Casteen to students, Sat. morning: Hey, let's negotiate!

Casteen to students, Sat. evening: OK, enough negotiations!

We all knew that UVa would likely resort to police action before social action (i.e., putting an end to the poverty wages it pays), but that didn't make it any less disappointing when it actually happened.

Carry forward, Living Wagers. Carry forward.

Posted on April 17,2006 :: 07:18AM :: Posted By : Dave Norris

Mary Stewart-Silver :: April 16,2006 - 11:52PM
Hi Dave - thanks for your hard work for people who struggle to live decently in this town. I think it's important that as you, David Brown, etc., lend your support to the work that's being done to press for a more realistic (living) wage at UVa, that you let us know how you will work to press for a higher minimum wage for C'ville City workers. A couple of questions. FIRST, when you say that UVa needs to change its bottom wages, are you referring only to their contract workers? Because the minimum hiring rate for non-contract/direct hire workers at UVa is virtually the same (a penny more) than C'ville's. If this needs raising at UVa, doesn't it need raising for the City too? And don't you need to be very straightforward about this? By the way, I've read the assertion that no full-time worker for the City of C'ville makes less than $10 per hour, but some of the job postings online for the City say these jobs indeed start at $9.36/hr.. SECOND, substantive talk need to be undertaken, or deepened, between C'ville government and advocacy folks on the one hand, and UVa decision-makers, experts, and activists on the other hand. Isn't C'ville really subsidizing the low "starting" wages at UVa, with social services to fill the gaps left when workers are underpaid? I'd like this to be framed as looking at how City government and UVa administrators can mutually CHALLENGE and SUPPORT each other to work for significant, visionary change toward increased equity in our community. It's good the wage issue is raised; housing and education are on that agenda as well.

Dave Norris :: April 17,2006 - 12:20AM
Hi Mary, thanks for your feedback and I agree with you 100%. If I'm elected to City Council I will a vocal advocate for the working poor of Charlottesville. That includes ensuring that the City itself is offering a Living Wage, that includes improving our educational and workforce development systems, that includes creating an Affordable Housing Investment Fund so that the families who do the hard work of making this town function can actually afford to live here. And yes, that includes holding UVa's feet to the fire when it comes to the wages it pays, so that we City taxpayers no longer have to subsidize this very wealthy university with our social services. Anyhow, thanks again and please do what you can to keep Council focused on this issue in the future (whether or not I'm elected on May 2). Peace, Dave

Mary Stewart-Silver :: April 17,2006 - 01:11AM
I'd like to air my thoughts about "process": In the spirit of a thoughtful and successful campaign to raise awareness about poverty in C'ville, and raise pay scales, I ask people to be sure they're looking beyond the spin and rhetoric (from both sides, I believe) that has predominated what many are hearing about the Living Wage controversy in the last several days. If you feel strongly about this issue, and want to see it succeed, be sure you've read background materials like the Living Wage Campaign report, etc., on the Campaign's website at http://www.uvalivingwage.net/. But be sure you also read (on the Campaign's website, too - just scroll down the page and follow the highlighted links) the letter to Sandridge from the Attorney General's office, where the statement is strongly made that the University is not legally entitled to place stipulations on/raise contract workers' salaries. Read Casteen's several responses to the Campaign's demands; these responses have changed rather dramatically, I think, over recent days. In his Sat. a.m. statement, he made what I saw as significant concessions and proactive offers of support and help to convene students and faculty members in order to hone demands and take them to the state legislature. Meanwhile, however, he also seemed to leave out the question of his willingness/ability to pay direct hire workers more. My point is that this is a more complex issue than it may seem, and it's good to have studied the publicly accessible documentation of some of what's lead up to this point. It's not simply a good-guy/bad-guy debate, but rather a challenge to us all to build a more sophisticated understanding and support each other in acting out of that understanding. I appreciate the concept of pressure and of raising awareness, which I think the campaign's been doing a lot of lately, and I want to thank them heartily for that. I also don't think it's always necessary to be polarized in order to be galvanized. Disagreement is not the same as polarization; while the first can lead to dynamic dialogue, the second can lead to stalemate. I think that we tend to think, in our generally apathetic culture, that things have to be perceived as polarized in order for people to stop endlessly weighing alternatives and move into action. But in this moment, there's a lot of action that could be taken, including pressing Casteen to make serious, immediate commitments to the process he proposed in Saturday morning's letter, seeing his proposal as a real step forward, and engaging with him in the legislative work he's suggested, towards setting a legal precedent for public institutions setting their own living wage for contract workers. I ask all parties to be cautious about making blanket dismissive statements about others' intentions (this includes you, Dave, with your statement "Ha, Ha, Fooled Ya" in relation to Casteen's decision to arrest the students), and instead look together for a truly integrative solution that demands of us all our best intelligence and collaboration. I hope I don't just strike people as naive. I honestly haven't had this whole issue out of mind for more than a few minutes at a time for the last several days. I know many feel the same. I think there's great potential here for increasingly intensive, rigorous, reflective thought and action on some of the things that plague this community. I believe that in confronting these problems, and our own and each others' role in perpetuating them, we need to ask of ourselves and one other an exceptional degree of specificity and clarity in our assertions.

Dave Norris :: April 17,2006 - 07:48AM
Mary--Thank you for encouraging everyone to seek an integrative, constructive solution here and to tone down the unnecessarily flippant remarks (point well taken). We are all in great debt to the 17 students who brought this issue to the public consciousness and it's now incumbent on the University to follow through on the commitments it was in the process of negotiating when it abruptly arrested all 17 on Saturday evening. I think President Casteen brought up some good questions about the methodology used in determining the $10.72 figure, and those questions need to be addressed. But the sad reality is that even $10.72 is insufficient for a working family to afford the cost of housing in our community.