Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives, jobs, debts, incomes, all of that. For us, for our children. I'm your host,

Richard Wolfe. I want to begin today by shouting out to the students at Smith College in

Northampton, Massachusetts. They are doing something remarkable that is happening on more and more campuses across the country.

They are acting in solidarity with workers at the college, the people who do the work,

provide the meals, fix the buildings, clean the property, all the hard work that goes into,

but is rarely recognized.

And Smith College has been doing what so many have, trying to make more money by understaffing,

overworking, underpaying their workers. You know, it's a sad commentary, but it's a way

that these kinds of elite schools prepare the

young men and women that go there for their lives later on in a capitalist system that

reproduces people at the top who get very nice service and people who do all the work and get

mistreated.

But here's a difference. The students aren't sitting by and simply watching or ignoring.

They're getting out there and they're working with those workers.

In particular, local SEIU, Local 211, and the solidarity and the commitment of the students and the workers to get a better work program.

That'll help the students, that'll change the feelings and atmosphere of that university,

and that will be a mark and a blow against the kind of abusive, rich versus poor exploitation scenario that Smith should

be ashamed of, but that these students are doing something to change. Hats off to the young

women, particularly, Smith is a longstanding school that has been focused on educating women,

and I wanted to recognize the remarkable solidarity they're showing and the difference that

they're making.

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