Duke plans to raise the minimum wage it pays regular Duke-hired employees to $10 an hour. Details of the raise are not yet final, but administrators expect to announce their plans within the next two weeks.
The University would not officially release its new base pay rate, but several administrators confirmed that Duke will pay employees at least $10 an hour—about 10 percent above the federal poverty level for a family of four.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said the new wage level would apply to full-time and part-time employees hired by Duke University Health System, Duke University Medical Center or the University directly. It will not apply to students, temporary workers, or contract employees, who are hired by outside organizations but work on campus.
When the University completes its analysis about the number of employees the increase will affect, Trask said more information will be available. Administrators said they are still examining multiple issues about the wage increase and its implementation, including how to extend it to unionized employees.
Preliminary analyses estimated the cost of implementing the wage hike to be as much as $500,000 per year. Because exact details of the increase are not final, a firm estimate is not available.
Any increase in wages would likely take effect in July 2004 when employee raise annually take effect, said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations.
Officials would not release the number of employees who currently earn less than $10 an hour, but Paul Grantham, communications director for the Office of Human Resources, said it was a “small percentage” of the people Duke currently employs. In 2003, Duke employed a total of 35,201 people, including students, part-time workers and temporary staff, according to an economic impact report released by the University last year.
Several dozen different jobs—many of them in DUHS—have starting pay rates under $10 an hour, according to guidelines from the human resources department titled “Job Classifications & Pay Ranges for FY 2004-2005.” Although individuals’ pay rates are partially determined by seniority and experience, food service workers, housekeepers, grounds operators, lab assistants, various medical technicians, clerks and others have starting salaries between $8 and $10 an hour.
Senior administrators have been working to help employees who fall at the “low end of the wage scale” for about two years, Burness said. After considering several ways to compensate employees, officials decided that raising all regular employees to a certain wage level would be beneficial for the greatest number of workers, he said.
Initial studies began under former President Nan Keohane, but the effort gained momentum about four months ago as preliminary discussions about next year’s budget started. “It’s clearly something that President [Richard] Brodhead is quite interested in,” Burness said.
Although Trask underscored that the University does not regard the move as implementing a living wage, the planned rate is in line with what other groups have considered a living wage for the Durham area. The Durham County Board of Commissioners set the current county living wage at $9.74 an hour in June, and the Durham City Council sets the living wage at about $9.50 an hour, 5 percent above the poverty level.
Although the increase will be offered to all University-paid employees, unionized workers have separate contracts, and their raises must be part of official negotiations.
“Anything that would affect the employees represented by one of the unions here at Duke, you would have to do the negotiation before anything could be written into the union contract,” Grantham said.
Two of the University’s unions—Local 77 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Local 1328 of the Amalgamated Transit Union—are scheduled to negotiate contracts this year. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 465 finalized a three-year contract with the University in May. Grantham did not know if the University would renegotiate its contract with Local 465 early to include the wage hike.
Although less than 5 percent of University employees are union members, unions are active in areas likely affected by the wage increase, such as dining and housekeeping.
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