In keeping with the earlier entries about the cost of sports — especially, outrageous salaries — you may want to see what NOW reports on low-salary workers at Vanderbilt. mjh

A Living Wage . NOW | PBS [mjh: in New Mexico on KNME-5, 8pm Friday, 3/30]

This week, NOW examines the fight for a “living wage”—the pay needed to cover an actual week’s worth of living—on the Nashville, Tennessee campus of Vanderbilt University. The chancellor there earns $1.2 million a year, the endowment is $3 billion, but some of the school’s lowest-paid workers—groundskeepers, custodians, and dining service workers—earn less than $8.00 an hour.

Is the university really sensitive to their basic needs? NOW Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa reports that with the help of student activists and public figures like actor Danny Glover, the workers recently won a wage increase.

“We have our home here. And I’m fighting—we’re both fighting to hold on to it,” says Vanderbilt custodian Dewayne Arbogast. “And the only way we can do that is to make sure Vanderbilt continues to pay us adequately.”

NOW travels to Nashville to talk with workers, university staff, and activists about the striking gap not just between Vanderbilt’s budget allocations, but between disparate people who share a common loyalty to campus and school.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/313/index.html