Cecilia Villatoro moved to the United States from El Salvador seven years ago. Six of those years she has spent in the Leavey Center of Georgetown University as a P & R Enterprises employee. She has a 10-month-old child and believes that her wages are inadequate to support him. Nevertheless, she said, “They don’t treat us badly. We don’t get benefits, but we’re not mistreated.”
Georgetown’s administration has announced that it is committed to bettering the wages and benefits available to its full-time subcontracted employees. With this goal in mind, the Advisory Committee on Business Practices met for the first time on Oct. 29 to discuss the issue of contract employees’ compensation.
“The issue of contractor compensation is one that the University takes seriously and that requires broad community involvement and dialogue,” University Director of Media Relations Laura Cavender said.
The committee consists of students, staff, faculty and administrators. Its current priority, Cavender said, is to ensure a minimum hourly wage of $8.50 and access to health care for all subcontracted workers.
Debate over the issue of compensation packages for subcontracted workers has been ongoing since 2002, when University research showed that while all regular, full-time employees earn at least $10.25 per hour, subcontracted workers earn considerably less.
According to Annie Rogers, a policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, $8.50 an hour still falls short of what she termed a “living wage.”
A 2002 study by the Economic Policy Institute calculated the living wage for the D.C. area at $11.87 an hour, according to Georgetown Solidarity and Advisory Committee member Ginny Leavell (CAS ‘05). Adjusted for inflation, this would place a 2004 figure at $12.49.
Unlike informal committees established in the past to address similar issues, the Advisory Committee on Business Practices includes the unprecedented addition of four regular staff members. One of them is a subcontracted worker for P & R Enterprises, which provides cleaning services for some University buildings.
Villatoro is the worker who fills this seat. When she and her colleagues received an e-mail earlier this semester requesting a representative to serve on the committee, Villatoro volunteered.
“The majority of the other workers felt uncomfortable because they do not understand English,” she said. “I speak a little bit.”
Villatoro’s English-speaking husband accompanied her to the Oct. 29 meeting to act as her translator. But even with this aid, GSC and Advisory Committee member Vikram Tamboli (CAS ‘06) observed that Villatoro was probably not the best choice to represent the workers.
“She seemed like a visual token more than part of the committee,” Tamboli said. “She did not speak much English. She was put in an awkward situation.”
University employees are provided with a benefits package, while P & R workers currently receive no benefits. According to Villatoro, the University has proposed a policy that will provide subcontracted employees with health care coverage at a cost of $25 each month. Four workers interviewed, however, believed that they would have to pay $25 every pay period to receive the coverage, amounting to a total of $50 per month.
“I think that most of the workers won’t pay because it’s too expensive,” a P & R employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “I know that there are other companies in this country that pay more and have benefits, but right now I haven’t found anything.”
Cavender said that implementation of the proposed increase in the minimum wage and providing universal access to health benefits will cost the University between $150,000 and $180,000 per year.
