Committee Ends Silence On Wages

The Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies broke the silence of its confidential deliberations about the living wage controversy yesterday, as the group released information it has gathered and hosted a public meeting at the ARCO Forum.

The group, commonly known as the Katz Committee after its chair, Professor of Economics Lawrence F. Katz, was formed last spring to advise University President Lawrence H. Summers on labor issues—including the living wage, worker benefits and outsourcing.

Yesterday’s event was billed as an “open forum” on Harvard labor issues, and about 150 people came to listen to Katz present the preliminary data the committee has gathered on labor at Harvard, as well as to hear ten invited speakers and to participate in a lengthy audience comment period.

Katz, who was the only committee member to speak, confined his remarks to explaining the data and the committee’s role, offering little insight into the particular opinions the committee may have about Harvard’s labor policies.

The committee released information yesterday that shows, according to information culled from Harvard’s computerized payroll records (dating from 1994) and gathered this year from subcontractors, the mean real wages paid to custodians, dining hall workers, guards and parking attendants have declined. More specifically, the purchasing power of these wages has been eroded by the rising cost of living in the Boston area.

During this period, the Harvard workforce has also changed in its composition. Among Harvard employees, minorities now constitute 73 percent of the service workforce below the $10.68 wage threshold, compared to 64 percent in 1994.

Further, the percentage of lower-paid workers with a high school degree has sharply decreased.

The committee’s forum comes on the heels of its first public signs of dissension, as recently tenured Professor of Economics Caroline M. Hoxby ’88 announced her resignation from the committee yesterday, charging that the committee was “not hearing from a cross-section of Harvard students” and not seriously seeking the input of groups that oppose the living wage.

“[The] University does not currently have an atmosphere that fosters the free exchange of ideas on this topic,” she wrote in a letter to The Crimson announcing her resignation.

Only one of the invited speakers, R. Graham O’Donoghue ’02, explicitly opposed the living wage, though Associate Vice President Thomas E. Vautin and Ascherman Professor of Economics Richard S. Freeman both expressed support for the practice of outsourcing. However, the comment period was more split, as several students spoke against “uniform minimum wages” and questioned the circumstances of Hoxby’s resignation.

Katz seemed to specifically address Hoxby’s charges in his introduction.

He said that the committee “pays attention to everyone’s comments.”

“All e-mails or other forms of correspondence get distributed to every member of the committee,” he said.

Other invited speakers advocating the living wage were Donene Williams, treasurer of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, Phillips Brooks Association president Trevor S. Cox ’01-’02, Assistant Professor of Government Russell Muirhead, third year law student Minsu Longiaru ’99 of the Harvard Workers Center, and Living Wage Campaign member Molly E. McOwen ’02. Two workers were listed on the program but were not present to speak.

—Staff writer Ross A. Macdonald can be reached at jrmacdon@fas.harvard.edu.