The University Committee on Class and Labor released its findings this month after nearly two years of research and deliberation.
Formed as a response to student movements in the spring of 2010 against Sodexo employment practices, the committee presented a report that addressed not only contracted labor on campus, like Sodexo employees, but the broader state and impact of class within the Emory community.
The committee offered a total of 59 recommendations across nine thematic categories. In addition to the specific recommendations, the report reflects the hundreds of hours of conversations held by the committee and provides an analysis of information collected through surveys and focus groups.
The committee was comprised of 17 members including faculty, staff and administrators as well as two University students. In the inaugural meeting, the committee was given a chance to start a conversation about Emory's position as an employer, based in the collection of information about the University's workforce.
The most important conclusions included in the report, according to committee co-chair Gary Hauk, vice president and deputy to the president, are found in a section discussing the definition and role of class as a marker of status at Emory. "This is where we really begin to explore the ways that class does exist on campus, and in some ways it might make community and effective work sometimes more difficult."
Discussions with students, faculty and staff highlighted in the report show a clear difference in perception of class at Emory within the different groups.
Nadine Kaslow, past president of the University Senate, School of Medicine professor, chief psychologist at Grady Memorial Hospital and the second co-chair of the committee said she was struck by the diversity of responses from students.
"Some students seemed very attuned to differences of class on campus, while there were others who seemed to feel like class wasn't really a big issue, and asked, 'Why are we even focusing on this?'"
While an overall survey of Emory staff found that 53 percent of respondents agreed with the doubtful students, noting they believed that class did not make a difference at Emory.
Closer discussion with employees in focus group settings revealed a consensus among some staff that they felt at times patronized by students and members of the faculty, being treated as "second class citizens."
One staff member commented in a survey that "faculty view staff as a service provider rather than [people who have] the same mission."
To address the discordant attitudes towards class on campus, the committee recommended creating "cross-university seminars and programs to engage with questions about labor."
"If students were encouraged to learn more about the impact of class historically and currently, that would be a great enhancement to our community life," said Hauk.
Many of the recommendations offered by the report do not consist of immediate action. To bring the committees' recommendations to reality, the report calls for an advisory committee to be formed, tasked with "monitoring and guiding the implementation of our recommendations."
The makeup of the committee will have some overlap with the initial Committee on Class and Labor, but will be more tailored to include members whose jobs fit the process of policy implementation.
The report also sought to address more specific elements of class and labor within the University.
Analyses of staff compensation, conducted by Emory's compensation department and an outside firm, Towers Watson, compared wages and benefits of Emory employees with the external Atlanta market. The research concluded that on average, Emory employees earn slightly less than what the same job would pay in the Atlanta job market while the value of benefits are relatively high compared to the Atlanta market (Emory's overall benefit program ranks second among 10 major Atlanta employers).
There are a few notable exceptions – Emory's life insurance and dental plans have a significantly lower value compared to the plans of comparable jobs in the external Atlanta market.
While Emory has worked in the past to increase wages and benefit plans for employees, low pay still remained an issue for some.
Antonio Harris, a food service attendant at the Emory Hospital, welcomed a reevaluation of employee compensation and related, "recent benefit increases really only evened out the low wages."
The committee aimed to address employee dissatisfaction with compensation by recommending continued research of comparable market compensation, considering increases in certain benefit areas and in one of the report's more concrete recommendations, increasing the minimum wage for Emory staff and contract workers.
A further discussion of the role of contracted workers on campus, the issue that catalyzed the discussion on class and labor, is included in the report but is limited by the information that Emory was able to gather from contracted companies and their employees.
While the committee was able to gather statistical data from contracted companies, federal labor laws prevented the committee from directly surveying contracted employees, leaving many questions about these employees' experiences and job satisfaction unanswered.
According to the report, the federal co-employment labor law "prohibits a contracting agency such as Emory from treating workers of a contractor as if those employees were Emory's own."
"We were disappointed that we were not able to come to a place where we could say, definitely, we know what the circumstances of contract labor are on our campus," said Hauk. "Our sense is that [the] benefits are good as far as they go, but we were not able to hear from the workers themselves, whether they're satisfied with their benefits."
The report recommends that Emory give a high priority to finding solutions to the problems created by co-employment laws, in addition to creating a more transparent process for selecting major contractors.
Among the many recommendations to be carried out by the new committee, a centerpiece could be the inclusion of class as a protected category in the University's nondiscrimination policy, according to Hauk.
The addition would add class to a list of factors including race and religion that the University promises to defend in their diversity.
The idea is not farfetched considering past precedent – sexual orientation was added as a protected category in 1993 following a similar committee report after harassment on campus.
–By David Shortell
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