[BoulderCouncilHotline] Committee on Rights and Compensation - CU grad students

[Weaver, Sam]

Fellow Council Members and HOTLINE followers,

I just signed onto this petition: https://bouldercrc.org/fee-waiver-petition

I want to tell you why and encourage you to do so as well.  This concerns seeking fair wages in Boulder, a subject Council has spent much time on since I have been involved. We have received several emails to Council on this subject.

I worked at CU for 10 years as a paid professional researcher in optics.  I worked alongside graduate students that entire time (1990 - 2000), and while I was paid a decent salary, the graduate students were not.  I was able to afford to purchase a house with my partner because it was 1990, and I was making a modest but real salary.  This was not the case for the graduate students, and it often seemed quite unfair to me.  I understand that they will receive advanced degrees, and I did not, but the reality on the ground was that once their course work was completed, the graduate students were working 40+ hours per week while being paid for 20.

While I acknowledge that CU has somewhat increased graduate salaries since I worked there, in no way have those increases kept up with the local cost of living increases, especially for housing.  So it seems fair to look at a waiver of the fixed-cost, regressive, annual student fees that are paid by all students to be waived for graduate students.  The website is more eloquent than I can be, so please at least check it out and become familiar with the issue.  In the spirit of our past work on wage fairness, I think it makes sense to ask CU to help with that work alongside us.

Here is the link to the Daily Camera article about this: http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_32440565/cu-boulder-grad-student-workers-push-union-comes

All the best,

Sam Weaver
Mayor Pro Tem
Boulder City Council
weavers at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:weavers at bouldercolorado.gov>
Phone: 303-416-6130

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