When I was about 10 years old, my grandmother taught me one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned in my life: get paid for the work you put in.

She told me this just after she had started a workers’ union at a textile mill in my hometown. She and a group of co-workers fought for years to protect workers’ rights and increase wages.

Today at the University, people don’t seem to understand this point.

In a Sept. 12 column (Business growth key to better pay), Clark Stallings, a student bus driver and columnist for The Red & Black, argued that The UGA Living Wage Network’s appeal for a “living wage” would hurt the local economy and ultimately lead to an increase in tuition.

What he failed to realize is that workers putting in long hours at a variety of jobs could care less. Their argument is simple: pay us for the work we do.

Students all over campus work endless hours, doing thankless jobs.

I’ve done them myself, working everywhere from Disability Services to the dining halls to intramural sports.

And what do most of these jobs start out at? $5.75 an hour.

And why isn’t this a justifiable wage? Just consider my roommate, who has worked for Food Services since June 2004.

Since then, he has worked full-time during the summer and the night shift at Snelling during the school year. In that time, his pay only has increased one time, and that raise only came this week. He was promoted to a new position in the stock room, earning a measly $6.25 an hour.

Know this: If you are fed up with unjustifiable low pay at your campus job, you have the right to be heard. Your campus employers are not bigger than you. These programs only exist because of you. And that may be the best thing these campus employers have going for them.

In his column, Stallings said University employees are “stuck with low-paying jobs” because there is an “abundant supply of student labor.”

In this case, abundance equals exploitation. The first day that I went to apply for a job at Snelling, I asked if there was any room for me, to which a secretary replied “oh yeah, there is a high turnover rate.”

There always will be students looking for a job with flexible hours. So as long as they don’t scare off too many people, they can continue to get cheap labor from both students and full-time workers desperate for a flexible job.

But flexibility does not justify low wages.

Clark Stallings says he would “think twice before settling down in Athens” and that the economy is faltering.

I say an economy is at its best when it has happy workers. Happy, well paid workers produce a better product. And better products produce a stronger market and more jobs.

Try telling someone who has busted their butt for eight hours for a total, after taxes, of just over 40 bucks, that business growth is the key to better pay.

If tuition, over the long haul, has to be increased to produce a better quality of life on this campus, so be it.

- J. Brandon Lowe is a senior majoring in magazines and history