Today I read in Mother Jones about some Stanford University students were on a hunger strike for "living wages" for the campus staff. After reading the background on the campus and the blog post by the students I am beside myself at the moment. I am writing this in a state of disbelief, that such an issue results in such direct dramatic action by the staff and students of the university.
My wife Arleta and I are trying to get our business, WicInd Group, started and one of our problems is that we are having a hard time sorting out the details on how we will implement our "living wage" program. I am probably the greatest problem, in that I want a "living wage" program that includes many features that are currently not considered in most "living wage" models. Not that I want to pay our employees less, but that I think they should get more. I believe "living wages" should be tied to certain indices that would implement certain unconventional controls over our "living wage" program that are usually not part of most "living wage" programs. One of these is the COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustment). This scale would increase or decrease our employees wages by an adjustment factor. This factor would effect our employees wages in both directions. To adjust the wages down seems counter-productive to most "living wage" programs, and to most people, but it makes it feasible for us to pay other parts of the wage at a more equitable rate for us. When the cost of living decreases, we should not just continue to pay the increase because it used to be needed. We should be able to decrease the employee cost so that we may see a cost savings at the company level as well. We also would make the adjustments on a quarterly basis, so even though the COLA may move more often it would only be adjusted as it were on the quarter. This program would make the program more affordable for the company, and fair to the employees. The employees would get an increase on the quarter that the COLA increased, or a decrease when the COLA decreased on the quarter. My wife disagrees with me, she says you can not take pay back from the employees once you have given it to them, but I continue to disagree. Look at a pay cut, many employees would rather take a small pay cut rather than lose their jobs. If we are able to keep our wages reasonable by using a variable scale percentage, we can continue to keep paying our employees even as cost decrease. Knowing this from the very beginning should satisfy most employees. Knowing that they stand just as much chance of an increase as a decrease should mean they will rather have this than strait wages.
This program does not mean that our employees do not get wage increases according to our incentives and performance bonus programs. It is a complimentary to our base "living wage" program. Each employee will receive a base "living wage", which will be increased or decreased to match the COLA index, as well as a few other indexes. We should be able to implement this program and see better performance from our employees as one of the other indexes that adjust payment is also a yearly adjustment based on performance of the operations, adjusted quarterly. These adjustments are across the entire enterprise, so that all employees, no matter what their scale will have their base rates adjusted to suit these scales.
Starting from a base rate that is applicable to the process being performed (according to a national and regional base pay rate + a premium ratio), adjusted to compute a base "living wage" (using average living cost +/- family ratios), we can compute a base "living wage" that will then be adjusted according to the then current ratio indexes. Our rates can never drop below the base "living wage" (unadjusted) rate. This should be an agreeable rate, but we still feel that there is more to understand about our employees feelings and how they would react.
That brings me back to this Stanford University Hunger Strike issue. How Stanford University can justify not paying a "living wage", at least a base rate, is beyond my comprehension. How can they afford not to. This is the augment I make with my wife, all the time. One of the main reasons good help is hard to find is that they are under trained, and underpaid. It goes back to that same old saying, you get what you pay for. By ensuring that the people who work for you can afford to live their lives and make all their basic living expenses, as well as providing continuous and enhanced training in their lives (not just job training, but additional training), you build a loyalty that will provide higher rates of productivity and provide greater cost savings in cost of employment and operations. The cost to get a person in our operations to the point where they are highly productive would be difficult to justify if we were to pay less than a "living wage" and provide comprehensive services. Stanford University may view their "staff" employees as less than normal contract employees, and this I guess would justify their opinion on this issue, but they shouldn't judge them as less than human, which is what they are doing if they continue to pay less than a "living wage" to all employees.
Mother Jones a magazine I used to subscribe to, but now I only get the electronic feeds through my Google Reader, because I don't like to waste paper, and money, has always provided me with fuel for dissension. Having been a protester before, I know what those people are going through. Even in my days of protesting I rarely if ever signed a petition, although I have written a lot of letters to editors, and political figures. In this case I am going to write a letter to the President of Stanford University, to the Governor of California, and to my congressional representatives to take action in this matter. Perhaps something will have already been done by then, but this is the least I can do. I am not in a position at this time to do much more, or I would. I will send a note to the students and staff at Stanford University to let them know I think they are doing the right thing, and that I wish I could help them in a more active way, but that I will do at least as much as I can from where I am.
I hope everyone does as much as they can, because no one can do it for them. We all need to get out there and do more, and if we did, we wouldn't need everyone else doing so much for us, as it would already be done by us.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Department of Labor
- EPIonline
- Mother Jones
- Stanford University
- Governor of California
- Google News Search: Stanford University Hunger Strike
Thank you,
James
No comments:
Post a Comment