Still Waiting on A Fair Deal

Last Thursday marked a quiet watershed in labor relations at Harvard University. After a delay of several weeks past the comment period he had set, President Lawrence H. Summers finally released a statement agreeing to adopt many of the “core recommendations” of the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies, including a significant one-time wage increase and the principle of wage parity for outsourced and in-house workers. In addition to major concrete gains for workers, the decision contained an important revelation. After all that fuss in and around Mass. Hall last spring, it turns out that the administration essentially agrees with what everyone else figured out long ago: workers should be paid more. “It is important to recognize that all who work at Harvard, regardless of rank or position, contribute in vital ways to the teaching and research mission of this great University,” Summers proclaimed in his statement. “It is essential that our employment policies and practices reflect this principle.”

Unfortunately, what follows this noble declaration is a series of reforms that fail to live up to the report’s expressed intentions. Important though it is, the administration’s latest decision falls far short of eliminating poverty on campus, now or in the future. Harvard will continue to negotiate wages that put families below the federal poverty line, and it reserves the right to engage in union-busting tactics in order to keep wages down. Summers has also refused to make benefits more affordable. Until he does, service workers, whose jobs put them at considerably greater physical risk than those of professors, will continue to have less access to health care and sick days. Most importantly, Harvard’s plan does not include a good-faith bargaining clause to ensure wages do not fall below a certain level regardless of the outcome of negotiations. If Summers agrees that workers should be paid more, why won’t he establish a mechanism to ensure they continue to be paid at the new level he is touting? And if he values those who do service work as much as those who teach, why won’t he grant them the same health benefits and agree not to bust their unions? If Summers is serious about the principles he espouses, he should prove it by offering policies that go beyond a quick fix to the problem of poverty on campus.

Perhaps Summers does not realize the extent to which the principles he now embraces are not being fulfilled by the policies he proposes. For instance, he lauds the collective bargaining process as the best way for workers to improve their wages and working lives, yet he rejects those measures that would provide for strong unions that could represent their members fairly. In effect, he is refusing to promise not to employ union-busting tactics. Yet he rejects a living wage on the grounds that an “externally-set wage” would undermine the autonomy of unions by potentially conflicting with wages proposed “within the context of collective bargaining.” This is total bunk, as unions would never wish to bargain below the wage levels proposed as a minimum. In any case, Harvard should not allow poverty wages to remain on the bargaining table as a viable option, at least not if it’s aspiring to act according to principle.

Summers and the Harvard News Office are fond of referring to the University as an above-average employer. In fact, Harvard is below the wage average set by other Boston-area universities, and it will continue to be even after the adopted recommendations are implemented. At other institutions, the standard is $14 an hour at minimum for janitors, a standard Harvard does not approach with a wage hike to $10.83 which lacks a mechanism to ensure that real wages will be maintained. With wages below $15 an hour, it is the norm for workers to have two full-time jobs or more if they wish to raise families. In light of these numbers, the only principle Harvard can honestly claim to be upholding is that of subsistence, a life of obstinate poverty in the face of nearly constant toil.

In spite of these inconsistencies, the intentions expressed in Summers’ statement are promising, and it can be hard to remember that intentions themselves are not enough. The administration’s past record of implementing labor policies that benefit workers could politely be described as imperfect. Though Harvard’s Bridge to Learning worker education program has enrolled an increasing number of people, many workers still report difficulty gaining access to the program’s benefits. It would be a travesty for the wage hikes that have been promised to remain in the realm of theory as well. But having witnessed this lack of accountability and poor faith, it is hard to put stock in Summers’ assurances that he has “discussed with deans and senior administrators the importance of effective implementation and received assurances that they will work to implement these measures throughout the university.” The best way for the administration to regain the confidence of the community is to establish an independent body of workers, students and faculty to monitor the implementation of all to which it has agreed.

With its latest series of reforms, Harvard can claim with some credibility to have turned over a new leaf in its treatment of workers. It cannot—and does not—claim to have eliminated poverty wages, or to have met the standards called for by the broader community. Until Harvard has improved its status as an employer by providing an acceptable wage minimum and the means for workers to organize freely, it cannot honestly claim to uphold any “principle” other than the bottom line. Until it has instituted measures to ensure transparency in decision-making and implementation, it can lay no claim to our trust. And until that day, Harvard will have to continue to post police officers outside of Mass. Hall.

Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04 is a social studies concentrator in Kirkland House. She is a member of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.