OPINION: A call to action for PSU student workers

Andi Marie Tisdell

She/Her

Contributor

8/30/24

On campus jobs offer Plymouth State students a compromise: flexibility in exchange for terrible pay (except for all of the inflexible jobs that still pay poorly). New Hampshire locals often say wages like $10 per hour is not that bad given New Hampshire’s minimum wage of $7.25. That argument is not compelling. New Hampshire is the only state in New England with a minimum wage under $13. In any surrounding state, the wages PSU offers would literally be illegal.

Student wages are so low because students allow them to be. Sure, professional staff of the University set budgets and offer pay. However, they cannot force students to work for such low pay. Students accept it.

Students at Dartmouth decided not to accept it. In 2022, Dartmouth dining workers unanimously voted to unionize, forming the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth. In 2023 they won a minimum wage of $21 per hour. They did it by saying no to poor pay and working together to do something about it.

They didn’t just win because Dartmouth is a private school, either. Undergraduate workers at the University of Oregon, a public college, voted on a wall to wall union in 2023. While they are still negotiating a first bargaining agreement, the University’s most recent counter proposal included a lowest base pay of $16.50. If ratified, that means no undergraduate student worker at the University of Oregon would be paid less than $16.50 per hour.

Workers are winning even within the University System of New Hampshire. Last semester, University of New Hampshire graduate student workers voted to unionize. Now they get to work on the admittedly long process of negotiating their terms.

The point is, Plymouth State students do not have to settle. They do not have to take the compromise campus jobs offer. The bar is begging to be raised.