[M]embers of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign are calling for higher pay, arguing their salaries should reflect the candidate’s support for a $15 per hour minimum wage.
Late Thursday, The Washington Post first reported the story based on internal communications between field organizers and Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager. The Post published the story hours after Sanders praised the U.S. House of Representatives for approving legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.
The complaint from field organizers, working for Sanders throughout the country, is that their annual salaries — which were set by a union contract finalized in early May — result in them earning less than $15 an hour, according to the Post.
In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, campaign staffers wrote that field operatives on the ground “cannot be expected to build the largest grassroots organizing program in American history while making poverty wages.” The Post reported that the letter was supposed to be sent to Shakir later this week.
“Given our campaign’s commitment to fighting for a living wage of at least $15.00 an hour, we believe it is only fair that the campaign would carry through this commitment to its own field team,” field staffers wrote in the letter.
The letter also said that field organizers are working at least 60 hours a week, which is dropping their average hourly pay to less than $13.
The contract between the Sanders campaign and The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 mandates that interns and canvassers be paid $15 her hour, while field organizers be paid an annual salary of $36,000 and regional organizers receive $48,000.
After the union and the campaign had ratified the contract in May, Shakir had called it “some of the strongest standards for campaign workers in history.”
But in the letter, campaign workers said that “field staffers are barely managing to survive financially, which is severely impacting our team’s productivity and morale” and that “some field organizers have already left the campaign as a result,” according to The Washington Post.
On May 17 — just nine days after the contract had been signed — Shakir called a staff meeting in which he advocated for raising the pay for field organizers to $42,000 and extending the workweek. The union rejected Shakir’s offer because the raise would have made field organizers responsible for paying more of their health care costs, the Post reported.
In the letter to be sent to Shakir this week, field staffers are now requesting the campaign cover all health care costs for employees making $60,000 per year or less — currently the campaign pays all premiums for salaried employees making $36,000 or less a year.
A spokesperson for UFCW Local 400 said it was unable to comment on the situation further than the statement it had given The Washington Post.
“First and foremost, our union is a democratic organization. We cannot comment on specific, ongoing internal processes between our members and their employer, particularly without the consent of our members. We can say that our union is proud to advocate for every member in every workplace we represent to earn a better life – both during contract negotiations and beyond,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement, Shakir said the campaign and the union have been in ongoing discussions about changes to the pay structure for employees.
“We look forward to continuing those discussions and obviously are disappointed that some individuals decided to damage the integrity of these efforts before they were concluded,” Shakir said. “As these discussions continue, we are limiting hours so no employee is receiving less than $15 for any hours worked.”
Throughout his campaign, Sanders, who has long advocated for raising the minimum to $15 per hour, has been putting pressure on retail giants Amazon and Walmart to offer employees $15 an hour and has also marched in solidarity with workers at McDonald’s who are demanding wage increases.
In Vermont, a proposal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 her hour died in the Democrat-controlled Legislature, never making it to the Republican Gov. Phil Scott.
Before the legislative session, Sanders held a private meeting with the lieutenant governor and the leaders of the Vermont House and Senate to urge them to pass the proposal that eventually failed.