Letters to the Editor

WROC uses unfair evidence for a fair wage

Labor policy, particularly in developing countries, has always been one of the more intractable problems that development economists have tried to address in recent decades. Campaigns for "fair" wages in these countries come and go, some with more success than others, but often fail, largely because when faced with labor reforms, multinational corporations relocate elsewhere rather easily. A more fundamental problem, however, is that what constitutes a "fair" wage has never been well defined.

Moreover, the issue is scarcely limited to workers in Third World countries living on less than a dollar a day; even here at Princeton, the issue is very much alive. Not a day passes when we are not greeted by the sight of the ubiquitous flyers bashing the University for not spending its $8 billion more generously on workers' benefits or not providing a guarantee that workers' wages will rise with inflation. Clearly, the University's labor policies are unfair. But are they? Should Princeton go about crafting a "model labor policy" as the Workers' Rights Organizing Committee has been advocating? On a closer look, many of the contentions they have made evaporate.

For example, there is the basic question of whether the University pays its workers a living wage. A "living wage" is usually defined as enough income to keep a full-time worker out of poverty, along with a modest-sized family. This year, the U.S. poverty line for a family of four with two children stood at $17,463, or about what one full-time worker would earn in a year if he or she earned $8.40 per hour. Of course, Princeton is an expensive place; another figure to use might be the Harvard living wage campaign's request, based on the costs to support a family in Cambridge, which is $10.68 per hour. Princeton is currently implementing a minimum wage of $11 per hour, which exceeds not only the Harvard activists' calculations of a living wage but also every living wage ordinance enacted in the entire United States. The highest municipal minimum wage ordinance is found in San Jose, Calif., which is set at $10.10 per hour when health benefits are included. By any definition, then, Princeton is according its workers a living wage.

That said, however, even if the University's wages do meet some minimum standard, they still might not be fair. Particularly if workers are paid some fair wage today, they ought not to have their wages eroded by inflation over time. Guaranteeing this, however, is not in any sense the same thing as guaranteeing that wages will increase by at least the Consumer Price Index every year. Under WROC's COLA proposal, a functioning pay for performance system commits the University to increase the average worker's wages by about one percent more than inflation each year, which, as staff salaries constitute more than two-thirds of the University's operating budget, wouldn't be even close to sustainable.

A more sensible policy would guarantee that wages would not erode over, say, a five-year time horizon. WROC and the University differ over whether University workers' wages have kept pace over time. Unfortunately, the calculation is extremely sensitive to the base year one starts at, and invariably WROC selects a base year that shows wages haven't kept pace, and the University selects a more favorable one. Nevertheless, when evaluated over the average time a worker spends here — approximately five years — wages have kept pace. In fact, in line with wages elsewhere in the United States, wages have increased faster than inflation.

Still, though, even if wages are kept in line with inflation, they might not be fair. One of the ubiquitous flyers, for example, asks, "How creative is your dining hall worker?" — the implication being that it is laughable to evaluate a dining hall worker on the basis of his or her creativity. I have never seen a statement so insulting to dining hall workers in my life. On the contrary, rather than shackle Princeton's workers to a system where individual effort — which includes creativity, even for dining hall workers — is meaningless, we should give them a chance to shine. Jim Vere GS