same, which will fortunately be enough to cover the grocery bill for you and your kids. In the meantime, you'll keep giving out burgers to kids who drop $200 a week on Mill Avenue and complain about having to take out more student loans.
If you work for Sodexho -- the food service company responsible for providing much of the food on campus -- this is just another day on the job.
The federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour leaves a full-time worker's salary with even less. In the past several years, the idea of a fair wage for America's workers has been referred to in many forums as setting a "living" wage. According to Arianne Peterson, a member of ASU's Campus Greens, an organization lobbying for a living wage for Sodexho workers on campus, ASU should set this standard if it truly is the "New American University."
According to the New York Times, there have been 134 successful efforts to raise pay in cities and states across the nation. Two such victories have been on university campuses -- Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and Washington University in St. Louis. Students at these campuses used hunger strikes to get better wages for on-campus workers. Peterson hopes to achieve the same goal on campus.
Peterson says that according to the Economic Policy Institute, the living wage in Arizona is between $7 and $8 an hour -- almost $2 higher than Sodexho's $6.25 an hour starting wage.
Because Sodexho's contract ends in June of 2007, Peterson says now is the time to pressure the University to give the contract to a company that pays a living wage.
Sodexho spokeswoman Bonnie Gordon would not discuss specifics regarding how much Sodexho pays their workers, but she did say she was sure it was much more than minimum wage.
"We also provide a lot of benefits," she says. "We provide medical and dental insurance for our employees, and we give them free buss passes, free meals, and their uniforms for free."
Gordon adds that the company does a market analysis every fall to determine what pay level is appropriate to a given market. She says that if Sodexho's wages were unfair, they would not be able to compete for workers, though she declined to share the exact data presented in the study.
Accusations that Sodexho leaves its employees below the poverty level are unfounded, Gordon says. She referred to Stop Hunger, an initiative by the non-profit Sodexho Foundation to address the "root causes" of poverty.
Still, a living wage isn't out of the question, according to Gordon.
"If the University mandates a living wage," she says, "We would comply with that."
Terri Schaffer, a spokeswoman for the University, says although ASU is concerned for the welfare of anyone working on campus, it is Sodexho's responsibility to pay employees fairly.
"It is not appropriate for the University to manage a contractor's compensation system when that contractor is not in violation of state or federal wage laws," she says.
Because the contract expiration is still six months away, the process for choosing a contractor is not yet set in stone, says Mike Matthies, facilities and contract manager at ASU. He adds that the ultimate decision will not come only from the bottom line.
"It's not just about what is going to make ASU the most money," says Matthies.
Reach the reporter at benjamin.horowitz@asu.edu.
