The following testimonial comes directly from a service worker at Princeton University, presenting an authentic sentiment of inadequate financial support and an uncaring institution: it comprises just one of many voices of frustration and despair on this campus. It has only been edited for clarity:
“My salary is not enough for a single father with two kids. I can not afford to [pay for] rent and utilities, [not to mention] car fuel and maintenance… I literally have to choose if I’m going to have breakfast or lunch most days cause the price of food is high and I can’t afford to eat both meals most days… I’m asked by office staff if I have plans for a summer vacation, I can’t even treat myself to McDonald’s so a vacation is just a dream. The small 2% or 3% raises we get are always erased [by] the annual 3% raise we pay for health insurance. I have been working for Princeton for a little over 3 years and my salary has gone up by less than 800 dollars for the year…I left a job that paid me significantly more but I couldn’t pass up the chance to work for what I thought at the time was a world class university. I have come to realize that it’s smoke and mirrors and Princeton wants to pay us middle to low end of the scale and expect to be talked about in the same breath as Harvard, [but] Harvard facilities operations [get] paid higher [than] we do here. So maybe Princeton should lower their view of [themselves] until they truly start acting like the prestigious university that they are.”
Our service workers are vital to the University community, yet paradoxically exist in a space disparate from it: a space in which their concerns and fears aren’t important enough for the University to accommodate them.
While the University helps faculty and students thrive, workers are left to the wayside—as one campus worker described, the administration “doesn’t really care what we are facing on [a] daily basis.” Princeton should no longer brush these issues aside. It must take these concerns seriously and commit to supporting its service workers with meaningful compensation.
While the cost of living has increased month over month all across America for the past two years, many Americans have felt left behind by the corporations that employ them. These employers have offered meager raises to pacify their workers while annual costs of living have skyrocketed by 8% and even 12% in some states, raking in record profits in an economy that is failing to support its essential workers.
Princeton, disappointingly, is no more than a follower of these trends, making only “market adjustments” to the pay of our essential workers. Despite requests from workers to be fairly compensated with respect to the cost of living increases in New Jersey (which stand around 8%), Princeton’s administration behaves as if it is blind to this reality, offering minimum pay increases below inflation and the cost of their benefits to unionized workers. In other words, many employees are effectively seeing their wages decline. This, despite Princeton’s attempts to move on without pushback, is a serious transgression that must be addressed.
While the University offers legitimately helpful benefits to its workers (healthcare, childcare, retirement funds, etc.) which are genuinely appreciated by workers, a survey of over 100 union workers on campus—conducted by the Princeton Chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA)—tells us that they are simply not enough. Instead, the ostensibly meaningful benefits mask the impacts of low wages on workers that need to pay for rent, a car, or even just food for their children. The survey included the following questions:
Question 1: Current raises at Princeton have not kept up with the cost of living for several years. Would you support automatic cost of living adjustments as a minimum?
Of the 116 respondents, 105 answered in the affirmative. In responses that provided more detail, many mentioned a desire for financial security and fair compensation. “Our current raises hardly even keep up with yearly increases in health care let along everyday cost of living increases,” noted one worker. Another asserted: we all deserve more than just a cost of living raise.” Yet given Vice President of Human Resources Romy Riddick’s claim that Princeton is “paying very close attention to the salaries and making market adjustments,” it is evident that Princeton only cares about the market viability of its wages, not the genuine needs of its workers.
Question 2: What is the greatest hardship you are facing now at work or at home? How could the University help?
Many of the responses to this question included direct complaints about the cost of living raises in New Jersey and of Princeton’s lack of action in supporting its employees. One respondent mentioned that “fuel cost + mortgage / rent is unattainable for my union brothers / sisters” due to the overwhelming inflation and lack of raises. Another mentioned the cost of “groceries and gas” as a major burden to them, and that “pay increases would help significantly.” Additionally, despite Princeton’s healthcare and benefits receiving praise from many respondents, union workers contend that their negotiated annual raises (around 3%) are entirely negated by the rise in healthcare costs each year (also around 3%)—even before inflation skyrocketed. Nearly all of the survey responses mentioned cost of living difficulties in some way, demonstrating how raises that fail to match with inflation at the bare minimum function as effective pay cuts. Princeton’s pay stagnation shows a blatant disregard for the deplorable conditions that their essential workers live in—conditions that are in direct contrast to Princeton’s status as the wealthiest per-capita university in the U.S.
Question 3: If applicable, how is your relationship with your union? What does your union do well? How could it do better?
Utilizing the union to advocate on the behalf of workers for their demands—the very purpose of a union in most cases—often turns out to be quite difficult at Princeton. At this institution, protecting the right of free expression is of great importance. This power has been freely wielded by groups on campus to debate the rights and existences of our community’s most vulnerable members. Apparently, however, this right does not extend to service workers and their ability to effectively fight for their right to be paid a wage that they can survive on, to be compensated for exceptional work, to enjoy meaningful and accessible benefits, and to work in a safe environment.
Princeton’s no-strike clause silences that right of free expression. SEIU Local 175 is subjected to a no-strike clause that prohibits any sort of striking collective action meant to communicate the will of the workers. Walk-outs, protests, and other similar forms of action are explicitly disallowed, a direct contradiction to Princeton’s constant support for all free speech on campus. Though this is unfortunately the norm across America, Princeton should become a trailblazer in this regard and defend its free-speech values for workers as vigorously as it does for all other groups on campus. Multiple distinct responses to the above question cited this clause as the source of the union’s lack of power (and, to an extent, its legitimacy).
Given Princeton’s current indifference to these conditions, students must play an active role in pressuring the University to make real changes—most importantly, annual wage increases across the board for its workers to combat rising costs of living. Students’ voices can genuinely influence the actions of the administration. Look to the incredible efforts of Divest Princeton, for instance, and their resilient campaign that resulted in the University divesting part of its endowment from publicly traded fossil fuel companies.
Their work is far from over, however, and so is ours. We encourage students to advocate on behalf of workers that have found their struggles invisible to and ignored by Princeton. Join us in our fight against the University’s negligence for our most essential workers to live a life free from immense and unnecessary turmoil and hardship.
In the ongoing fight to secure greater wages and the deserved right to strike for our most essential workers on campus, we encourage you to sign on to student groups’ petition for the University to address campus workers’ needs.
Additionally, fighting on the side of Princeton’s campus workers in their attempt to receive fair and livable compensation is their local union, Local 175 of Service Workers International Union (SEIU). Made up of our indispensable workers (staff from dining halls, cleaning, maintenance, etc.), SIEU 175 is urging the University to pay its workers fairly. However, effectively utilizing the union to advocate on behalf of workers turns out to be quite difficult at Princeton, giving their “no-strike” clause in the current negotiated contract.
To read more about this facet of the issue, what role SEIU 175 has to play in supporting our workers, and more on Princeton’s “no-strike” clause, please read this article’s companion piece, “By Restricting Strikes, Princeton Silences Workers’ Free Speech,” from Bryce Springfield ’25 and Lucy Armengol ’26.
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of SEIU Local 175.
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