It is borrowed from calculations arrived at by the cities of Cambridge and Somerville for their employees. The cost might actually be more. Few think a living wage is less. The sit-in has attracted more and more attention from the media first as a news item, then, more recently, with intelligent exchanges between students, university officers and employees especially on New England Cable News. The university counters that the sit-in complicates serious salary negotiations and that part of their contract package is to offer free courses to develop employees work skills.
Employees think that the university s negotiators are dragging their feet.
Whatever the merits of these arguments, the students have raised a serious moral issue that is an integral part of the Church s social teachings. The American public is well aware of the minimum wage, the amount an employer must pay an employee by law. This may be acceptable for part-time, teenage help or for those whose wages are based largely on tips which can be reasonably presumed. Few of us, however, give much thought to the moral dichotomy of paying wages for a full week s labor so as to keep him or her below the poverty line. By it, he meant a salary that would provide food, shelter, clothing and enough money to live in simple decency.