WILL IRVINE (HE/HIM)
On September 9 the University Council passed a resolution tasking the senior management staff with developing a plan to implement a living wage strategy. The motion evolved from a proposal by Councillor William Bell-Purchas to amend the Council’s contentious strategic plan with a directive to phase in a living wage. Bell-Purchas told his fellow Councillors that the resolution “would show that we, as a Council, value and care about the workers that allow our University to exist, to educate and to research”. For the Council, the resolution marks the first time the University has made a formal commitment to working towards paying a living wage.
Living Wage is a global initiative that aims to calculate and provide a fair wage that workers can maintain a basic standard of living on. It takes into consideration cost of living factors and basic necessities in order to determine what organisations that value their employees should be paying. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Living Wage is calculated by Family Centre’s Social Policy Research Unit. Organisations like Wellington City Council and the Parliamentary Service have all achieved living wage accreditation, as have all of the major banks. The current living wage is $27.80. Comparably, the minimum wage, which is set by the Government, is $23.15.
While university staff like lecturers and researchers are often paid well above the living wage, estimates raised by The Post columnist and VUW staff member Max Rashbrooke show that the University has around 500 directly employed staff and 160 contracted staff who make under the living wage. In 2021, COO Mark Loveard told students that the University had “made a commitment to pay a living wage” and that they were “phasing it in over four years”. Three years later, no substantial progress has been made.
In a chamber packed with supporters, Councillors initially rejected Bell-Purchas’s proposal to include the Living Wage commitment in the strategic plan. This opposition was led in part by Vice-Chancellor Nic Smith, who makes $368,750 a year, or roughly $177.2 an hour. Smith, who is often touted as an austerity champion brought in to fix the University’s finances, based his opposition on the significant cost it would incur to the University. According to Rashbrooke’s numbers, this cost would be roughly 0.2% of the University’s annual revenue.
Smith’s salary alone could nearly cover the cost of paying all contracted staff a living wage in 2025.
VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson and Councillor Bell-Purchas both thought that Smith had a genuine concern about the cost for the University, with Bell-Purchas saying that “everyone at the Council table does have the University’s best interests at heart”. Parkinson, however, was more critical, saying that while Smith cared about costs, he was “using it as an excuse to offput the living wage”. Parkinson pointed to the fact that the resolution was not calling for an immediate cost, but a broader phase-in that could be balanced against costs.
Despite pressure from Smith, both Parkinson and Bell-Purchas viewed the compromise resolution as a major success. Parkinson said that VUWSA “definitely views it as a victory”, but added that “we need to keep an eye on things and make sure that the plan does go into place”.
Speaking to Salient, Living Wage organiser Finn Cordwell also stressed that he wasn’t criticising Smith, but instead asked why Smith couldn’t support the approach of other universities he had worked at, like Oxford University and King’s College London. Cordwell said he understood concern about finances, but thought that the point of departure from Smith was around the “principle of a living wage”.
“We’re asking him to make a commitment to the principle. He seems to have a problem with the methodology of the Living Wage”. Cordwell’s view was that if Nic Smith didn’t support the living wage, “he doesn’t have another solution to ensure that the cleaners aren’t living off food banks. I would ask Nic to put himself in the shoes of his workers and ask him if he could live off that pay”.