While President Joe Biden’s nominee for Wage and Hour Administrator at the Department of Labor frequently calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, the nominee has not called for students at the university he works at to receive the same.
David Weil, who Biden announced as a federal nominee last week, has backed a $15 an hour wage while not instituting such a policy at Brandeis, where he is a dean and professor. The group that alerted The Federalist to this contradiction is the American Accountability Foundation.
According to the Office of Student Financial Services, the minimum wage at the private school in Massachusetts is $13.50 an hour, the same minimum wage set by the state. Given the dean’s influence and position as a staunch progressive, it is curious why he would work at a school that does not provide the same compensation he seemingly determines is necessary.
“As my co-author @EDerenoncourt eloquently points out, wage spillovers shown in our research arise from market power,” tweeted Weil in March, in relation to a post that a University of California at Berkley professor who called for a $15 minimum wage. “Unions create countervailing power to allow sharing of gains w/ workers. That’s what’s at stake in Bessemer, Alabama.”
“Great thread by @arindube on why the @USCBO estimate of job loss arising from a $15 federal minimum wage is on the high side of what most of the evidence says about employment effects,” said Weil in February.
The administrator even claimed in October 2020 that “increasing the #minimum wage reduces racial inequality,” sharing an article that argues for why “raising the minimum wage is so important.”
Brandeis pays $15 per hour in a select amount of positions, such as research assistant, a specialized tutor, and others, but largely dishes out $13.50. Of the 35 positions listed on the website, 26 of them are paying the Massachusetts rate — about 74 percent.
The university did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, nor did Weil.
Weil assumed his role in 2017 after three years of working in the Wage and Hour Division in the Obama administration. Biden signed off on a $15 minimum for federal contract workers in April starting in 2022 and Democrats continue to argue for a federal $15 minimum wage for all jobs.
