Chancellor John Wiley addressed the Limited Term Employee Collaboration Committee Thursday morning, thanking them for their hard work and calling the information he has heard thus far about their upcoming proposal encouraging.
The proposal, according to a Student Labor Action Coalition statement, recommends 400 of the University's 1,300 LTEs be given full-time status. Additionally, it calls for a living wage\ of $10.23 per hour for all LTEs and the creation of an LTE advisory committee. The advisory committee would manage implementation of the plan and facilitate worker and management grievances.
The money for this plan would ""absolutely not"" come from student segregated fees, according to committee member and UW-Madison junior Ashok Kumar.
""The money exists,"" Kumar said. ""Administrators are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and LTEs are making poverty wages. Giving a living wage to every LTE on campus would be less than a million dollars.""
However, the committee's proposal has not yet been finalized.
""I haven't read anything, I haven't received any paper,"" Wiley said. ""I've been orally briefed and it sounds to me like you're making good progress, and I'm very supportive of your goals.""
Wiley also said he was unsure of how long it would take to implement the plan, though he did say it was highly dependent on the committee's specific recommendations and date of submission.
""Assuming we don't get massive amounts of feedback, or uncover problems we haven't thought of, then I think we can make a decision to go live, or to implement—pretty quickly—maybe even by the end of the semester,"" he said.
According to committee member and UW-Madison freshman Molly Glasgow, the group should be ready to submit their plan in the next few weeks.
""I think it's possible to have the recommendations ready by the end of the next meeting,"" she said. ""So I think it is possible to have it all down by June.""
However, some involved were disappointed at Wiley's responses, seeing him as too ambivalent on the proposal.
""He was very noncommittal. He was very ambiguous. He said he was a fan of it, but then we said ‘Well, what's your opinion?' and he said he hasn't seen it. So how is he a fan of it if he hasn't seen it?"" Kumar said, ""We've put in a lot of time and effort into this, and so it seems, to me, kind of shocking.""
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