More than 50 Stanford students and workers gathered in White Plaza on Friday afternoon to support minimum living wages for all Stanford workers. Armed with picket signs and a megaphone, the demonstrators gathered in front of the Stanford bookstore around noon and subsequently made their way to Tresidder Memorial Union.

The Living Wage Campaign (LWC) spearheaded the rally, which had been planned weeks in advance, said LWC member Daniel Weissman. Weissman, a physics graduate student, said the point of the overall campaign is “to have a real living wage policy that covers all workers at Stanford.”

“Stanford says that it has a living wage policy, meaning that workers get paid a wage that they can live decently on,” he said. “Except it turns out, if you read the fine print, that they only mean some workers, not all workers.”

According to fellow LWC member AV David ’12, an environmental engineering major, the objective of today’s rally was to show “that workers and students are united on this cause.”

Students, she added, wanted to demonstrate their concern about the working conditions of campus employees. She noted that a handful of students spontaneously joined the march to show their support.

With the school year drawing to a close, David speculated the chances of the University implementing a living wage policy for all campus employees is unlikely. But she also noted that students and workers are prepared to take up the fight again next year.

“We’re not going anywhere,” David said.

The Living Wage Campaign is endorsed by AASA, FAITH, FEED, Los Hermanos de Stanford, KSA, Lambda Phi Epsilon, MEChA, MSAN, PASY, SAAAC, SIRP, SLAC, STAMP, Stanford Says No to War, STOP and the Women’s Coalition, among others.

— An Le Nguyen