Community members gathered at the Southside Community Center on Sunday for a Living Wage Town Hall hosted by the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, where local leaders and workers discussed the need for higher wages and increased worker protections across Tompkins County.
While the focus of the Town Hall was presenting data and having conversations about what increasing wages would do for the community, local leaders had opened the event for questions and direct comments from attendees — many of whom shared their own issues with working conditions in Ithaca.
“I walked in on Sunday morning for my shift one week after my dad died and was fired for taking four days off,” Jeff Cole told The Sun.
Cole recounted the story of losing his father, job and home in roughly one month at the Tompkins County Living Wage Town Hall on Sunday at the Southside Community Center. He described his story to a panel of roughly 10 community leaders, including members of the Tompkins County Legislature. Cole was a chef at GreenStar Coop when he received an early Sunday morning call that changed his life.
“I got a call at 6 a.m. on Sunday informing me of my father’s passing,” Cole said. “I walked to work, pulled my manager aside and broke down, sobbing, explaining to him I lost my father and I needed to go to Indiana to bury him.”
In response, according to Cole, his manager offered him one day off work. Just seven days after the passing of his father, his manager fired Cole with no severance pay. Cole subsequently lost his apartment and became homeless.
Dozens of other community members and workers attended the event to learn more about the Tompkins County Workers initiative to increase the minimum wage to the living wage. Other coalitions attended the event including members of Ithaca’s Common Council. Ian Greer, the senior researcher for the Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations School’s Ithaca Co-Lab, provided relevant statistics.
In brochures distributed during the event, a Cornell ILR study stated that “raising New York’s minimum wage to $21.25 would create 75,539 jobs statewide” including “2,787 in the Southern Tier alone.” The reasoning behind this claim is that by increasing workers’ disposable income — a person’s total income minus current taxes on it — generates a boost in spending and therefore the economy of the area.
Greer presented more statistics at the Town Hall event, including one that described high rents as the number one factor “for unaffordability in Tompkins County” explaining that “about 50 percent of renters spen[t] more than 30 percent of their income on housing.”
“The work and the data that the lab collects helps us better understand the issues facing citizens,” Greer said. “And with that data and information we can pinpoint issues and help find solutions and hold events like this for people to access that information.”
One of the leaders of the initiative and founders of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, Pete Myers, addressed the attendees and emphasized the importance of workers in Ithaca having access to wages that allowed them to “thrive” in their communities — not just survive. Myers also explained why it is necessary for workers to rally behind the cause and provided resources for people to gain more information.
While the community members who attended the event were supportive of the cause, many of them, including Cole, cited deeper issues than just wages. Cole specifically shared that he wished to not only see wages increase, but also to “increase workers’ rights."
Phoebe Brown, who is a member of Ithaca’s Common Council and is a longtime local resident said an increase in wages is “overdue and definitely needed.” While she supports the initiative, she hopes that the panel is more inclusive to all workers in Ithaca.
“I hope that the leaders of this initiative reach out to minority communities like the Black community and have conversations with them,” Brown said. “I hope they are intentional with making sure people on the panel are representing the diversity of Ithaca and speaking to those communities.”
But for Cole, he would like to see more immediate action and awareness surrounding issues like homelessness, job insecurity and low wages in Tompkins County.
“It’s crucial that people start to negotiate more and work together and cut out all the bullshit middle-man stuff,” Cole said. “There is a real crisis in Ithaca that needs to be addressed, but it starts with wages and jobs.”
Zeinab Faraj is a reporter from The Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun's summer fellowship at The Ithaca Voice. This piece was originally published in the Ithaca Voice.
Zeinab Faraj is a member of the class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is the feature editor on the 143rd Editorial Board and was the assistant sports editor of the 143rd Editorial Board. You can reach her at zfaraj@cornellsun.com.
