In Defense of ‘Coercion’

In recent weeks, the Living Wage Campaign’s use of public protest and civil disobedience has been repeatedly denounced as “coercive.” This criticism is familiar to student-labor activists at Harvard. Although it did not involve any physical force, many called the living wage sit-in of last spring “coercive” because it was not intended to persuade the administration to pay its workers a living wage (two years of such attempts had proven that futile) so much as to induce it to. “Coercion,” thus used, simply refers to any form of action used by one party that aims to make all alternatives to a desired outcome less preferable to the other party. Indeed, the purpose—and the success—of the sit-in was to make it so costly and embarrassing for Harvard to pay its workers poverty wages that it would choose on its own to change its ways.

An essential fact that critics of the Living Wage Campaign’s tactics have overlooked is that what they call “coercion” is and always has been the only effective expression of workers’ organized power in the absence of workplace democracy. Strikes, pickets, boycotts and media campaigns are not intended to convince corporations that exploiting their workers is immoral. To expect this would be hopelessly naive. Workers go on strike to cripple their employer severely enough that paying workers more is the less costly alternative. Farm workers organized the historic California grape boycott to make it impossible for farm owners to continue making money while treating them despicably. The history of labor victories worldwide is the history of workers coercing their bosses into treating them fairly.

It has been said, however, that coercion is “inappropriate” for a university community. Unfortunately, the administration has not given campus workers and their supporters any alternatives. Harvard may be exceptional in many ways, but when it comes to governance, the sad truth is that Harvard is no different from other corporations, and pressure tactics are just as appropriate and necessary here as anywhere else. Students, and workers especially, have virtually no say in university decision-making. If a large portion of the Harvard community believes that university policies are unjust, Harvard offers nothing more than infrequent token meetings with administrators. We all prefer to be part of a university with democratic structures in place to ensure that policies are accountable to students, faculty, and workers. But the incredibly authoritarian way Harvard operates ensures that broad university problems will only be resolved, if at all, in the same way that economic injustices are resolved in any other kind of corporation—not through democratic governance but through coercion.

Administrators who denounce coercive tactics ignore the fundamentally coercive nature of their own unchecked power. They would like us to believe that collective bargaining provides workers with a voice in forging university labor policies—that is the myth that all employers perpetuate in order to delegitimize the various actions that are the only source of workers’ strength. But any trade unionist will tell you that the outcome of collective bargaining is determined by the balance of power between the union and the employer. Harvard only offers higher wages out of fear of what might happen if it doesn’t. Workers agree to inadequate wages only because without a contract, their pay can be more severely cut and they can be fired. Unfortunately, collective bargaining is not an idyllic process by which both sides seek a common ground; rather, it is a process that pits the combined coercive power of workers against the immense coercive power of the employer.

If Harvard wants to end coercion as a means to address deeply entrenched injustices on campus, it must radically change the way it functions. It must provide alternative means for effectively addressing glaring problems when they arise. In response to the sit-in of last spring, there were signs that the administration was beginning to head in this direction. Former President Neil L. Rudenstine created a committee with student, worker, and faculty representation to reevaluate university labor policy. This process, however limited, resulted in far more progress than was ever achieved by the worthless meetings between the Living Wage Campaign and various administrators.

But instead of widening the power of members of the Harvard community to decide university policies, the new administration is heading backwards. The president and deans’ recent decision to punish sit-in participants more severely not only reflects a sad lack of understanding of the undemocratic university governance that necessitates such actions but is moreover a symptom of those very problems. It was made without the slightest input from students or faculty, demonstrating that administrators remain uninterested in involving anyone else in decisions of broad importance.

Until the administration is made accountable to the Harvard community, its call for more dialogue is nothing but an invitation to beg. It should come as no surprise that workers and students are fed up with begging.

Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’03 is a philosophy concentrator in Dudley House. He is a member of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.