Prescription for a Living Wage

For the past three years, a growing proportion of our community has rallied around the moral standard that Harvard workers deserve pay, benefits and working conditions that reflect their dignity as human beings. The huge outpouring of support for janitors on Nov. 30 demonstrated that the Harvard community is as mobilized as ever around the demand for a living wage for all Harvard employees. Thanks to the work of the more than a thousand people who attended this rally and previous ones like it, the crisis of poverty on Harvard’s campus is finally beginning to get the attention it deserves. Now, the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies (HCECP) and University President Lawrence H. Summers must provide the right solution.

This is a dangerous time for Harvard. We are faced with the opportunity to finally cure a disease that has attacked our University’s system for far too long. The right cure would strike at the root of the problem—not just its current symptoms. Only a sadistic doctor would instruct his tuberculosis patient to stop antibiotic treatment as soon as the disease’s symptoms have subsided. Partial treatment of tuberculosis allows for much more virulent, life-threatening strains to emerge years later. Likewise, a solution that reduces the symptoms of today’s crisis without providing a genuine cure threatens even greater disaster for our community in the future.

If the administration does not commit to a living wage floor that rises along with the cost of living, the immense power imbalance between Harvard and the workers who maintain the University will return poverty to our campus within a few years. And in a few more years, its cure will be even more difficult to attain. The HCECP and the Harvard administration cannot diffuse our moral indignation by paying the community lip service with short-term fixes that force it to repeat the same battles every few years.

The HCECP is charged with the task of collecting data on employment conditions at Harvard, soliciting the views of the committee and presenting recommendations that “reflect a humane concern for the well-being of all the individuals who work here.” The data they have collected show that real wages of Harvard’s workers have fallen faster and farther than anyone but the workers themselves could have imagined. Hundreds of letters from students, workers, faculty and community members have argued that a living wage floor, a ban on outsourcing service work and protection of the right to organize are necessary to ensure the basic well-being of Harvard workers.

In formulating their recommendations, members of the committee must remember the real driving force behind every display of support for helping Harvard’s workers: our community demands justice, and will accept no less. This demand goes beyond a simple call for improvement in the lives of people who currently work at this school. It is a demand that Harvard’s actions reflect the principles and values of those who make up the Harvard community. Short-term political “fixes” that help to blunt the worst effects of Harvard’s employment and contracting policies are not acceptable alternatives to strong and principled solutions that actually eliminate poverty from Harvard’s campus for good.

The title of the recent rally was not “Placate Us With Temporary Benefits,” but rather “Justice for Janitors.” Nearly 1,000 people marched through the Yard supporting the principles that workers should have a voice in our community, that they should be paid enough to meet the basic costs of living and that they should be given equal treatment for equal work. Poverty wages, anti-union practices and outsourcing at Harvard must be ended not only to help workers, but also because they violate these important principles.

A principled offer to raise wages now must guarantee that this commitment will last into the future. For the obligation to pay workers fairly today will be just as pressing tomorrow. The importance of treating those who work to keep our community clean, safe and well-fed does not decline overtime, and there is no reason that our commitment to paying a living wage should do so either.

We must consider any proposal that does not clearly reflect these principles of justice with suspicion. So-called “pragmatic solutions” dampen our cause’s urgency so that the amazing coalition which has arisen to respond to this crisis will dissipate by the time that increases in the cost of living have driven workers back into poverty. Sure, there will be people willing to rebuild the coalition, and do whatever it takes to make Harvard confront the crisis of poverty again. But the administration has an opportunity now to show that committees and other “traditional channels” can solve our community’s problems effectively.

If the committee process fails as a mechanism for the university to act on the values of its community, it is proof that the University’s decision-making processes are fundamentally flawed, and that Harvard responds to community priorities only when pressured by massive demonstrations and civil disobedience.

Ariel Z. Weisbard ’02-’03 is co-chair of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and a member of the living wage campaign.