Estroff shared their discontent and has proposed forming a joint committee with the Employee Forum to address low staff salaries at UNC.
Employee Forum Chairman Tommy Griffin said Monday that there are several employees who make less than $20,000 and that at least 50 percent of the staff work two jobs to make ends meet.
"It's unacceptable to have an institution that doesn't pay its employees a living wage," Estroff said.
Estroff and Griffin have not yet made concrete plans for the composition of the committee or the start date.
Griffin said the Employee Forum's Personnel Issues Committee has been looking into this problem for a few years now, and he said the committee could step up its efforts with the help of the Faculty Council.
The new committee will address the underlying causes of low UNC employee salaries and will work on raising those salaries across the board.
"It will be a fairly short-lived but intensely focused group that will take a careful look at people who are just not making a living wage, and we'll see what we can do about it," Estroff said. "We want to have very focused discussions with the Employee Forum."
The effort, however, is being made to raise staff, not faculty, salaries, she said.
Estroff said that feeling of shock that the council members had needs to be sustained to come up with viable ways to remedy the situation.