WKEF-TV ABC 22 News :: News - Top Stories - Update: Professor Still On Hunger Strike for Housekeepers

Tuesday, December 11 2012, 06:57 PM EST

Update: Professor Still On Hunger Strike for Housekeepers

UPDATE: Professor Nibert continued his hunger strike on Tuesday. He is still stationed in the university's administration building.

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SPRINGFIELD -- A local professor goes on a hunger strike and sit-in for his fellow employees after he says they are treated unjustly. The Wittenberg University professor and some faculty and students have been sitting in the administrative building all day protesting the treatment of the housekeeping staff.

Sociology Professor David Nibert sits in Wittenberg's administration building with nothing but a book, a comforter and a water bottle.

"The only way they're going to get me out is to carry me out, either the paramedics or the police," said Nibert.

His sit-in and hunger strike is to protest what he calls Wittenberg's unfair treatment of housekeepers.

"They became second-class citizens on campus," he said. "This group that is primarily women and people of color they have low wages and low benefits."

Wittenberg is facing a budget shortfall so they outsourced their housekeepers to one of the the lowest-bidding housekeeping companies. It's a plan that could save $600,000 a year.

If this sit-in and hunger strike does not produce a compromise, housekeepers here at Wittenberg could take as much as a 59 percent cut in their salary.

"They are not taking a 59 percent cut, why are they expecting the lower wages to do this," said housekeeper Miriam Mayse. She and her husband have worked at Wittenberg for a combined 53 years and once the new year hits, her family and 35 other families will have to fight for fewer positions paying less with little to no benefits or go somewhere else.

"They want me to work for $8.50 an hour and say I've only worked for a year," said Mayse. "The luxuries are definitely out: no cell phones no cable, keep our heat on at 55. We are definitely going to struggle."

The housekeepers came up with a solution that involves creating their own cooperative that will increase their wages and save the school money, and now Nibert will sit here until:

The Wittenberg administration shares the details of its contract with WFF Facility Services with the volunteer attorney member of the Housekeepers' Cooperative Viability Committee so that the Committee can determine whether in fact it would be costly for the University to opt out of the contract, as Wittenberg's attorney states, and whether that would be more damaging to the University and its mission than proceeding with its disgraceful treatment of the housekeepers,

Wittenberg agrees to fully support the creation of a housekeeping workers cooperative and to allow time for the cooperative to be organized by either executing a bridge contract with the current housekeeping contractor, ABM, or by hiring the individual workers as University employees for at least six months so that our current housekeepers can continue their service to Wittenberg until their cooperative is ready to assume the task; and the administration commits to reviewing the proposals to discontinue important academic programs with the same innovative spirit and consideration of imaginative faculty suggestions and alternatives that characterized the proposal for a housekeepers' cooperative."These housekeepers are not getting their fair share and they are as much of the Wittenburg community as I am as a student," said Ian McNeill a senior at Wittenburg. "Our campus motto is: 'With light, we pass it on to others' and we're not passing any light.

"I've cried and I'm on the verge right now," said Mayse. "It doesn't make me feel good about myself when you know you put your heart and soul into this job and gave 110 percent every day and I did it with a smile. The hardest thing to do is to smile."

The University says they do not want to opt out of the contract they've signed with the housekeeping contractor even though there is an opt out clause.

After the building closed at 5 p.m. Monday, the professor remained there with a senior student.

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