Opinion Piece: University cleaners demonstrate the case for the living wage
“Even when they are sick, they go to work, because they have bills to pay.” Sarah (whose name has been changed to protect her identity) is describing the situation for her fellow contract cleaners at Victoria University . And they don’t even always earn enough to eat, Sarah tells me when we meet in the university’s Hub. “[Sometimes] they just don’t eat lunch. I go to the Salvation Army [foodbank] to bring them noodles or other foods.”
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Everyone doing work for the universities (and anywhere really) should be paid a living wage. This includes Masters and Doctoral scholars, many of whom get paid less than minimum wage. Our system is skewed towards getting research done by paying the workers very little and justifying it with the false promise of that work opening the doors to a stable academic job somewhere, sometime in the future. See the piece below to get an idea of what the realities are for doctoral scholars in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This piece was written as part of the Te Ara Paerangi / Future Pathways reform process which has been scuttled by the current government.
zenodo.org 