Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
Students walking across Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center Plaza Oct. 15 might have noticed several individuals with cardboard signs, a guitar and a megaphone calling attention to the national general strike, also referred to as “Striketober.”
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The demonstrators, who also organized the climate strike that took place on campus Oct. 8, handed out literature from Labor Movement X’s website and chatted around The Stump with curious students about capitalism and unionization.
One of their signs advertised the Instagram account @Unionize_CSU, whose bio says “unions make us stronger” and “a democratic CSU is better for everyone.” According to the account, The Plaza demonstration was “for all the workers who work too damn hard to get paid too damn little.”
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The demonstration on The Plaza was a local expression of a trend that is bigger than both CSU and Fort Collins. A quick glance around the country shows that radical changes in workers’ rights are long overdue.
The logic of maximizing profits while minimizing costs is the backbone of the entire capitalist economy and has justified too many environmental and social injustices to count.”
Across the United States and across several different industries, thousands of workers are voicing their demands. Workers at Kellogg Company plants in four different states and John Deere workers across the Midwest and in Colorado and Georgia are currently on strike. The same goes for health care workers with Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon.
Almost two weeks after janitors at Denver International Airport staged a one-day strike Oct. 1, DIA security officers voted to go on strike and might do so this week. Fortune attributes this nationwide trend to “rising corporate profits, a severe labor shortage and a widening income gap.”
My colleague at The Collegian, Cat Blouch, has written about this labor shortage, what some have called “the Great Resignation.” Citing COVID-19 as an important catalyst for convincing workers that better opportunities might lie elsewhere, Blouch argued, “Raising wages should be a legitimate consideration across the board.”
The Oct. 15 Plaza demonstrators echoed that point.
“CSU does not pay a living wage to its lowest-wage employees,” @Unionize_CSU stated on its Instagram. “Whether it’s dining center staff, custodial staff or graduate workers, the people who run our campus are simply not properly compensated for the important work they do. There is no CSU without these people!”
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The frustration and demand for better treatment that has pushed thousands across the country to strike is the exact same sentiment behind @Unionize_CSU.”
According to the CSU Career Center website, “The average wage for campus employment is $13.62/hour.” While this number is higher than the current Colorado minimum wage of $12.32, it is simply not enough.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineered a Living Wage Calculator that calculates “the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support his or herself and their family.”
According to the calculator, a single adult working full-time and only providing for themselves in Fort Collins should earn at least $15.93 to earn a living wage. In other words, CSU campus employment does not, on average, provide a living wage.
The frustration and demand for better treatment that has pushed thousands across the country to strike is the exact same sentiment behind @Unionize_CSU. What we’re seeing now is not a sporadic event, it is a consistent pattern observed across American history.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations published a timeline of labor history that highlights important moments and figures in the history of American labor. Many readers might not realize some of the basic things we take for granted actually had to be fought for and won, sometimes costing workers their lives.
“If you get weekends off or overtime pay, thank the union members who fought for those rights,” the website states.
The relationship between employers and employees in America has never been equal and has always tended to benefit one at the expense of the other. The logic of maximizing profits while minimizing costs is the backbone of the entire capitalist economy and has justified too many environmental and social injustices to count. A living wage has never been anything more than a cost to capitalists.
That being said, what we’re seeing on campus and around the country is not going away. It can’t go away until we see fundamental political and economic changes, such as higher corporate tax rates, paid parental leave and the elimination of paid lobbying in government — and that’s just the start.
Cody Cooke can be reached at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @CodyCooke17.
