On Thursday, I went to an action at IUPUI in support of our
campus food service workers who are in the midst of re-negotiating their
contracts. I was
glad to be a part of the sheer number of people who joined the workers—though I
can’t for sure say how many, because being in the crowd can make it difficult
for me to really get perspective on the size, there were easily over a hundred
of us; knowing my limited approximation abilities, there might have been many
more. It was an encouraging mix of the workers themselves, students, and
faculty. The action itself was frustrating—initially planned to be a march to
the office of the food service higher-ups, it was derailed when we arrived to
find the office empty and with the door(s) locked. So we headed from the Campus Center
across the street to the Tower, which has the other main food service locations on campus, where
they were presumed to be. Eventually, we found them. My view partially
obstructed due to being unfortunately short, I could see three of them—I later
found out there were four—but the complete and utter ambivalence and disrespect
of those I could see was frankly appalling. Three or four of the workers
passionately and succinctly spelled out their grievances and their demands, and
a student (a fellow soc major!) spoke in solidarity on behalf of the students.
One of the men had his face to his phone the entire time. The other two I could
see barely looked at the workers when they spoke, if they looked at them at all.
They didn’t even appear to be listening. I was not paying all that much
attention to them, primarily focused on the words of the workers; but when I did
notice them, I was enraged at how little they seemed to care.
General knowledge about and observation of our current
economy will tell you that service jobs make up the largest share of our labor
force. But for record’s sake, the U.S. Department of Labor
can tell you as well. The services some provide—medical care via doctors, for example—is
fairly well valued. Many others do not carry the same prestige, due to the low
“skill” and education required, despite their undeniable significance to our
overall economy and society. But the ability for a job to exude prestige does
not necessitate a poverty wage.
I say poverty wage not to be dramatic. I can’t know the
lives of every single food service worker, but I am fairly familiar with some
of the workers on campus. Many of them are older, and because of this, are much more likely to be supporting other dependents as well as themselves. I work with our student-run
food pantry, and a decent percentage of our regular shoppers are campus
workers, not students. At the action, one of the workers gave an incredibly eloquent and passionate account of her grievances, and noted that she has to utilize our food pantry in
order to eat. I teared up immediately when she mentioned this – what says more
about the unfair state of our wages than people who work in food service and cannot
afford to eat?
I currently take a class about social change, and last semester took a class about political sociology, with a professor who used to teach Labor Studies at IU. I’ve learned more in the last two semesters about the history of labor organizing than I had learned in my previous fifteen-odd years of schooling. I’m by no means an expert, but I now know a good amount to place actions like these within the contexts of history. And what I know is that good wages are not offered up willingly. As Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter to Birmingham Jail, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
And though I'm definitely no economist, I can’t imagine that the low level of wages for much of our labor force has no relationship with the poor and slowly-recovering state of our economy. How can people participate in an economy if they are struggling to purchase basic necessities and acquire even a small semblance of financial stability?
Prior to the aforementioned sociology courses, I was regretfully and painfully ignorant about the idea that modern worker’s rights are a relatively recent invention. Even things we ostensibly take for granted, like weekends and the 8-hour workday, are products of labor organization, protest, and resistance. Companies will not provide decent or even livable wages unless given an adequate incentive to do so. And that takes a lot. But it’s not impossible—relatively low-skill work has been capable of providing a living wage in the not-too-distant past. That only happened, however, when workers had the ability to band together and organize to level the power imbalance between themselves and their bosses. This is why I stand with our campus workers, metaphorically and physically—because there is power in numbers, and we can do so much more together than we can do alone.
Finally, I can’t not acknowledge that the food service workers, those who attended the action and in general, are over-represented in minority statuses. This is true across the nation; minorities, of gender and race and otherwise, are disproportionately engaged in low-wage work. The reasons for this are multifaceted, but it remains in fact. I am utterly incapable of ignoring the fact that the majority of these people struggling to make ends meet are racial minorities and/or women, and that their calls for wage increases are ignored. Thus, to me, supporting actions like these are as much about racial and gender justice as they are about economic justice.
I participated in this because I hate the idea that people
who do so much for our campus—we have to eat!—are struggling to get by. I would
hope that the money I spend on arguably overpriced food is at least providing
adequate support to the people who make and serve it. As a part of this campus,
I think it’s my duty to show up when I don’t like the way things are being run.
And I most definitely don’t.
