“I think the absence of a living wage is something that screams out,” said Benjamin L. McKean ’02, a member of both the wage committee and PSLM.

“This is a great opportunity for [Summers] to show leadership and do more,” McKean said following the report’s release. “I see the committee’s recommendations as a floor for the options now available for the president. For him to do less would be inconceivable.”

A Moral Obligation

The committee’s report adopted strong language—similar to that employed by PSLM’s living wage campaign—criticizing labor practices on campus.

Steep declines in the real wages of Harvard’s lowest-paid service employees—a 13 percent drop over the past seven years for some custodians—“distressed” the committee, and members heard “powerful and often troubling” testimony from employees about the experience of working at Harvard.

“The committee heard accounts of lower-paid service workers at Harvard being unaware of their rights on campus, being uncertain of how to assert them, or being fearful that asserting them would result in retaliation from management,” the report stated.

Harvard, the committee concluded, has an “obligation to be a good employer.”

“A good employer should work to ensure that its lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers share in economic prosperity and do not disproportionately and inappropriately bear the brunt of adjustments to economic and financial hardship,” the report stated.

The committee called on Harvard to adopt a code of workplace conduct and urged Summers to issue a “strong” statement about workplace expectations.

“All employees on the Harvard campus should be treated with dignity and respect by supervisors, fellow workers and other members of the Harvard community and enjoy rights to the highest levels of freedom of expression consistent with the University’s goal of being a beacon of intellectual inquiry and learning,” the report stated.

Making It Work

The committee urged Harvard to “raise pay immediately”—but to do so through collective bargaining, the “appropriate process” to determine wage adjustments.

Harvard must reopen its contracts with its service unions to negotiate for higher wages.

The report said committee members “expect” Harvard and its service unions to agree on wages that do not fall below the range of $10.83 to $11.30 per hour—a range defined by the recently negotiated contracts of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) and Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee (HERE) Local 26.