Next year, ASUW’s 110th administration will be the first to pay senators an hourly rate. The senators will receive $11 per hour for up to 9 hours a week.
This signals a positive move towards fairly compensating students who contribute to campus life; but this should not be the end of conversations about pay at the University of Wyoming.
Not only students, but all hourly workers, should receive fair compensation for their work.
Our nation has a history of undervaluing what are considered “unskilled” workers.
For example, custodians at UW are among the lowest paid full-time staff, with typical yearly salaries in the low to mid $20,000 range for fiscal year 2021.
And yet, without the work of custodial staff, the university would undoubtedly begin to fall apart at the seams. There is not a single person at UW whose life has not been improved by the work of a custodian.
Currently, Wyoming’s minimum wage is the same as the federal minimum wage; $7.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009 from $6.55 per hour. Since then, the value of the minimum wage has dropped by 21%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In response to employee losses due to state budget cuts, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has proposed a plan to raise wages for state employees, including those at UW.
According to a UW press release, about $8 million in annual appropriations from the Wyoming legislature would provide for an increase in pay between $1,400 and $1,900 for employees currently making under $150,000 dollars. For workers at the bottom of the pay scale making around $24,000 per year, this would amount to an 8% pay increase.
The issue with this plan is that wages have been stunted for so long that even moderate pay raises aren’t enough to compensate for the compensation lost from inflation.
We shouldn’t pretend that raising wages by a small percentage will counter the fact that many positions are still egregiously underpaid and have in fact been losing money due to rising living costs with no adjustments.
This isn’t to sound ungrateful. It is clear that Governor Gordon and President Ed Seidel have acknowledged that low wages are a problem for multiple reasons and realize that having wages that attract more workers is mutually beneficial to both employer and employee.
But we should also be paying attention to what a living wage is for residents of Laramie, Wyoming, and what the true cost of living should equate to in terms of pay.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) living wage calculator, the living wage for a single working adult in Albany County is $14.88 per hour.
It is frustrating to note that it is only once the state government is feeling the pressure of employees leaving due to lack of fair compensation that they decide it is time to raise wages.
In order for all UW employees to be able to live a comfortable life in Laramie, the campus communities cannot be satisfied with the occasional stipend which is only handed out when employers are desperate for workers. There has to be a larger culture shift surrounding how workers should be treated and what a fair wage is.
