Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Same Old Story From Living Wage

THE HOYA published a gripping, New York Post-style cover photo last Friday of Department of Public Safety officers physically restraining a student protester from entering a meeting in New South.

When it comes to publicity, the Living Wage Coalition knows how to get the job done.

Whether it was last week’s stunt – trying to break into a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Business Practices – or last year’s hunger strike in Red Square, complete with the giant white space bubble, the solidarity activists have amassed solid credentials for a career in guerilla public relations.

But not in negotiation.

While students hailed university assurances for a “Just Employment Policy” as a victory last March, the hunger strike fizzled and failed. In fact, it never had a chance to succeed.

Universities can be frustrating places to create change. The pace of reform is slow yet demand for it seems so urgent. And students are only around for four years, making it easy for administrators to wait them out, especially ones as passionate and vocal as the living wagers.

So the solidarity kids kicked the traditional route on March 15 (the day their hunger strike began), two years to the day that they had put forward their original proposal. On that day, they abandoned any chance at two-way compromise.

Imported protesters, mostly labor union officials, joined in the rabble-rousing. Like any labor dispute, both sides looked to save face, to exit the ordeal claiming a “win.”

By resorting to the nuclear option of a hunger strike, Georgetown students lost all their leverage. They were forced to accept what the university would offer rather than bargain for a middle ground.

Dripping with self-righteousness, student activists labeled administrators as “villains” and jumped at any chance to ambush a private meeting – the ACBP, the university’s Board of Directors, the President’s Office. That strategy backfired. Now activists are back to bargaining with the “villains” who have had their confidence severely undermined by the coalition’s tactics.

As the university discovered, it’s difficult to negotiate with people holding a gun to its head. You’ll say and do anything to convince an irrational person to put down his or her weapon.

While students claimed a “stunning victory” (and one-sided media accounts almost everywhere, from The Voice to The Washington Post did the same), it wasn’t all that stunning.

Look at the proposal Senior Vice President Spiros Dimolitsas made before and after the hunger strike. The university increased wages and benefits to $13 an hour for full-time subcontracted workers by July 2005 and promised $14 an hour by July 2007. Solidarity spokesperson Shalini Thomas (SFS ’08) conceded that monetarily the change “wasn’t a whole lot” – hunger strikers had “demanded” a raise to $14.93 immediately. Indeed, the most significant changes included ambiguous language that would take future pay raises “into consideration.”

Rumblings of discontent began last semester, when members of the Living Wage Coalition alleged that Georgetown hadn’t been living up to its end of the bargain.

And they boiled over last week. Now the solidarity kids are making “threats” if new “demands” are not met.

Fresh gripes include the university’s reluctance to let subcontracted workers join the Service Employees International Union (which was not part of the policy agreed upon last year) and concerns that the university is shorting workers of pay under the new policy implemented in July.

The university won’t release figures proving that the $13 an hour employment policy has been effected, merely issuing boilerplate statements that amount to a “come on, trust us.” As Tuesday’s HOYA editorial pointed out, releasing the numbers would go a long way to dispel student concerns.

At the same time, working within the university framework would allow the Living Wage Campaign to make the most progress. Protesting is sexier than navigating bureaucracy, but it can also desensitize the community so that all protests, even serious ones, get ignored.

Activists have their hearts in the right place but are poor tacticians. Such ad nauseum protesting gets stale. Hunger-striking, DPS-harassing students may think they’re being crusaders, but the campus has increasingly looked at the coalition with contempt.

Admittedly, the university dragged its feet and paid for it with the Great Hunger Strike of 2005. Both sides should have learned from last year so that important issues, like worker pay, don’t get drowned in extreme rhetoric and obnoxious tactics. If implementing a living wage is so important, then seeking compromise, not issuing “demands,” should be valued above all.

The Living Wage Coalition doesn’t have to listen to this though. I’m sure there are plenty of people hungering for another strike or more headline-grabbing action next March.

Nick Timiraos is a senior in the College and a former editor in chief of THE HOYA. He can be reached at timiraosthehoya.com. DAYS ON THE HILLTOP appears every Friday.

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