Letters to ed: Johns Hopkins challenged by staff, students, alumni to pay livable wages

Letter to editor in The Daily Record, Baltimore, published April 10, 2014. Since it was published 8 other alumni and students signed on. Folks were represented from the US and mainland Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico.
Daily Record, let to ed

In regard “Hopkins workers reject pact, begin strike”, April 9, we alumni, students, and staff of the Johns Hopkins Academic Institutions in Baltimore and across mainland US and Puerto Rico, support the opportunity for all hospital workers to receive pay that will enable equitable access to resources and wellbeing. The lack of a live-able wage decreases access to affordable safe and sanitary housing, affordable health care, equitable education, safe and sanitary transportation, affordable recreation, and affordable healthy food. Poverty is the leading cause of poor health according to the World Health Organization. The hospital that is rated the number one health care institution in the country, part of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, has trained us to be leaders in preventive and public health, social determinants of health, and decreasing health inequity. But by paying its workers wages that do not allow them access to resources necessary for achieving health, the institution contributes not only to Baltimore’s pressing crisis of income inequality – the 10th worst in the United States’ big cities – it contributes to inequality in all the resources not affordable with poverty-level wages. We can and must do better to change this history and set a new path toward equity, building a better Baltimore for all.

Luis Alberto Aviles Anne-Emanuelle Birn
Tyler Brown Rebecca Cohen
Nick Cuneo Hector Gomez Dantes
Lena Z. Denis Elizabeth DuVerlie
Stephanie Farquhar Ruthie Fesahazion
Caroline Fichtenberg Kate Flores
Andrea Gerstenberger Joshua Garoon
Marisela Gomez Kate Hayman
Issac Howley Alexander Jenson
Kate Khatib Sara Evangeline Larson
Kathryn Leifheit Sabriya Linton
Lavanya Madhusudan Jillian Marks
Sara McClean Nicky Methani
Kate Miele Shivani Patel
Isabel Perera Tonia Poteat
Chavi Rhodes Adam Richards
Mike Rogers Max Romano
Samuel Scharff Anthony Serritella
Ellen Shaffer Emma Tsui
Tyler Smith Amber Summers
Jenny Tighe Deanna Wilson
Diana Wohler Julia Zur