Summers Should Speak Up

The Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) and the University seem to have reached an impasse. The PSLM has attracted growing numbers of protesters to its cause: hundreds of dining hall workers helped Wednesday night’s rally spill over into Massachusetts Avenue, and yesterday’s noon rally was one of the largest Harvard has seen in decades. Yet the ongoing protests are taking their toll—on the protesters inside, on the residents of Mass. Hall and on the overworked Harvard University Police Department, which is tiring of its 16-hour shifts.

For its part, Harvard has shown no inclination to budge. The administration has refused to categorize its talks with PSLM members as “negotiations,” and the office of the president sent out a statement to all undergraduates yesterday outlining its refusal to negotiate with what it rightly views as a coercive protest. Harvard has been here for 365 years, and we believe the administration when it says it can out-wait the protesters. The situation seems untenable: the University won’t negotiate until the protesters have left the building, and PSLM won’t leave until the University pays a living wage.

We have argued that PSLM should go. The most effective aspect of their protest has been the tremendous outside support it has generated—the non-coercive and far more visible endorsements and rallies. Withdrawing from Mass. Hall while maintaining the daily pressure would deny Harvard its central argument and increase the likelihood of fruitful negotiations. We have also urged Harvard to open negotiations after the PSLM has left, and to implement a living wage in the legitimate interests of its workers. But neither outcome seems likely to happen.

All of this is complicated by the fact that in two months’ time, Harvard will have a new president and a new administration. President-elect Lawrence H. Summers has never publicly expressed his views on a living wage at Harvard, and the protesters’ efforts to sway the current administration are handicapped somewhat by Rudenstine’s status as a lame-duck president. The Rudenstine administration is no doubt hesitant to saddle its successor with a decision, and Summers’ views on the subject will make the current discussion almost moot come July. Summers should therefore take the opportunity afforded by this campus discussion to review the University’s wage structure and to commit to the principle of a just wage for all of Harvard’s workers—outsourced as well as direct.

As treasury secretary, Summers supported the Clinton administration’s increases in the minimum wage because he recognized that workers deserve a wage that allows them to stay out of poverty. In a May 1996 speech in New Orleans, Summers—then deputy treasury secretary—told his audience that a raise in the wage was necessary to ensure that “while America competes better and enjoys greater prosperity, no Americans slip through the cracks.” These standards apply even more stringently to Harvard. The University is a non-profit that invests in its community, and as the Harvard community has overwhelmingly recognized, it owes its workers for their labor a decent standard of living.

Summers has the advantage of not being an officer of the University, at least not until July. He would therefore be able to comment on his own intentions and to endorse a living wage on principle without offering his statement as a quid pro quo or as a bribe for the protesters’ departure. Summers may be reluctant to step on Rudenstine’s toes by announcing his views before taking office, but Rudenstine must feel similar pressure to avoid policy commitments. Given the immediacy of the living wage issue, the University should not operate without anyone at the helm for the next two months.

The living wage should not be a tough call for the University, and Summers is in an ideal place to define its position for the future.