Cornell’s student workers minimum wage is currently set at $15, which equates to just over 60 percent of Ithaca’s liveable earnings rate for single adults with no children, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s widely-used Living Wage Calculator.
The Student Assembly has begun its initiative to increase this wage, unanimously voting to reestablish an ad hoc committee for further discussion at its meeting on Thursday.
The creation of the committee, entitled the Committee on Student Employment and Wages, follows actions taken by last semester’s Assembly to investigate concerns over student employment at Cornell. Members will work alongside the Office of Financial Aid and Student Employment to improve student worker experience, including raising the minimum wage to $18.50 to meet local living costs and simplifying the student job application process.
Cornell trails behind other upstate colleges — including Binghamton University and Syracuse University — in matching local living costs, according to MIT’s calculator.
However, Assembly members have voiced concerns about the plausibility of their plan to increase the student wage after witnessing the University’s response to the UAW Local 2300 strike.
The UAW Local 2300 strike began in mid-August after University administration and union representatives failed to reach an agreement after months of bargaining. With their requests for a wage that matches Ithaca’s cost of living denied, full-time food, maintenance and other auto workers refused to cross the picket line, causing the University’s day-to-day functions to slow or halt entirely as Cornell’s Class of 2028 arrived on campus.
The 2023-2024 Committee on Student Employment and Wages committee released a report in March that contrasted University data with other local schools and elite universities, noting a significantly lower percentage of payment to student workers than the average cost of living in the Ithaca area. After months of investigation, the subgroup of the Assembly recommended that the University increase the wage to match at least 75 percent of the living wage of Ithaca, a proposal then adopted by Resolution 67.
“Home to one of the country’s best labor studies schools, Cornell should be at the top of its class for fair wages and labor practices, including for its student workers,” the report read. “It can achieve this by paying a minimum of 75 percent of Ithaca’s living wage.”
Last spring semester — over a month after the report was released — the majority of voters in the S.A. election approved raising the minimum wage of student workers to $18.50.
The resolution also suggested a yearly cost-of-living adjustment that would match New York’s annual minimum wage increase, along with requiring an annual job fair for students to explore on-campus jobs and a reorganization of the application process for on-campus jobs.
Ezra Galperin ’27, an S.A. undesignated representative at-large, explained that Workday’s — Cornell’s centralized time and pay management software — current system for finding job postings needs to be streamlined, as jobs with specific requirements, for any level of experience, are piled in one “student jobs” category.
“It creates a clutter of jobs that, unless you are part of a very specific group or are a specific individual, you’re pretty much guaranteed not to get,” Galperin said.
Danielle Donovan ’25, the S.A. student workers’ representative, reiterated the lack of transparency when it comes to Workday postings. According to Donovan, the committee met with the University's human resources department several times last semester to discuss potential changes. While the administration was willing to implement a job fair, there was a lot of pushback in terms of increasing wages.
“If they are unwilling to give a [cost-of-living adjustment] increase to full-time workers, even though they go on strike, it is unlikely that they would give a [wage] increase to the students,” Donovan said.
Galperin explained that the recent UAW strike highlights how students have the ability to ensure that the University listens to the Assembly’s recommendations.
“Ultimately, and unfortunately, the University is not bound by our recommendations,” Galperin said. “I do think that the University needs to take a serious look at the wages, given what we saw during the UAW strike, and given the very clear power that students have to make change in that sense.”
Donovan explained that the committee’s goal is to work towards a student minimum wage increase from $15 to $18.48 this year, which — according to the report — would result in a $6,103,767 increase in additional University spending.
“For context, the increase in the total student wage expenditure equals just over one-tenth of one percent (.11%) of the University’s [fiscal year] operating budget: a cost that Cornell can certainly afford to bear,” the report stated.
Cornell’s expenditures in 2023 summed to $5.5 billion, with just over 60 percent of that spending used for salaries, wages and benefits. $26 million of that budget went towards student employment, an allotment that would increase by 23.2 percent if the assembly’s recommendations are adopted.
The Office of Financial Aid and Student Employment declined to comment on the Assembly’s plans to request an increase in the student wage.
The report also proposed a pay scale for different tiers across student workers, as they found that the wages of lower tiers — entry level positions — increased at a higher rate than that of upper tiers — positions requiring specific experience and developed skills — in the past few years. The Assembly recommended a yearly increase for each tier’s wage that is uniformly tied to inflation.
“A lot of my friends are student workers. [They] really make the campus run, especially for me, as a Kosher-keeping student,” Galperin said. “I want to make sure they are looked out for.”