Students, professors and other members of the University of Michigan community congregated Sunday at a Fight for 15 rally.
Ann Arbor — Students, professors and other members of the University of Michigan community congregated Sunday at a Fight for 15 rally, bringing together advocates for two school labor initiatives and a statewide minimum wage ballot drive. Standing on the steps of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, speakers called on the university to introduce a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all student and temporary workers across its three campuses, introduce a fieldwork stipend for School of Social Work students, and tout the ballot initiative to raise the state of Michigan’s minimum wage to $15 by 2027. Organized by the university’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, Payment for Placements and One Fair Wage, the rally follows UM’s introduction in June 2021 of a $15 minimum wage for permanent workers across the campuses in Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn. «We want (the school) to value all the labor that everyone puts into this university to make it into a great institution,» said Logan Smith, a YDSA organizer. «On our campus, students drive all the buses, students work in the libraries, students serve the food in the dining hall. So they’re really essential to the functioning of the university.» The rally Sunday comes on the heels of a petition drive to raise the school’s minimum wage for student and temporary workers, which the organization delivered to the Board of Regents with around 600 signatures. Smith,22, said some of the regents had been receptive to their demands. Jason Kosnoski, an associate professor of Political Science on the Flint campus, said it was «a shame» for a university with a $17 billion endowment to not pay students the wages they deserve.
