OSU President Kirwan's Raise, Etc.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 08:08:59 -0400
>Reply-To: furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Sender: owner-engrad at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>To: allfac at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu, serj at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu,
>        MMflint at aol.com
>Cc: libby.1 at osu.edu, engrad at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu,
>        AAUP at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>Subject: OSU President Kirwan's Raise, Etc.
>X-Sender: yfuruhas at pop.service.ohio-state.edu
>
>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