The lowest-paid HUCTW employees currently make $10.83 per hour and the lowest-paid dining service workers in board operations bring home $11.30 per hour, according to the report.

In addition to boosting wages of Harvard employees, the University must also raise the pay of subcontracted employees to equally high levels, the report recommended.

Currently, about 400 Harvard employees and 600 outsourced workers earn less than $10.68, the figure established by the City of Cambridge as its living wage.

As part of the compromise that ended last spring’s sit-in, the custodial workers union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 254, is due to have its contract up for renegotiation this month.

SEIU Local 254 Deputy Trustee Rocio Saenz said the recommendations provide only a “base” in the upcoming negotiations.

“This is not over yet,” Saenz said. “This is just the floor, it doesn’t mean that’s what we’re getting. Obviously, we’re fighting for a living wage for all workers.”

Adrienne Landau, president of HUCTW, applauded the recommendations as a strong endorsement of unionization.

“We love it. We love the report, the recommendations, the depth and breadth of it,” Landau said. “We hope Larry loves this too.”

The report stated that after the University’s negotiations with SEIU Local 254, Harvard should “quickly” move into negotiations with the dining service and security guard and parking workers unions. The committee suggests May 2002 as a deadline for this set of negotiations to be completed.

The report also includes a strong indictment of outsourcing, blaming the practice of using outside contractors for driving down wages on campus.

“Outsourcing should not be used to lower wages and weaken the unions representing Harvard’s employees,” the report stated.

The committee recommended that a “parity” wage and benefits policy be applied to all potential contractors.

“We believe that the solution here is to try to fix the system, not gut the system,” said Professor of Economics Lawrence F. Katz, the chair of the committee, in an interview Dec. 18.

Instead of an explicit ban on outsourcing, he said ensuring parity would take away the University’s incentive to contract out work as a cost-cutting mechanism while maintaining the positive aspects of outsourcing—“innovation, productivity and competition,” Katz said.

Creating a wage floor by adopting a living wage, Katz said, would encourage subcontractors to merely pay the minimum.