Tutors at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC), particularly single tutors with children, are paid FAR below what's necessary for bare-minimum survival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Those who serve GRCC students in the tutorial labs across campus are constantly asking for livable wages, but decision-makers at GRCC insist on having zero flexibility for "contingent" employees. Individual tutors have also asked for raises, but GRCC administration does not even read (let alone consider) such requests before denying them categorically. Wages are so insultingly low that Tutorial Coordinators struggle more desperately with each passing semester just to staff tutorial labs at all. Qualified professional tutors simply cannot afford to work for so little, creating a severe and continually worsening under-staffing problem that has shuttered many tutorial labs for unacceptably long periods. Repeated requests for full-time hours and wage increases have fallen on deaf ears; tutors and coordinators are rebuffed time and time again, year after year. This is why GRCC tutors need help from students and the wider Grand Rapids Community!

Despite their degrees and expertise, their unwavering dedication to GRCC students, and their essential contributions to student success and institutional accreditation, GRCC decision-makers think that it's acceptable to impose the following pay structure on all of its tutors, regardless of the circumstances:

• Default: $12.50/hour
• Bachelors Degree Holders: $14.00/hour
• Masters Degree Holders: $16.00/hour

This is shocking and pathetic. Talented tutors are leaving GRCC in droves to work at places like fast food chains, which have a higher starting wage than any GRCC tutor could hope to earn, including those tutors who've been loyal to GRCC for decades. Furthermore, even the worst-paid office support staff at GRCC, whose jobs do not require any prerequisite knowledge, college degrees, or subject-matter expertise, are paid more than the best-paid tutors, whose jobs do require prerequisite knowledge, college degrees, and expertise. IT support staff are paid roughly DOUBLE what tutors are paid. Unlike tutors, office/IT support staff are offered full-time employment, which also entitles them to healthcare, benefits, and job security. To add insult to injury, GRCC strictly limits its tutors to a 28-hour work week in order to avoid legal obligations under the Affordable Care Act, which arise when employees work 30 hours/week or more on average. Tutors therefore get no healthcare, no benefits, no job security, and no respect from GRCC administration. 

To understand the full picture, it’s important to note that GRCC leadership is arranged in a strict hierarchy, with the decision-makers at the apex being almost entirely disconnected from what happens on the ground, with many layers of administration between tutors and leadership. From that perched perspective, students become paying customers, the tutors and adjunct faculty become completely disposable grunt workers who can be paid virtually nothing to do most of the actual educational work of the college, and management/Dean-level employees can be deputized to relay orders that allow decision-makers to reap the financial rewards of everyone else's hard work. In fact, all GRCC administrators are paid at least a living wage—often far more—for any household size, meaning they can easily afford to have and care for children, pay utility bills, buy real estate and vehicles, invest in savings and retirement, take long vacations, and enjoy those finer aspects of life that are afforded only to those with disposable incomes. On top of their salary, they also receive excellent healthcare benefits for their families, generous pensions, stipends for life's big expenses, and other forms of compensation. Tutors at GRCC receive none of these things.

While they don’t directly determine tutor pay, well-compensated Student Success Deans are responsible for ensuring student success, which includes the responsibility to demand livable wages for the educators who dedicate their professional efforts to student success, yet live in abject poverty. GRCC tutors have personally met with Student Success Deans in desperate attempts to impress upon college leadership how dire the situation is, with many tutorial labs constantly teetering on the brink of collapse. Sadly, those discussions were entirely fruitless. The Student Success Deans displayed relative indifference to tutor pleas, repeatedly suggesting that, from their perspective, tutor pay is a low-priority concern, because “low pay is a college-wide problem”. Furthermore, it was clear that the leadership has very little understanding of the hopelessness of being an educator who lives in poverty, or of how much worse pay is for tutors than for ANY other GRCC employees. When pressed for details about who decides tutor pay at GRCC, the Deans tiptoed carefully around the topic, vaguely referencing “a lot of red tape” standing between Deans and the ethereal realm of decision-makers. When asked directly what that “red tape” entails, and who tutors can contact to advocate for meaningful changes in tutor pay, no actual response was ever provided, foreclosing further action by tutors to plead their case to decision-makers.

Because there was never any follow-up to tutor concerns, tutors are left to work with the following information:

• GRCC tutors are struggling in poverty
• Tutorial Coordinators are constantly asking for higher tutor wages
• Student Success Deans have their hands tied by a mysterious, inarticulable web of “red tape”
• No one—at least, no one who tutors interact with—disagrees with the statement that “tutor wages are too low”

Who exactly is standing in the way, then? Someone is consciously deciding to pay GRCC tutors so little that they live in poverty.

Even if decision-makers at GRCC don't really care about tutors' ability to financially survive, or students' access to stable, well-staffed tutoring services, it DOES care very much about its public image, and a growing number of unhappy customers (students) and other community members is bad PR for a community college. Businesses never listen to angry employees, but they always listen to angry customers and the local community, so please contact the Student Success Offices—where concerns about tutorial services should be directed—and tell them how you feel! Visit them at the Student Community Center (Room 313), call them at (616) 234-3673, and use the Student Service Complaint form online (https://bit.ly/3Yhurn4 Share the flyer below! Spread the word to GRCC students, the media (try The Collegiate), and the wider Grand Rapids community! Even small actions go a long way in helping GRCC tutors fight for a living wage.