(Radio Iowa) – The labor union representing more than two-thousand graduate assistants at the University of Iowa is demanding higher wages, saying the current minimum 26-thousand dollar salary isn’t enough. Natalie McClellan is a third year P-H-D student and she represents COGS, the graduate student worker union at the U-I.  McClellan says, “Our demand was to keep up with inflation but keeping up with inflation, which can go up and down, it’s not accounting for what it would actually take to have a living wage.”

The union and the Iowa Board of Regents agreed to that 26-thousand minimum last March during negotiations, but McClellan says the reality is, the wages don’t cover costs like housing, transportation and food. The regents are asking the legislature to increase funding for the state’s three public universities, but McClellan says any increased funding needs to benefit the workforce. “Okay, you’re asking for more money for the university system,” she says. “How is that going to benefit us as the people who are making it go.”

During the regents’ Wednesday meeting in Iowa City, protesters organized by the union shut down proceedings. Regents President Pro Tem Sherry Bates had to raise her voice to adjourn the meeting.

The union is using M-I-T’s Living Wage Calculator that accounts for costs like transportation and housing. Assuming a 40-hour work week, it says a single person with no kids in Johnson County needs a pre-tax salary of 35-thousand dollars. The U-I estimates a 25-percent increase in graduate student wages would cost the system nearly 14-million dollars. Just this month, the Regents requested an additional 15-million dollars from the state for the 2025 fiscal year.