In the summer of 2021, the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan approved a budget including a $15 minimum wage for all non-temporary employees across each of its three campuses. The Board of Regents neglected to extend this to all employees, including students and temporarily-contracted workers. This exclusion feeds into a fundamental tactic of predatory universities: squeezing students by raising tuition costs and paying student workers starvation wages while the cost of living in Ann Arbor continues to increase. Therefore, we are calling on the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, to establish a universal tri-campus minimum wage of $15 an hour for all.

Students contribute a significant fraction of the university’s workers, present in virtually every unit, and yet remain underpaid for the work they do amid the ongoing pandemic. As labor strikes bloom across the country, the Board of Regents must recognize that student workers are a critical component of the university and its ability to sustain itself. Without students working in the dorms, in the dining halls, as athletes, at a desk, or elsewhere on campus, operations would come to a grinding halt. For the value we produce for the University, we are not substantially compensated. Furthermore, given the disproportionately wealthy white student body, much of the harm is burdened on low-income students of color. Students who, despite overcoming a wide array of challenges to be enrolled at one of the richest institutions in the nation, struggle to afford basic necessities, jeopardizing their academic success, health, and wellbeing.

If the minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and increases in worker productivity, it would currently be over $24 an hour. If the University could afford to pay former President Schlissel $927,000 a year ($445 an hour), our regents can easily afford to treat workers with dignity by utilizing a mere sliver of the $17 billion endowment that the University sits on. Considering that the regents approved a $10 million retirement package for Schlissel, they can afford to pay students $15 an hour. This is a matter of priorities, not resources. The Board of Regents must choose to prioritize educational and economic equity for student workers.

As regents, you have a responsibility to the campus community and should recognize that the University and the Ann Arbor, Flint, and Dearborn communities are increasingly unaffordable for students. Tuition and costs of living continue to rise amid the pandemic as student wages remain the same. This system inevitably favors those with the ability to pay staggering rates and forces out low-income students from marginalized backgrounds who don’t have that privilege. In this way, the University of Michigan perpetuates systemic racism, classism, and other forms of marginalization that our community will not tolerate. Across sectors of the economy, labor shortages are revealing an increased need to improve pay: this is no different among student employees.

Administrative staff members receive pay raises and exorbitant exit deals while neglecting the needs of the university community. We are fed up with this exploitation and demand change. We the workers, students, and community members of the University of Michigan demand that the Board of Regents use its authority to ensure that a universal $15 minimum wage is included on the budget for FY2023 for all university employees, students or otherwise. Action on this is necessary to uphold campus equity and provide workers with the dignity and parity they deserve. Attached to this letter is a list of the names of the 572 students and community members who have signed our petition, demanding the administration pay all student workers a living wage of $15 an hour.

Sincerely,

Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) at the University of Michigan

ydsauofm@gmail.com