The Wisconsin Union is guilty of worker exploitation. There are 150 new janitorial, food service and maintenance employees this year in a classification called \limited-term employees."" This means that they are not hired as permanent employees, but on a temporary basis for six months. In most cases after this six-month period, they are renewed. This form of employment, often called ""permatemp,"" keeps Wisconsin Union workers in a state of permanent limbo.
The workers are not really temporary. Many have been fired and rehired five or 10 times to work in the same position. By keeping them as temporary workers, the Wisconsin Union denies them full-time work, refuses to offer them health insurance and pays them as little as $7.25 an hour. This is because LTE's are not members of the blue-collar university workers' union, AFSCME Local 171. One statistic from the University's own Campus Equity and Diversity Office shows the Wisconsin Union's blatantly racist hiring practices. According to this office's 2002 report LTE's were three times as likely to be people of color than workers the Wisconsin Union hired permanently.
One may wonder how all this affects us as students. The answer is that we pay for it. In the upcoming student government elections, the Wisconsin Union is pushing an initiative, called Question #16 to fund the Wisconsin Union's Master Plan. In order to build the r??sum??s of top UW Administrators, the Wisconsin Union wants to tear down Union South and rebuild it, complete with a privately-run 100-room hotel.
Question #16 is costly. Today students suffer out-of-control tuition and fee hikes; Question #16 would nearly double the seg fees students pay over 12 years. Question #16 would raise $5 million for the continued mistreatment of Wisconsin Union's LTE's, and another fee hike would cause more loan debt for UW students.
Fight worker exploitation. Reduce student debt. Vote ""No"" on Question #16.
Ross Reykdal
UW-Madison junior
Economics
