We, the workers at UNC, provide essential public goods to the state of North Carolina. We produce skilled labor and research for one of the fastest-growing states in the country. The state’s department of commerce wants to add 2 million jobs with post-secondary credentials by 2030. Without our blood, sweat and tears, this goal would be unattainable. Without our labor, the university would fail, and the state of N.C. could not develop.
The administration refuses to make changes that honor these basic facts. They refuse to pay their graduate workers living wages despite constant requests for funds from faculty across the University. While the University’s leadership supports policies that gut social safety nets, the Graduate and Professional Student Government has accommodated the low pay by hosting financial literacy workshops showing graduate students how to apply for food stamps. There is, of course, no inherent shame associated with being on food stamps. There is, however, shame in paying your workers poverty wages when they provide essential public goods.
How does the University expect its teachers and researchers to produce quality research when they are worried where their funding next year is coming from? Why does the University continue to, in reality, waste resources by paying poverty wages that leave students renewing their contracts to ninth, even tenth years, due to burnout?
Even if the administration merely cares about UNC’s ranking, recruitment and prestige as opposed to the well-being of its graduate students, these stipends are a national embarrassment. The minimum stipend is not even close to being competitive with peer institutions.
Duke University, just last year, won $40,000 stipends among a host of other improvements to their contracts. As a percentage of the living wage, UNC ranks dead last among peer institutions, providing a stipend that is 42 percent of a living wage for a single person with no children.
UNC loves to plead poverty when it comes to paying a living wage. The University has the money to pay us. The administration is able to find $195 million to finance building a new facility for the business school. Decisions like this simply reflect the priorities of the administration. New buildings to increase enrollment are priorities for the university — paying us a living wage is not.
Administration has provided meager pay increases that do not substantially increase the stipend to a sustainable rate, including fee removal for graduate workers, addition of $3,000 to the minimal stipend in 2023 and the inclusion of basic dental insurance in 2024. Great change requires collective action. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
We recognize the value of our labor, even if the administration does not. We demand a stipend compatible with our human dignity. We demand to be made a priority. The administration has made it clear that they will not recognize this demand without a fight. Join us in this collective effort and sign our living wage petition. It is your federal right to join the union.
— UE 150 Workers Union at UNC
