Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the article “8-3 vote keeps Chick-fil-A in the SUB,” published in the Daily Lobo Feb. 28. The article was about the SUB Board vote to keep Chick-fil-A in the SUB after an ASUNM Senate vote to recommend that they remove it, despite survey results that showed 85 percent of those surveyed were in favor of keeping the restaurant. The SUB Board performed a similar survey that reported 44 percent of respondents said Chick-fil-A’s principles are positive overall, while 41 percent said they are negative overall.
opinion@dailylobo.com
I am responding to the excellent reporting by Daily Lobo scribe Ardee Napolitano regarding the Chick-fil-A controversy. And I want to thank Rebecca Vanucci and the two other Student Union Board members who sustained a “no” vote. It’s rather shocking that the board voted to keep Chick-fil-A in the face of two very disparate surveys and a mere 44 percent mandate. This vote directly impacts the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer and transgendered people and it’s shocking that the student union board is essentially voting on the rights of those who are non-gender-conforming. Aren’t rights inalienable?
Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s assertions about who has the audacity to define marriage are ludicrous given that his donations to the Family Research Council fund legislative lobbying efforts that restrict definitions of marriage to man and woman while defaming homosexuality via what the Southern Poverty Law Center has outright labeled “junk science.” The Family Research Council and Focus on the Family were founded by James Dobson in Colorado Springs. Dobson manages annual revenues of more than $130 million.
Both organizations advocate for Bible-based citizenship, abstinence-only education and reparative therapy for non-gender-conforming people.
Given Chick-fil-A’s large donations to the Dobson empire, I wished the SUB Board had seriously considered, too, this wringing of profits from New Mexico to be sucked into a more affluent region for purposes that betray UNM’s mission to “increase access by and participation of traditionally underrepresented groups” (Administrative Policies and Procedures, 3100.4). In addition, this document also clearly states sexual orientation and gender identity are protected categories. The New York Times states Chick-fil-A gives millions to “groups working to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives” and that the “company’s Christian culture and its strict hiring practices … require potential operators to discuss their marital status and civic and church involvement” (NYT, Jan. 29, 2011). Chick-fil-A’s profits directly fund groups that relegate some of us to a tenuous second-class citizenship and my queer heart sank when reading Walter Miller’s comments.
The associate vice president for Student Life (paid $130,964 annually) betrays principles in favor of economics, apparently stating student fees would have to cover the $175,000 cosmic price tag that engenders in any bid to replace this icon of the food court. Is Miller really suggesting that, in addition to the incredible savings incurred by restaurants in the SUB due to not having labor upkeep for seating or restrooms, these restaurants are also seeded $175,000 for kitchen set-up and equipment? This is corporate welfare. Miller adamantly states this is money that will come from student fees. He is threatening in his unprincipled dialectical machinations.
I believe many of us can attest to the limited employment opportunities at UNM available to workers who are black, aging, gay, disabled, female, or of native or Mexican descent. The segregation is shockingly overt within the Physical Plant, which employs a pool of some 400 hourly-wage workers. Within maintenance, the labor pool of licensed technicians and facility technicians is 100 percent male. Grounds is also predominantly male and includes a large percentage of native and Mexican-descent workers. Custodial is a large work force comprising women who are first-language Spanish speakers. This is segregation and again betrays the University mission.
What do salaries look like within the Physical Plant? And how do they compare to salaries of those who are part of the academic mission?
— Associate director of environmental services, grounds and maintenance and planning, Ph.D. in horticulture, three years in: $115,117.
— Area manager with no college degree: $64,628.
— Area supervisor with no college degree and one license: $54,504.
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— Senior lecturer, mathematics, Ph.D., teaching 18 credit hours and 20 years in: $42,000.
— Male plumber II with five years in, two licenses: $40,310.
— Female plumber II with ten years in, some college and three licenses: $36,810.
— Groundskeeper: $21,207.
— Custodian: $18,720.
Predictably, it is the lowest strata of hourly-wage employees covered by an almost nonenforceable CWA bargaining contract that labor on conscientiously, despite a decade of UNM economic austerity measures and five years of stagnant wages. In addition, the $0.15 an hour night-shift differential of custodians was stripped away when their shifts abruptly changed from beginning at 4:30 p.m. to beginning at 4:30 a.m. Over 25 years, UNM will save $7,800 per employee. These are the logistics worked out in the upper echelons of management class that must constantly conform to neoliberal imperatives that squeeze workers and reward the lackeys of economic mayhem.
UNM bargaining unit employees covered by the CWA contract labor in the most draconian of conditions and are subject to disciplinary measures. It’s beyond the pale of imagination that some of the lowest paid workers are now regularly subject to unpaid suspensions of three days by managers spurred by personal animus and a corporatist incentivism that raids workers’ salaries, pensions, health care and educational opportunities as a way to extract productivity and balance budgets. David Harvey writes about the management squeeze on workers as “extracting tribute.”
Wealth gained from workers enriches a management country club class at UNM that does generally receive annual contractual raises and enjoy a very leisured life “working” at UNM.
For Miller to claim, also, that it’s not about safety must be considered within the realities of these enduring inequalities. This affects our physical safety and the material conditions of our lives. I just wish the UNM upper administration would quit protecting departmental structures that buttress a sexist, queer-hating, racialized hierarchy that re-inscribes patterns of settler colonialism upon captive student and employee populations. This is definitely not about the chicken.
