IU support staff say pay raises necessary

IU employees want a 3.5-percent salary raise.

The Communications Workers of American Local 4730, a union for IU-Bloomington support staff and IU-Northwest clerical and technical staff, is seeking for a raise that will help employees make ends meet, Union President Bryce Smedley said.

“Employees are really struggling, especially when they haven’t seen raises that keep up with rate of inflation,” he said.

Last year, employees who were members of CWA 4730 received a 1.5-percent increase when IU President Michael McRobbie asked all the employees to “shoulder the burden of this bad economy,” Smedley said.

“We were happy to take the 1.5, thinking that this is what we were all going to do to really get through,” he said. “We then find out that the top administrators turn around and give themselves huge increases.”

Last year, the IU board of trustees approved a 12-percent increase to McRobbie’s salary of $476,000.

Most of the workers who are part of the CWA union are secretaries, cooks, servers, janitors, maintenance workers and technical staff.

“A lot of these employees keep this University running, and a lot of them are actually some of the lowest-paid employees on campus,” Smedley said.

Forty percent of the support staff earn less than $30,000, more than $8,000 less than the Monroe County average, Smedley said.

He also said he knows money is available and IU is in a financially sound place.

“If they’re able to find huge raises for some of the top income earners on campus, then I think they can really start to address some of the lowest-income earners and find money to make people at least pay their bills,” he said.

For employees to receive a raise, the University will have to take into consideration what next year’s enrollment will be as well as the cost of benefits, such as social security, retirement and health care.

Budget conferences begin next week, and members will outline where the money is coming from and how much they will have to spend.

The University will then take the budget to the Indiana state legislature. Once the legislature approves, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald will present the budget to the IU Board of Trustees.

“Clearly, we are incredibly dependant on our employees,” he said. “We try to provide good health care, provide good retirement benefits, salary. We just have to see where we are on the budget.”

Smedley said the union’s biggest struggle is helping those who work at IU make ends meet without raising the cost of students’ tuition.

“If IU can’t give us a 3.5 raise or a 3 percent raise, we would really like to hear their justification, and we’d like to know if they are going to advocate for the lowest income employees on campus or not,” he said.

Today, the CWA union asks for staff, faculty and students to wear green as a silent protest to show IU administrators the demand for affordable health care.