Since February 2024, the United Campus Workers of Utah (UCWU) has been fighting to increase wages for the University of Utah and Utah State University staff and faculty through their Living Wages Petition. The petition calls on both universities’ administrations to demand a higher minimum wage for campus workers that accommodates the high cost of living along the Wasatch front.
“Our union saw a real need for higher wages for staff and faculty across the board. Obviously, the cost of living is rising; what it costs to live in Salt Lake is rising,” said Gabriela Merida, member of UCWU and Secretary for Communication Workers of America Local #7765.
UCWU met its goal of 1,000 signatures on the Living Wages Petition and intends to deliver the petition to U President Taylor Randall as they continue to gather signatures and organize for living wages.
The petition demands U employees be paid a minimum hourly wage of $23 an hour, full-time employees receive a minimum annual salary of $47,000, graduate students receive a minimum 12-month stipend of $47,000 and all employees receive annual 5% pay increases.
Additionally, the UCWU asks for wage transparency, improved healthcare and parking benefits, equitable and safe working conditions and for the universities to address sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace.
Merida said the developers of the petition used MIT’s Living Wage Calculator to determine the rate of $23 an hour, as seen on the petition. According to the calculator, the living wage in Salt Lake County for one adult with zero children is $22.77 an hour. The U currently pays at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Increasing wages will have many effects, such as decreasing employee turnover, resolving faculty shortages and increasing the quality of student experiences and education, UCWU Member Marley Dominguez said.
“It’s hard to justify working in a place when one, you’re underpaid and two, you’re being undervalued,” Dominguez said, who is also a Student Resource Navigator at the Center for Student Access and Resources (CSAR). “Doing this living wage campaign, we’ll actually see an increase in maintaining staff and faculty and ultimately, that is better for students.”
Dominguez said that since her relocation to the CSAR from the women’s resource center following the passage of HB261, she noticed her coworkers were experiencing burnout due to the excess amount of work they were assigned. She said employees responsible for student support services such as CSAR or the Center for Community and Cultural Engagement experiencing burnout could decrease the quality of these services.
“They’re incredibly exhausted, and the pay isn’t worth it. And it’s really unfortunate because these programs are so important and these events such as our cultural history months are so important,” Dominguez said.
In 2023, the U employed over 4,000 faculty and 30,000 staff. Dominguez described the university as a “small city” considering the number of people it employs. She said this is one of the main reasons for the unionizing effort.
“Another element that goes hand in hand with the living wage campaign is just getting as much of the information about our union out there as possible,” Dominguez said. “The union is for all of us. It’s not just for select workers, it’s for every single worker at the University of Utah.”
