"Employment is more complicated than a single phrase or a single wage," Wrinn says. "We all want the same things: fair and competitive wages and equitable benefits."

Janet McGill, project director of the Massachusetts Project for Family Economic Self-Sufficiency, says a living wage for Middlesex and Norfolk counties (including Cambridge) means $8.11 an hour for a single adult, and $17.47 an hour for an adult with one child.

"There is no way I could live in Cambridge. A one-bedroom apartment would cost more than 50 percent of my take-home pay," says M. Steve Fritz, a Fogg Museum central station monitor who makes $11.85 an hour.

Middlesex County is in many places more affluent than other parts of the Boston area. But, though across the river in Suffolk County the requirements are less, McGill says a living wage there is $7.52 per hour for a single adult, and $18.54 per hour for an adult with one child.

But it is hard to draw firm conclusions from these even this data, because the University has not been able to gather figures on how many of its employees have families.

A Casual Problem

While a majority of Harvard's employees are union members, the number of casual employees draws ire not only from the Living Wage Campaign, but also from union organizers.

Wrinn says the University sees the casual workforce as a potential foot in the door for workers who may be only to start working part-time, but eventually can graduate to full-time status. Over 1,200 of Harvard's current full-time employees came from the casual ranks.

But for the campaign, casual workers represent a segment of the Harvard workforce that is continually vulnerable.

And to the union organizers from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) the casual workforce is not just a stepping stone for workers, but also a method for Harvard to divide up one regular, benefit-paying job into two part-time non-benefit paying jobs.

"They have taken regular jobs and broken them into two [casual] jobs," says Donene M. Williams, treasurer and past president of HUCTW.

Williams also says she believes the University uses the casual work force as a no-man's-land of employment where workers are always temporary.

"There's a legitimate use of the casual workers; it's the misuse of casual

payroll which worries me. I do take issue with people who are working for

more than three months and people working endlessly in casual jobs," Williams says.

And other union officials say Harvard recently has been moving in the opposite direction from wage increases with all of its workers.

When Local 254 of the Service Employment International Union renegotiated the contract for Harvard's custodial staff in the fall of 1996, the result was an agreement in which wages were frozen and benefits slashed.

The benefits of seniority were eliminated, as was time-and-a-half holiday pay and other wage perks.

Union officials say the threat of outsourcing was always present--and continues to be a way for the University to get leverage over dissatisfied groups of employees.