Larry's Foot-Dragging

Two weeks ago, University President Lawrence H. Summers released the University “Wages and Benefits Parity Policy,” more than two weeks after the March 31 deadline he promised. Assuming no further delay, Harvard’s outsourced janitors will receive their raises sometime in the next few weeks, more than two months after Harvard and their union agreed upon them. In the meantime, they have continued struggling on their current meager wages.

Rather than asking Harvard’s outsourced workers for an extension on sending them their long-awaited checks and back pay, the Office of Human Resources simply eliminated the box for “Wage and Benefits Parity Policy completed” on its online checklist and replaced it with two separate boxes. One, labeled “Wages and Benefits Parity policy has been drafted,” had a nice red check in it while the newly added “Administrative Council signs off on Wages and Benefits Parity policy” remained empty, failing to even suggest a new deadline until the recent announcement of the parity policy.

Now that Summers has finally submitted the policy to the community, it makes sense to go over a few of the parity agreement’s provisions and see if the policy measures up.

When the members of Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies (HCECP) proposed their parity plan, they were aware that Harvard’s superior bargaining power, if left unchecked, could easily push workers’ wages back down to unacceptable levels. In order to “ensure that a threatened bargaining impasse is not used to lower the real value of the parity wage,” HCECP included an anti-union busting clause that “the parity wage will be adjusted upward annually by the rate of increase of the U.S. consumer price index” if the University refuses to negotiate a contract with unions. Although it is not the same as a living wage provision—because unions may have to accept lower wages in exchange for something else—HCECP’s fair bargaining clause provides some protection to unions from being forced to accept poverty wages in order to get their contract signed. Without this clause, the crisis of poverty on Harvard’s campus could easily return as soon as after the next contract negotiation.

This policy makes sense. Anyone who thinks that workers deserve decent wages today should be just as committed to providing at least the same level of decency tomorrow. Since the importance of justice does not erode with inflation, neither should the minimum value of workers’ wages.

The fair bargaining provision is one of the most important recommendations that the HCECP made and Summers has ignored it completely. Not only did Summers fail to adopt the provision, he neglected even to give a reason for his refusal to do so. Summers’ rejection of the fair bargaining provision implies that he might use Harvard’s bargaining power in order to push wages back down as soon as he can get away with it.

When the HCECP recommended wage and benefit parity between regular and outsourced workers, it meant that both their wages and benefits should be equal. In his response to the HCECP’s report, Summers said he believed these workers should receive “substantially equivalent” wages and benefits, but tried to leave himself some wiggle room when it came to giving outsourced workers decent healthcare.

The faculty, students, administrators and workers on HCECP unanimously agreed that the University should provide all of Harvard’s workers “with a benefits package at least equivalent to those for Harvard’s in-house unionized employees.” Instead, the parity policy that Summers has released only requires that compensation of outsourced employees be “comparable to the total compensation received by Harvard’s in-house unionized employees.” This provision leaves the door open for contractors to provide health benefits that are woefully inadequate by manipulating the premiums of their health plans.

It is also now essential to follow HCECP’s recommendation regarding implementation and form a broadly representative group of workers, students and faculty to oversee the implementation of the report and prevent further administrative foot-dragging. Such a group would ensure that the contracts for the dining hall workers and guards’ unions give subcontracted workers a fair deal. Summers has unfortunately chosen to ignore some of the HCECP’s most important recommendations and delay the implementation of others. It is time, once again, to use the power of student protest to hold him accountable to the values of the community.

Ariel Z. Weisbard ’02-’03 is co-chair of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and a member of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.