The Living Wage 'Welcome'

Lawrence H. Summers remained silent last April while students from the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) occupied his future office demanding a “living wage” for Harvard employees.

The economist—selected the previous month to lead Harvard—let then-University President Neil L. Rudentstine take the lead in negotiating a settlement to the protest.

But the compromise—the formation of a joint student-staff committee to study the wage issue—has left Summers to make the final decision on Harvard’s wages.

And as Summers slowly breaks his silence over the living wage issue, concern is increasing among members of PSLM that the changeover bodes ill for their cause. Alongside the fear, however, is an even greater feeling of anticipation, as PSLM members wait to see where Summers will fall on the wage issue.

The 20-member Katz committee will deliver a set of recommendations to Summers by Dec. 19 on how best to benefit Harvard’s lowest-paid workers. At that point, Summers will choose the University’s course of action.

“All eyes will be on Summers and how he handles this,” says PSLM member Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04.

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When group members staged a protest last March in front of the Loeb House press conference announcing Summers’ appointment, they criticized both the presidential search process and Summers’ record on labor issues.

At an Undergraduate Council meeting Summers attended last spring, a student asked the new president his opinion of the mandatory wage floor, PSLM member Stephen N. Smith ’02 remembers.

According to Smith, Summers gave the student a hypothetical situation—if the student could get 80 applicants willing to work for $500 per week, 60 applicants willing to work for $400 per week or 30 applicants willing to work for $300 per week, which 20 applicants would the student hire?

Smith says he was perturbed by the response.

“It seems Summers has this knee-jerk reaction to value efficiency over anything else,” he says.

But Smith also notes that Summers has used the same principles of efficiency to advocate for higher wages for workers—to increase company loyalty and decrease job turn-over and training costs.

He says he worries, however, that Summers’ training as an economist could make him even less willing than Rudenstine to implement a mandatory wage floor.

“Look at their backgrounds,” Smith says. “One is a professional economist, trained in arenas like the World Bank where corporate interests and efficiency are at the center, as opposed to a former dean of students.”

Indeed, Summers told the council this week that neither side of the living wage debate can claim moral superiority.

He said the College also has the responsibility to fulfill prior collective bargaining agreements and to assure donors that their money will be spent on education.

“The community has already had a discussion on the morality of the living wage issue,” Smith counters. “We all agree it’s worth it to make worker’s lives better—after all, that’s the charge of the [Katz] committee.”

A Less Cordial Relationship

The dynamic between the new president and PSLM is far less “cordial” than the relationship the group had developed with Rudenstine, Elfenbein says.

The former president seemed to have grown accustomed to the student protesters.

But although repeated meetings with Rudenstine took a friendly tone, Elfenbein says they were ultimately unproductive.

“His cordiality with us did not translate into any kind of true responsiveness,” she says.

Summers’ perception of PSLM, however, seems to be based primarily on impressions formed during the sit-in last spring.

“I think that our relationship with Summers hasn’t had a chance to develop into a productive one yet,” Elfenbein says.

At Monday’s council meeting, Summers implied that he might have responded more harshly than Rudenstine to the Mass. Hall occupation.

“It is very wrong when attempts are made to shut down portions of the University to intimidate people from carrying on their work,” Summers said at Monday’s council meeting.

To PSLM members, Summers’ reference to the tactics as “coercive” came as a slap in the face.

“That just strikes all the wrong chords for me,” Smith says.

Most recently, PSLM clashed with the University when the group was denied a permit for a rally to be held at today’s installation. The permit was subsequently granted, but the incident has not helped the relationship between the two parties.

“In denying the permit, the administration has created unnecessary hostility between itself and PSLM,” Elfenbein said at the time. “It shows where the administration places the community’s concerns on its own list of priorities.”

Still, with the newly granted permit in hand, PSLM members approached today’s rally with the intent to convince Summers that he enters a community in favor of wage raises and will find, in PSLM, a group with which he can successfully work.

Smith says he sees PSLM adopting an advisory role that would necessitate working closely with the University.

“It would be tough for Summers to ignore the [Katz committee’s] tireless work...particularly in his first year as president,” Smith says. “But it would be easy for him to drag his feet, unless there’s pressure to make sure the University [implements] its policies.”

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.