Pinthouse Pizza
Renew the Fight
RECEIVED Tue., Sept. 15, 2015
Dear Editor,
UT-Austin is currently reviewing bids to contract out several services in the Dell Medical School’s new medical office building to private corporations. These services include maintenance, custodial, and landscaping. We, the Austin community, cannot allow this to happen. This new medical school was funded, in part, by city taxes with the understanding it would create new, quality jobs for our city. Instead, UT’s attempting to turn the facility into a cash cow for corporations that pay unlivable wages and provide little to no benefits.
The lowest-paid employees always face the most dramatic effects of privatization, and that isn’t a burden we can bear. I’ve worked at UT for seven years, and I make less than $12/hour. While it’s a nearly impossible wage to exist on in Austin, the university pension and health care provide incentive for workers.
The public suffers too: Instead of having a reliable workforce, our institutions become revolving doors of inexperienced workers. Further, privatization has wasted millions of Texans’ tax dollars in the past, like the $244 million mess Accenture made of the Children's Health Insurance Program.
We’ve seen this at UT before. Two years ago, administrators planned to privatize all food service positions. The Texas State Employees Union formed a community coalition, Save Our UT, with student and community groups. Together, we defeated that privatization attempt. Today, that fight is renewed.
The state and the university have the means to give all UT workers a living wage, a pension, and good health care. But they’ll never do it out of benevolence. We will always have to fight to defeat that threat. We must demand an end to this privatization scheme, for the good of our workers and for the good of the services they provide.
UT-Austin is currently reviewing bids to contract out several services in the Dell Medical School’s new medical office building to private corporations. These services include maintenance, custodial, and landscaping. We, the Austin community, cannot allow this to happen. This new medical school was funded, in part, by city taxes with the understanding it would create new, quality jobs for our city. Instead, UT’s attempting to turn the facility into a cash cow for corporations that pay unlivable wages and provide little to no benefits.
The lowest-paid employees always face the most dramatic effects of privatization, and that isn’t a burden we can bear. I’ve worked at UT for seven years, and I make less than $12/hour. While it’s a nearly impossible wage to exist on in Austin, the university pension and health care provide incentive for workers.
The public suffers too: Instead of having a reliable workforce, our institutions become revolving doors of inexperienced workers. Further, privatization has wasted millions of Texans’ tax dollars in the past, like the $244 million mess Accenture made of the Children's Health Insurance Program.
We’ve seen this at UT before. Two years ago, administrators planned to privatize all food service positions. The Texas State Employees Union formed a community coalition, Save Our UT, with student and community groups. Together, we defeated that privatization attempt. Today, that fight is renewed.
The state and the university have the means to give all UT workers a living wage, a pension, and good health care. But they’ll never do it out of benevolence. We will always have to fight to defeat that threat. We must demand an end to this privatization scheme, for the good of our workers and for the good of the services they provide.
Vanocur Edwards