NYSUT is encouraging School-Related Professional local unions and units to consider, as an option, "living-wage campaigns" to gain contractual wage increases.

"Local unions should tell our stories to the community," said Debbie Minnick, president of the Ithaca Paraprofessionals Association. "When communities find out that there are school employees living in poverty, they want to change that."

At the NYSUT SRP conference in Albany this month, a workshop gave some two dozen SRP leaders tips on mounting living-wage campaigns.

In such a campaign, SRP leaders work to let the community know that the school district pays a poverty wage to many SRPs. The campaigns strive to bring all school workers up to a salary standard that allows an SRP to survive on one full-time job, without support from others, and have time left over for a personal and family life. A living wage is determined by a variety of local economic factors, from food prices to housing costs.

Minnick was one of the first local leaders in the country to coordinate a living-wage campaign. Earlier this fall, she was a featured panelist at a conference in Buffalo on "Advocating for Economic Justice at the Local Level."

Together with two labor allies, Jobs with Justice and ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — Minnick discussed tactics for organizing living-wage campaigns in school districts, universities and "big-box" retailers like Wal-Mart. A teacher aide in the Ithaca city schools, Minnick is a member of the NYSUT Board of Directors and the union's Statewide SRP Committee.

Besides her groundbreaking campaign as president of the Ithaca Paraprofessionals Association that won substantial double-digit pay raises for SRPs, Minnick has worked with local and state unions around the country to raise the importance of living-wage bargaining, based on her experience as a local leader.

A family of four with an income of $20,614 or less is living in poverty, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. It reports that 9.8 percent of the nation's families were in poverty in 2006.

That rate is unacceptable. NYSUT and its national affiliates, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have long pushed for increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state level.

Strategic shift

"Our locals should remain steadfast as they fight for fair and equitable wages," said NYSUT Vice President Kathleen Donahue. "When our members are well-informed about contract issues, and the public understands our issues and concerns, it's a powerful force for fairness."

Local unions interested in living-wage campaigns should contact their NYSUT labor relations specialist.

— Bernie Mulligan