Public Employee Press

Surviving on stagnant wages

After years without a raise, Local 1597 member Rory Satchell said his pay has fallen so far behind that some days he goes without eating.

Satchell said he earns $14.35 an hour for his job as a Custodial Assistant at the College of Staten Island. His take-home pay comes to less than $700 every two weeks.

Satchell struggles daily to get by while supporting himself in his studio apartment with a kitchenette in Staten Island that costs him $500 a month to rent.

"We basically have to live like poor people," Satchell said. "I often run out of food by the weekend and have to call friends to borrow money. Some days I don't eat anything." Satchell complained that the CUNY administration is failing to move on the new contract months after New York City settled a seven-year deal with other members in DC 37, whose total pay increase amounts to about 10 percent over seven years.

He said he is irritated that he and his coworkers are paid less than contracted workers, who take in about $25 an hour.

A quarter million workers like Satchell - 37 percent of all wage-earners in the city - are paid less than $15 an hour, which is considered "low-wage," according to the Fiscal Policy Institute.

These workers scratch by as their wages stagnate and costs go up. From 2002 to 2011, the typical monthly rent in the city rose 53 percent, more than twice as fast than the median annual income of renters. From 1990 to to 2010, median hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, declined by 7 percent, even though worker productivity rose by nearly 40 percent.

"I don't know how they expect us to survive," Satchell said.

— GNH