Restrictions on Hennessy’s “Living Wage Policy”
What they are and why they should be removed
This document enumerates the restrictions on the living wage policy, then gives a detailed information about of the effects of each restriction, the University's justifications for it, and an explanation of why it should be removed.
Contents:
-------------------------------------------------------
The seven restrictions are as follows:
1. The services are those performed on the core campus (excluding the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) that Stanford might otherwise perform with directly hired paid employees, such as basic service jobs.
2. The contracts are for a term, in the aggregate, of at least a year.
3. The work is being done for Stanford University directly, not for tenants or other entities doing business on Stanford owned land, including Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
4. The workers are employees of contractors with agreements with Stanford University.
5. Such workers are employed at least 30 hours per week, for a period of six months or whatever period the contractor designates for its employees to be considered “regular” employees.
6. Such workers are not represented under any existing collective bargaining relationship.
7. The aggregate value of the contract(s) exceeds $100,000 per year.
-------------------------------------------------------
Restriction #1 – Core Campus, Replace Directly-Hired Employees
“The services are those performed on the core campus (excluding the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) that Stanford might otherwise perform with directly hired paid employees, such as basic service jobs.”
This excludes workers such as those at the library archive, the janitors and cafeteria workers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and workers at Stanford’s various operations and land holdings. It also excludes construction workers and others doing a tremendous amount of work to sustain the campus.
-------------------------------------------------------
Restriction #2, #5, and #7 – Contract Size, Duration, and Hours Worked
2. The contracts are for a term, in the aggregate, of at least a year.
5. Such workers are employed at least 30 hours per week, for a period of six months or whatever period the contractor designates for its employees to be considered “regular” employees.
7. The aggregate value of the contract(s) exceeds $100,000 per year.
PAC: “We recommend that conditions 2, 5, and 7 be removed.” We can offer no more convincing analysis than that undertaken by the PAC. These restrictions exclude a large number of workers doing work right on campus, alongside directly-hired workers who are getting paid higher wages. These three restrictions constitute a fundamental contradiction in a policy that aims to extend Stanford’s social responsibility to all its workers.
Restriction #5: HR Argument A
“If item 5 were eliminated, contractor pricing would increase”
As an essentially tautological argument, this is hard to address. HR did not calculate the cost of this increase, and because it fails to collect any data on subcontracted workers, stated that it would not even be possible to do so. It goes without saying that the President, the PAC, and HR are all aware that an increase in wages leads to an increase in costs – this is of course insufficient grounds to deny an improvement to the living wage policy that proclaims a moral basis in the University’s obligation to its workers.
Restriction #5: HR Argument B
“Further, it is a normal practice for organizations to differentiate wages and benefits based upon hours worked or the duration of the working relationship and to pay a higher wage or provide benefits for employees who have gained experience and work stability with an employer.”
This is an irrelevant and disingenuous argument. Legislating a wage floor does not interfere with an employer’s ability to differentiate wages and benefits on whatever basis the employer sees fit, so long as the lowest paid wage is not below the living wage policy.
HR Argument: Restrictions #2 and #7
“If items 2 and 7 were eliminated, the number of contracts falling under living wage review would increase substantially and would require additional staff in Procurement to monitor...The cost of hiring staff to seek out and monitor such contracts would be onerous.”
The impossibility of enforcing a policy on a case-by-case basis is no grounds for failing to implement such a policy. Stanford presumably has many stipulations for the contractors it hires, including at very least those outlined in Administrative Memo 1, “University Code of Conduct” (http://adminguide.stanford.edu/1.pdf). None of these stipulations were withheld based on the difficulty or cost of “monitoring” all contracts.
Furthermore, along the lines of “HR Argument A,” just as it goes without saying that an increase in wages will increase contractor pricing, it should go without saying that an increase in contract stipulations will increase the cost of contract implementations. Greater budget allocations will indeed be required, and the University should investigate creative ways of more efficiently managing its contracting or monitoring processes in order to displace this cost.
Although we understand the difficulty arising from the University's decentralized contracting scheme, the resultant costs should be carefully calculated (at least estimated) and extensively reported, along with analysis of any possibilities for streamlining the contracting or monitoring processes, if the University Community is to accept this as a sufficient reason to dismiss an expansion of the living wage.
-------------------------------------------------------
Restriction #3 –Tenants and Entities on Stanford Land
“The work is being done for Stanford University directly, not for tenants or other entities doing business on Stanford owned land, including Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.”
This restriction takes a very narrow view of the Stanford Community and those who sustain it. The PAC recommended that this restriction be removed subject to review: “We would like to extend [the living wage] policy to core campus tenants, but we do not know the costs of this and how these tenants would be affected. We recommend that these costs be determined and the implications for the tenants examined before applying the policy to core campus tenants.”
HR failed to even address this recommendation whatsoever. Meanwhile, workers at the Treehouse, Jamba Juice, and various other tenant vendors fail to qualify for a living wage. Additionally, the Hospitals at Stanford employ hundreds and hundreds of workers to whom the current Living Wage Policy does not apply. The University claims that these are separate entities not under their control, but there is a significant degree of overlap. For instance, janitors hired by Stanford Hospital are responsible for cleaning Stanford’s academic facilities at the School of Medicine. Additionally, the Clinics and Hospitals are certainly accountable to Stanford for certain policies and practices as a basic requirement of utilizing Stanford property. As stated in Hennessy’s “Administrative Guide Memo #1,” all individuals or entities who “contract with” or “assert an association with” the University “are responsible for sustaining the highest ethical standards of this institution, and of the broader community in which we function.” There is no reason Stanford cannot include a living wage policy among these stipulations. Finally, workers at Webb Ranch, on Stanford land, were subject to a great deal of exploitation that was uncovered in the 1990s. A living wage policy applying to all tenants would prevent such labor abuses.
Recommendation #3 should be removed.
-------------------------------------------------------
Restriction # 6 – Unionized Workers Excluded
“Such workers are not represented under any existing collective bargaining relationship.”
This is a crucial restriction, as it excludes many workers without any cause, including the hundred or so ABM janitors who clean our academic facilities, many of whom make substantially less than a living wage no matter how long they have served Stanford. And this just because they are members of a union. The PAC recommended, “If there are no legal problems…we would also recommend the elimination of condition 6.”
HR failed to even address the question of legal problems. Instead, they deemed it “inappropriate” based on unspecified criteria, presumably their own opinion: “If item 6 were eliminated, Stanford would be engaging in inappropriate interference in the collective bargaining process of its contractors.” There appears to be no legal problem with such ‘interference.’ Harvard, for example, has a living wage policy that applies even to unionized, subcontracted workers.
d