Students at William & Mary wrote the following about their campaign with housekeeping staff. Contact Katie Dalby at email hidden; JavaScript is required for more info or to get involved!
On Thursday, September 9, 2010, Residence Life workers as well as members from the Tidewater Labor Support Committee (TLSC) are sending a delegation to Allison Wildridge, the Associate Director of Residence Life, to demand that William and Mary fill the vacant positions left open after workers from the summer left. Without a full housekeeping staff, workers that are usually assigned to only one building on campus are expected to perform extra duties at other buildings without being compensated for their additional workload. This means that workers clean up to three and four additional buildings in the amount of time it takes to adequately clean one building. Not only are these unreasonable expectations for workers, it affects the quality of life for all members of the campus community when the places we study, attend class, eat and shower are not adequately kept up.
The action that workers and students are taking tomorrow is one step in a larger plan to bring better working conditions and greater pay to the housekeeping staff on campus. After meeting together last week, the coalition of workers and students defined three top demands: to have a full staff of workers year-round, to increase wages for workers, and to reform the system of hiring and promotion.
Early this morning Shelly G., a full-time housekeeper in Jefferson, shared her experiences of working on campus this past summer. Speaking on the challenges workers faced in the summer heat without air conditioning, Shelly explained, “We came into work at 5am to open up the windows so that air could circulate… It was 113 degrees outside, how hot do you think it was inside the buildings?” For the buildings without air conditioning, Residence Life only provided one fan per floor. Instead of providing water for the workers, Ms. Wildridge gave them ice. She told the workers they could get water from the bathroom sinks. At least one worker, Shelly explained, went to Urgent Care as a result of being overheated. The summer heat posed additional hazards to workers with health concerns like Shelly who has diabetes. Being overheated suppresses her appetite, but skipping meals with her condition is very dangerous.
Over the summer housekeepers were expected to work from 5am to 6pm and sometimes 8pm at night. In addition to this system of mandatory overtime, some workers who left early had these hours subtracted from their allotted paid leave. Like many of the workers in Residence Life, Shelly has a second job. When learning that her paid leave was being taken away, Shelly confronted Ms. Wildridge. Shelly explained to Ms. Wildridge that her other job – working at a dialysis clinic – demanded that she arrive by 5pm and that she had informed Ms. Wildridge of her secondary employment before the summer session began. While Residence Life is now returning Shelly’s paid leave, there are still problems regarding compensation for overtime work.
At the coalition meeting last week another Residence Life worker, Devon, explained to TLSC that time-and-a-half pay is only granted to people who work on Saturdays. This means that housekeeping staff who work more than 40 hours on weekdays but who do not work on weekends are not compensated for their overtime.
Adequate compensation for overtime is only one part of the problem concerning workers’ wages. Many of the workers are only making between $9 and $11 an hour. According to Poverty in America: A Living Wage Calculator, a website sponsored by Pennsylvania State University, the calculated living wage for Williamsburg, Virginia for one adult is $9.95/hr. For one adult and one child dependent, the calculated living wage rises to $18.49/hr. This means while current wages are minimally adequate for one adult, they cannot support a worker with a family. There are also people who have been working over twenty years for Residence Life who have not been offered promotions and are still not making more than $10.50/hr. These wages are drastically below the $15/hr wage Virginia recommends for state employees who have worked at least twenty years. Speaking on low wages and an unfriendly working environment, John, another housekeeper on campus speaking with Shelly said, “If you have people working their butt off, be nice to them. I would like a little more appreciation.”
Low wages, the lack of compensation for overtime, poor working conditions over the summer, and the extra work demanded of housekeepers as a result of vacant positions are only some of the many grievances Residence Life workers have reason to speak out against. When asked what students, faculty and staff could do to support the workers, Shelly replied that it would nice if the William and Mary community “came together to help achieve a happier campus.” If students can help compel Residence Life to take better care of the housekeeping staff, Shelly said, then the housekeeping staff will be better able to take care of students.
