April 4, 2005 - Washington University students pile into the admissions office to begin their sit-in.
Community celebrates progress, sees more to do one-year after Wash U Sit-In
Updated 4/16/2006On Monday, April 17, a panel of community leaders will released a report to the community on both the progress, and the work still to do in the struggle for justice for Washington University workers.
Download a flyer an Executive Summary or the Full Report
The community panel was organized by the St. Louis Workers' Rights Board and included:
Rabbi Susan Talve, Convener
State Senator Joan Bray
State Representative Maria Chapelle-Nadal
Honorable William L. Clay, Jr.
Rabbi Randy Fleisher, Jews United for Justice
Vincent Flewellen, MSW, Alumni Board of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University
Jerry Hochsztein, JD, Jews United for Justice
Rhona Lyons, JD, Jews United for Justice
Bill Ramsey, Human Rights Action Service
Professor Mark Rank, PhD, Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University
Joan Suarez, Workers’ Rights Board
Reverend Michael Vosler, Workers’ Rights Board
Background: Washington University Living Wage Campaign ....
The struggle for a Living Wage at Washington University began quite uniquely in the fall of 2003, when a group of three dozen Nicaraguan lawn care workers here on seasonal H2B visas were asked to sign away their contractual rights and leave the country in two days. A group of five students who maintained close friendships with these workers committed to investigating this situation, working to bring their friends back from Nicaragua if possible, and find out if mistreatment by subcontractors and the administration was characteristic of employer-employee relationships on campus.
In this way the Student Worker Alliance was formed in November of 2003. The decision to launch a Living Wage campaign followed shortly thereafter when students discovered the working conditions for most campus workers suffered—unbearable poverty wages, with few benefits if any, feeling threatened and pressured by upper management.
After two years of working through universtiy committees with no progress, the Student Worker Alliance began a Sit-In on April 5, 2005. After 19 days and an outporing of labor, religious and community support, the SWA won a groundbreaking agreement.