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PEP April 2016
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Public Employee Press

Surviving 7 years without a raise


By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Workers at the City University of New York are angry, disillusioned and frustrated as many live paycheck to paycheck. The 10,000 DC 37 members who work at CUNY are seeing their living standard deteriorate as they try to support themselves on stagnant wages, now frozen for seven years. During that period, the cost of living has gone up 10.5 percent.

These economically pinched CUNY workers cope with homelessness, skipping meals to save money, assuming enormous credit card debt, while contending with constant stress in juggling their mounting bills.

Now, they are picking up the fight for economic justice.

Raymond Luciano, a Custodial Assistant, is one of the estimated 1,500 CUNY workers and supporters who showed up on March 10 for a demonstration in front of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office in Midtown Manhattan. They gathered there in the early evening to demand a new contract and decent funding for CUNY.

"The cost of living is up and my rent has increased four times but my pay has remained the same," Luciano said in an interview, mixing Spanish and English.

"No food. No Money. No good," he said. "The rich don't want us to eat."

Luciano carried a bag with empty bottles with him to the rally. The pay freeze has forced him to rely on recycling bottles to put food on his table, he said. By recycling, Luciano collects about $150 every two weeks.

The pay freeze is particularly disturbing because the 7,000 College Assistants at CUNY represented by DC 37 are low-wage workers who earn less than $15 an hour. About 45 percent of the College Assistants are paid an hourly rate that ranges from $9.72 to $11. CUNY workers were excluded when Cuomo unveiled his $15 an hour minimum wage plan, but they are supposed to be covered once a new contract is in place.

With CUNY's administration appearing unwilling to take negotiations seriously, workers grow angrier about their economic hardship.

The cruelty of frozen wages

"It's amazing that we are such a big part of the city and we don't have a contract," Custodial Assistant Julio DeLeon said. "It's not fair."

Frustrated by his frozen pay, Custodian Supervisor Halroy Taitt, who works at New York City College of Technology, joined the union's campaign for a new contract. The effort includes engaging members in the contract fight, reaching out to the media and lobbying legislators for proper funding. At the rally, Taitt said he had gathered lots of signatures of students, faculty and coworkers for a union petition calling for fair funding for CUNY.

A diabetic, Taitt said rising medical costs are making it more difficult for him to meet his family household expenses. In addition to his prescribed medications, he uses over-the-counter drugs, which aren't covered by his union prescription drug benefit. In addition, Taitt must now make a $15 co-pay each time he visits his doctor, who switched to the GHI medical plan from HIP, which doesn't have a co-pay.

Local 1597 member Rory Satchell said his frozen wages forced him to drop the insurance on his Dodge pickup, which he used to use for handiwork jobs. Unable to maintain the insurance for the truck, he no longer does the outside work. Sometimes he forgoes meals because of a lack of cash.

"I am tired of living from paycheck to paycheck," said Custodian Assistant Roxana Galindez, who earns $12.75 an hour. That translates to nearly $30,000 a year.

Sometimes, Galindez must visit the food bank to be able to feed her family. Her mother occasionally drops off groceries.

With her biweekly check coming to $700, Galindez can only afford a one- bedroom apartment. Her children receive Social Security benefits, which help cover the rent.

Galindez sleeps on the sofa. The three of her four children who reside with her share the bedroom.

"I am barely making ends meet with my salary-$34,000," said CUNY Office Associate Jeffery Kazembe Batts, a member of Local 384. In recent years, he has dropped his cell phone service to cope with his stagnant pay. He regularly visits a soup kitchen for meals.

"I know people who are living hand to mouth," said Miriam Allen, a CUNY Administrative Assistant and Local 384 shop steward at Baruch College. "They are starving us. People worry that they can't afford to buy milk. They don't go to the movies. What's going to happen to the working poor and middle America?"






 
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