Katz Panel, PSLM Gear Up for Busy Semester

For the past several weeks, 11 faculty members, three unionized Harvard employees, two administrators and four students have attended a unique course on wage policy and employment practices.

The 20 participants form the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies-—dubbed the “Katz Committee,” for its chair, Professor of Economics Lawrence Katz—and meet for two hours every week.

Since the committee’s founding last spring, members have compiled information on the wages of Harvard’s subcontracted employees, labor policies at other universities and the history of outsourcing at Harvard.

The committee’s deadline—a set of recommendations for wage policies due to University President Lawrence H. Summers by Dec. 19—is fast approaching.

“We have quite a tight schedule,” Katz says.

The Committee

The Katz Committee was born last spring out of the three-week-long occupation of Mass. Hall, home of the president’s office, by Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) members calling for a “living wage”—a mandatory wage floor of $10.25 per hour for all Harvard employees.

The committee is charged with deliberating on wage policies, outsourcing and the feasibility of a minimum wage floor for employees, which has long been PSLM’s main demand.

As committee members continue to collect facts, they have taken steps to increase campus involvement in the research and decision-making process.

“Obviously, my hope is to have as open a process as possible,” says Benjamin L. McKean ’02, a PSLM member and one of two student representatives voted onto the Katz Committee by the Undergraduate Council last spring.

To that end, committee members plan to hear from Harvard employees on what policies they think should be changed, and have scheduled a forum on the economics of poverty with professors over the next week.

They have also established a website, complete with brief profiles of committee members and a request for comments, that has already garnered a few responses. They also took out an ad in The Crimson on Monday inviting student input.

On Oct. 22, the committee will release preliminary findings and hear audience response at an evening event at the ARCO Forum.

“It’ll be a chance for members of the community to voice their views to us and to the broader community,” Katz says.

McKean says he will push for a mandatory wage floor that applies to all employees, not just those directly employed by Harvard. The distinctions between directly employed, outsourced and casual employees became a significant source of contention during the sit-in last spring.

“In my opinion, it’d be disastrous to have a living wage only for direct hires,” McKean says.

“For the campaign, our goal is to win a living wage by Dec. 31,” he continues. “That’s a pretty tight timetable.”

Katz says the idea of a living wage is a complex one, as the primary examples for the University to study are the 60-odd cities that have implemented a mandatory wage floor.

“It’s clear what it means for the city of Cambridge, for instance, but it’s not so clear what this would mean for a private employer,” Katz says. “These are all issues we will be discussing.”

They will also address the affordability of health care and access to English as a Second Language classes—recommendations made two years ago by the Mills Committee, the first University committee charged with examining Harvard’s wage policies.

The Campaign

As they await the Dec. 19 deadline, “cautious, though optimistic” PSLM members plan to keep up their very visible presence with a series of actions this semester, says PSLM member Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04.

They are currently planning a “community welcome” for Summers, scheduled to take place before Summers’ official installation on Oct. 12.

“It’s an opportunity for the whole community to say, ‘This is the kind of community you’re coming into, where values like the living wage are important,’” McKean says.

And since the PSLM members are no longer occupying an administrative building, McKean says he hopes those who were hesitant to endorse the sit-in will be able to rally around the idea of a living wage.

“Hopefully, what we’re seeing is a campaign that’s been transformed by the sit-in,” McKean says. “It’ll be easier now for people to express their support.”

Indeed, PSLM members say their first-year membership has skyrocketed, with first-years who saw PSLM members occupying Mass. Hall during their prefrosh visit last spring.

Elfenbein says there are 10 to 20 first-years who have regularly attended meetings and participated in PSLM activities, while meeting attendance has increased dramatically.

Elfenbein attributes this to an aggressive recruiting drive in early September and to the early exposure of many first-years to the sit-in.

“We harnessed the energy that came out of the sit-in,” Elfenbein says.

She says Summers’ appointment has also changed the playing field for the PSLM members campaigning for a living wage.

Summers, says Elfenbein, is “conscious of a need to appear open to the response of the community” on labor issues.

But his response to the Katz Committee’s recommendations will prove to be the real test, Elfenbein says.

Sweat-Free

While members of the living wage campaign keep a close eye on the Katz Committee, proponents of PSLM’s other movement, Harvard Students Against Sweatshops (HSAS), say they are gearing up after a quieter semester.

HSAS has long agitated in protest of Harvard’s membership in the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a consortium founded by manufacturing companies such as Nike to monitor working conditions in foreign factories.

HSAS members criticize FLA because its governing board is made up of representatives from the companies it intends to supervise.

Through a series of actions and even a striptease, the group has urged Harvard for three years to join the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), a group run by labor and human rights organizations.

Although one of the PSLM’s demands when they stormed Mass. Hall last spring required the University to join the WRC, later the demand seemed to fall off the radar.

“It was a living wage sit-in—that’s what the issue was,” says HSAS member Alexander B. Horowitz ’02. “WRC membership was definitely secondary.”

Particularly in light of the Coop’s recent licensing deal with Nike, Horowitz says membership in the WRC monitoring group is even more important.

“We’ll keep pushing with a mix of pressure and education,” Horowitz says. “Until we join, we’re complicit in suppressing information.”

In addition to pushing for WRC membership, HSAS will join with students nationwide to campaign for higher wages for tomato farm-workers in Florida who harvest tomatoes used at Taco Bell.

The group says this could mean phone calls, a letter-writing campaign or direct actions and protest against Taco Bell later this year.

“We’ll continue to support all workers who request student support,” Horowitz says.

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.

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