‘Milk Isn’t Two Bucks Anymore’ … USC Hospitality Workers Fighting Low Wages

SURVIVING IN LA-University of Southern California’s Hospitality and Auxiliary Services employees turned out in force last Thursday to protest stalled contract talks with school officials. Chanting “USC, step off it, the people over profit!” and “Together we will raise SC,” around seven separate groups of placard-bearing workers converged on USC’s Trousdale Parkway for a 5:30 p.m. rally. 

The protests have become an increasingly familiar campus spectacle in recent months since negotiations, which began in July, deadlocked over union demands for a living wage. 

According to UNITE HERE Local 11, USC currently employs some 900 food and dormitory service workers that on average are paid about $18,800 a year. That works out to about $9 an hour, which is minimum wage in California. The official federal poverty line for a household of three currently stands at $19,790. 

Workers are asking that their hourly base pay be raised to $15 over the next five years. The increase would bring wages in line to similar jobs at UCLA and in city hotels — and, workers argue, more realistically reflect the steep costs of living in Los Angeles, which boasts the highest poverty rate among California counties. 

“Milk is not two bucks anymore. It’s $4 for a gallon,” noted dishwasher Paco Torres. “WIC [Women, Infants and Children] used to help me out a lot. Now I don’t get it, because my daughters are over the age. Without the programs that the government helps with, it’s hard … What I’m making here is not enough for what I need to survive out in the world.” 

Torres added that his $1,050 monthly take-home is exactly the same as what he and his wife pay in rent for the two-bedroom apartment at Manchester and Figueroa, where they live with their three children, aged 12, 8 and 6. 

“It’s pretty tough,” he said grimly, describing his neighborhood. “Two months ago, there were like three murders consecutively every week. Murders after murders. I have to walk my kids to school [past] a memorial to a little girl that got killed for just hanging around. She got shot in the head.” 

The union insists that the school can well afford the increase. USC currently sits on top of a comfortable $3.7 billion endowment that it hopes will top $6 billion by 2018, and it’s in the midst of an unprecedented multibillion-dollar building spree. Its tuition is the second most expensive in the state. 

“I feel that what we do is not respected by the bigger bosses,” marcher Abigail Lopez told Capital & Main. Lopez currently works as a food preparer at Lemonade, an upscale student dining facility at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center. “We feed kids here every day, all day long, and it’s hard to go home and think about how we’re going to feed our kids at home.” 

Lopez, a single mother, says that her 20-cent annual raises have fallen far behind her expenses. Too often that has meant that the family must get by on dinners of what she sardonically calls “poor man’s soup” — star pasta served in a thin, meatless tomato broth. 

“I came here because of the things that USC promised, which is full-time work, and benefits and raises every year,” she added. “You know, everything they offered sounded like something that was good for my kids and myself. But I started here five years ago and I’m still making $11 an hour.” 

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Lopez says that the university has countered by bumping the annual raise to 25 cents over the next five years. “That’s like an insult, because that’s what, $1.25 we’re going to be making more in five years — I’ll actually be making about $12.25. That’s still not enough to take care of a family.” 

For its part, USC is remaining mostly mum. When reached by Capital & Main, a school spokesperson responded with a prepared statement from senior vice president for University Relations Thomas Sayles, saying, “We are offering a very fair proposal with new enhancements for these employees and we are confident that we will reach agreement,” and that the school already offers “wage and health benefits that compare very favorably to similar settings outside the university.” 

Local 11 organizer Christian Torres disagrees. He says that although the union has won concessions in language about the workload at the campus Radisson Hotel, which is owned by USC, along with minor concessions about service, the school continues to resist what he calls “fair raises” and work hour guarantees that would end USC’s current practice of sending workers home early without notice. 

“Through the history here at USC,” Torres said, “workers have gotten [annual] raises of 15, 20 or 25 cents. So we’re just looking for something bigger. We want people to make a living of more than $15 an hour. We want $15 and up to be the standard for a USC employee. USC can do it. We know they can do it. That’s why we’re seeking it.”

 

(Bill Raden is a freelance Los Angeles writer. This piece was posted first at capitalandmain.com. Read more articles by Bill Raden )  

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CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 10

Pub: Feb 3, 2015