Flawed Process on Wages

The Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies (HCECP), popularly known as the Living Wage committee, is charged with considering Harvard’s practices with respect to lower-paid workers. It is also charged to seek the views of all members of the Harvard community.

If a committee is to make a fair decision, it must either have process imposed on it (as in Congress, where committees are chosen from both parties; or as in court, where the prosecution and defense both present cases) or it must be filled with highly principled people who will act in a balanced way, even when they do not have to. I believe that the HCECP has neither the process nor the principle to fulfill its duties, and therefore I have resigned from it as of Monday, Oct. 22, 2001.

From the beginning, it has been obvious that the HCECP did not have process. Its membership is far from balanced—it contains several people who have an explicit pro-living wage agenda and it contains no one with an opposing agenda. Former President Neil L. Rudenstine convinced me to join the committee only by telling me that it would have a quorum of highly principled people who would ensure that its proceedings were fair. Yet, every decision the committee has made suggests otherwise. Just consider the testimony it has heard. Apart from hearing from administrators and contractors who have presented institutional information, it has heard exclusively from groups lobbying for the living wage: the Living Wage Campaign, the Workers Center, a Workers Forum and all four unions that represent Harvard employees. The committee has not heard one presenter who has made a positive case against the living wage, and it stops hearing testimony today.

We know that Harvard’s community has a diversity of opinions and that there are groups, such as the Employment Policies Institute, that present ethical and practical arguments against the Living Wage. So, why is the committee hearing only one view? I am ashamed to admit that my university does not currently have an atmosphere that fosters the free exchange of ideas on this topic. Anyone who speaks publicly against the Living Wage risks being demonized, and the committee has chosen to offer the community no way to express its views except by making a public appearance. We ought to offer people a way to express themselves that is not punishing and yet is likely to be given some weight. (Yes, you can write an e-mail, but you can guess how much weight these have been given.)

I had supposed that the principled people on the HCECP were also concerned that our proceedings did not have the appearance, let alone the reality, of balance. Thus, when Matt Milikowsky (the only undergraduate on the committee not associated with the Living Wage Campaign) suggested that we hear from one fewer Living Wage campaigner at tonight’s public forum so that we could have more time for voices from the floor, I was shocked to hear the scorn with which the principled people greeted this modest proposal for a more representative hearing. None of them even voiced sympathy with Milikowsky’s concern that we were not hearing from a cross-section of Harvard students.

Worse, when I tried to address Milikowsky’s concern by suggesting that we might ask for a referendum (such as the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Councils have carried out on past occasions), the principled people began to insult Harvard students to avoid hearing from them. Harvard faculty said that Harvard students were too uninformed to be listened to and that we could not possibly expect to learn anything from them. One professor argued that Harvard students should not be allowed to express their views because they were such dupes that they could be hoodwinked by any competent pollster into saying what the pollster wanted them to say. Another began loudly exclaiming, “This is not a democratic process. This is not a democratic process!” The stands these professors were taking were in direct violation of the principles they have advocated in writing for years. Not one principled person spoke up for the principle of representativeness or even for the acumen of the Harvard student body.

Students, workers, alumni and general community: I have not found that your diverse views are respected by the HCECP, and I believe that has neither the process nor the principle to act with the fairness that will convey legitimacy.

Professor of Economics Caroline M. Hoxby ’88 is a former member of the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies.