Realities Make Living Wage Campaign's Claims More Credible

Earlier this month, student protestors for three campus causes stood on the steps of Memorial Church and called for "Justice at Harvard."

Two of those groups, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence and the anti-sweatshop Progressive Student Labor Movement, got what they wanted the very same day, as the University took steps to address their concerns.

Only the Living Wage Campaign, with its calls for $10 per hour wages for all Harvard employees, seemed left out in the cold. And, it seemed, there was good reason for this neglect--no other university in the Boston area has even a similar policy.

But earlier this week, President Neil L. Rudenstine moved for the first time on this issue, announcing that a faculty committee would begin to study wage concerns. A faculty committee is given relatively more leeway to recommend policy change than other administrative channels would have.

But what could have motivated the University to move beyond words to action?

Perhaps it was because there is at least some merit behind protestors' claims. Over a thousand of Harvard's employees do make less than $10 per hour.

And, since one expert says an adult with a child needs over $15 per hour to live in the Boston area, concerns about a living wage could be more than just a trumped-up cause for student protestors.

Employment Snapshot

One of the pieces of evidence before the faculty committee is a "snapshot" of Harvard's employees for the week of Feb. 20.

And, while that snapshot is by no means a complete picture of Harvard's employees, it quantifies the nebulous issues of who makes what that have been at issue since the campaign's first march last month.

According to the snapshot, out of a total of 13, 113 "regular employees"--wage-earners who work more than 17.5 hours per week--only 358 earn less than $10 per hour.

But out of 1,361 "casual employees," 669 or 49 percent made less than the $10 cutoff. Casual workers are officially designated as those who work less than three months at full time or less than 17.5 hours per week. They typically receive lower wages and no benefits.

These employment figures are important because, though they show that the vast majority of employees make more than the campaign's living wage, there are over a thousand who make less.

And these numbers do not include subcontracted workers, of whom the campaign estimates there are 600 to 700 at any given time who make less than $10 per hour.

Stretching a Dollar

The term "living wage" seems not to have an exact economic definition. The campaign uses it to mean enough money to "live decently and raise [one's] family." It seems generally accepted to mean enough wages for a worker to live a safe distance above the poverty line--including non-"basic" costs like child care, housing and transportation.

Harvard spokesperson Joe Wrinn says this question makes setting a concrete living wage for Harvard workers a contentious and inexact task.

"Employment is more complicated than a single phrase or a single wage," Wrinn says. "We all want the same things: fair and competitive wages and equitable benefits."

Janet McGill, project director of the Massachusetts Project for Family Economic Self-Sufficiency, says a living wage for Middlesex and Norfolk counties (including Cambridge) means $8.11 an hour for a single adult, and $17.47 an hour for an adult with one child.

"There is no way I could live in Cambridge. A one-bedroom apartment would cost more than 50 percent of my take-home pay," says M. Steve Fritz, a Fogg Museum central station monitor who makes $11.85 an hour.

Middlesex County is in many places more affluent than other parts of the Boston area. But, though across the river in Suffolk County the requirements are less, McGill says a living wage there is $7.52 per hour for a single adult, and $18.54 per hour for an adult with one child.

But it is hard to draw firm conclusions from these even this data, because the University has not been able to gather figures on how many of its employees have families.

A Casual Problem

While a majority of Harvard's employees are union members, the number of casual employees draws ire not only from the Living Wage Campaign, but also from union organizers.

Wrinn says the University sees the casual workforce as a potential foot in the door for workers who may be only to start working part-time, but eventually can graduate to full-time status. Over 1,200 of Harvard's current full-time employees came from the casual ranks.

But for the campaign, casual workers represent a segment of the Harvard workforce that is continually vulnerable.

And to the union organizers from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) the casual workforce is not just a stepping stone for workers, but also a method for Harvard to divide up one regular, benefit-paying job into two part-time non-benefit paying jobs.

"They have taken regular jobs and broken them into two [casual] jobs," says Donene M. Williams, treasurer and past president of HUCTW.

Williams also says she believes the University uses the casual work force as a no-man's-land of employment where workers are always temporary.

"There's a legitimate use of the casual workers; it's the misuse of casual

payroll which worries me. I do take issue with people who are working for

more than three months and people working endlessly in casual jobs," Williams says.

And other union officials say Harvard recently has been moving in the opposite direction from wage increases with all of its workers.

When Local 254 of the Service Employment International Union renegotiated the contract for Harvard's custodial staff in the fall of 1996, the result was an agreement in which wages were frozen and benefits slashed.

The benefits of seniority were eliminated, as was time-and-a-half holiday pay and other wage perks.

Union officials say the threat of outsourcing was always present--and continues to be a way for the University to get leverage over dissatisfied groups of employees.