Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 08:08:59 -0400
Reply-To: furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx
Sender: owner-engrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
To: allfac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, serj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
MMflint@xxxxxxx
Cc: libby.1@xxxxxxx, engrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
AAUP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: OSU President Kirwan's Raise, Etc.
X-Sender: yfuruhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here's to your reading pleasure before the Board of Trustees meeting
on Friday, May 5 at the Longaberger Alumni House, 2200 Olentangy
River Road (from 9 AM) and a discussion on "Academic Priorities and
Budget Policy in a Changing University," chaired by Provost Ray,
from 3:30-5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9 in the Grand Lounge of the
Faculty Club. (The forum is open to the public.)
***** Bob Fitrakis and Jamie Pietras, "Dark Side of the Boom:
Striking OSU Workers Demand Fair Wages and Economic Justice,"
_Columbus Alive_ 4 May 2000: pp.10-11
...As president of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local
4501, Josephson represents the maintenance and medical workers who
keep the Ohio State University up and running. Yet 30 percent of his
CWA members make less than $8 an hour, and half make less than $10
an hour. This, in a period touted as the greatest economic boom in
U.S. history.
Welcome to the dark side of the boom at OSU.
On May 1, after weeks of increasingly tense protests, the CWA's
2,000 service and skilled trade workers went on strike, leaving OSU
struggling without many essential custodial and maintenance services.
The pre-strike protests came to a head last Wednesday, April 26,
when some 100 union workers and their student allies stormed the
entrance to Bricker Hall, where President Brit Kirwan mans the OSU
flagship. As they streamed into the administration building, and
then stayed put for an impromptu sit-in, the protesters chanted, "No
money, no peace." Ironically, with graduate students T.J. Ghose and
Yoshie Furuhashi in the forefront of student support, the sit-in
coalition actually reflected diversity in ways that the land-grant
university can only dream of otherwise.
Don Slaiman, spokesperson for the national AFL-CIO, insisted at the
start of the sit-in in front of Kirwan's office, "We have to build a
movement for low-wage workers. We can't expect private companies to
do the right thing and pay sustainable wages if our institutions of
higher learning don't. Every worker has to supplement his job with
another job here. It's the best economy ever, yet none of these
people are feeling it."
Josephson, echoing Slaiman's sentiment, pointed out that for many
workers, their strike benefits are higher than their regular wages.
Dave Caldwell, Franklin County AFL-CIO president, noted that OSU
wages were lower than many of the fast food joints in Columbus.
"It's an absolute obscenity, especially because it's public money,"
he said.
It seems like everybody, or at least everybody other than OSU
employees, is doing well. In February, 35,000 state employees,
already better paid than OSU's CWA employees, won an 11 percent pay
hike over three years. In March, Ohio Department of Education
Superintendent Susan T. Zellman received a $45,000 raise after her
first year, raising her salary to $180,000.
OSU President Kirwan's raise last July was a mere 5.8 percent, which
added $16,000--or the yearly salaries of approximately 400 CWA
workers--to boost his annual salary to $291,000. That pales in
comparison to OSU Athletic Director Andy Geiger's 39 percent hike,
which took him from $179,000 to $250,000. Now, when the lowest paid
workers at the university ask for a modest raise, the administration
pleads poverty.
Last Friday, when Columbus Alive visited the "liberated zone" in
front of Kirwan's office, a dozen students and community supporters
busied themselves making signs and preparing for the May Day strike.
They also incessantly worked their clickers and drums, creating a
din in Bricker Hall that proved quite unnerving.
That same day, the OSU student newspaper The Lantern announced that
it supported the workers' demand: "In a feeble and insolent attempt
to end the dispute, university administrators offered the union a
$1.90 [an hour] pay raise [over a three year period] to only the
lowest paid members of the union. And this only months after they
selfishly decided to raise their own salaries at huge percentage
increases."
Ghose told Alive that students are being urged to bring the
accumulating trash normally picked up by striking CWA workers to the
president's office. "We're encouraging students not to scab, and
particularly not to do the jobs done by the striking union workers,"
he said.
On Saturday morning, April 29, 1,000 members marched 10 blocks from
the CWA union hall to Bricker Hall, stopping traffic along the way.
Josephson continued to dismiss OSU's wage offer as paltry....
...On Saturday, Josephson stressed this point, noting that CWA
workers in terms of real wages, adjusted for inflation, were
actually make less money than 15 years earlier.
A study last year by the Northeast Ohio Research Consortium
demonstrated that despite the strong economy of the 1990s, the
median income for workers in Ohio and Columbus actually declined
between 1979 and 1997. In Columbus, real wages dropped from $12.19
and hour to $11 an hour in 1997, a point stressed by Mayor Michael
Coleman in his 1999 election. Coleman frequently told audiences that
part of the problem in Columbus was that 44 percent of city
households lived on $21,000 a year or less.
In 1979, roughly one in five workers in Columbus earned poverty
wages. By 1997, the figure had jumped dramatically to nearly one in
three. Despite all the rhetoric from corporate media sources about
the soaring economy, workers all over Columbus are finding it more
and more difficult to make ends meet.
OSU actually offered maintenance workers at the university's medical
center a $1.40 an hour raise over three years--50 cents an hour less
than "campus workers." These are the people who work with biohazards
on a daily basis and keep the hospital's patients and corridors
clean. It's no wonder that a March survey by the Ohio Nurses
Association (ONA) found that nearly half of their members would not
feel comfortable having a family member or friend stay in a hospital
or nursing home where they worked.
Betsy Waid, ONA's director of economic and general welfare, told the
Dispatch that "rather than cutting staff to save money, hospitals
should be decreasing CEO's salaries. There's always money for
building new buildings and increasing salaries for top executives,
but no money for care."
On Sunday night, counting down the hours to the strike, 200 people
gathered at a candlelight vigil in front of Bricker Hall pledging to
stand in solidarity against a university where there's always money
for sports arenas, new buildings and increasing salaries for
football coaches, athletic directors and top level administrators,
but where attempts by OSU's lowest paid workers to make ends meet
are seen as a "budget buster."
<http://www.alivewired.com/2000/20000504/news3.html> *****
awaiting a Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken,
Yoshie