“We’ve made a lot of serious efforts to hear from people—people organized a pretty comprehensive set of one-on-one conversations to make sure everybody was comfortable with PSLM, and the direction it was going in,” McKean says. “On balance people agree that PSLM should stay the way it is—a democratic organization.”

PSLM member Daniel DiMaggio ’04 says involvement requires a significant time commitment, which first-years might not have been ready for.

“Some people latched on and took ownership of part of the group, but that may have been a problem for people who weren’t ready to make a total commitment to the group,” DiMaggio says. “We were putting in a lot of hours, and it might have been intimidating.”

But he says members have not turned a deaf ear to the concerns of new members.

“We’ve definitely been trying to come up with new ways for retaining people and maintaining a better atmosphere and making sure everyone’s voice is heard,” DiMaggio says. “I’m not sure how far we’ve come on that lately, but we’ll be trying to work on that the rest of the year.”

Looking Forward

PSLM members are also uncertain about the focus of their group, particularly as the unions are now in negotiations.

Thanks in large part to PSLM’s efforts in the past four years, workers are better organized and more capable of dealing with the University on their own. But this places PSLM members in a supportive, rather than a leading role.

In late February, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reached a contract settlement with Harvard that will pay all janitors at least $11.35 an hour—although PSLM members said they would have encouraged the union to hold out for a better contract.

Since then, PSLM members have organized protests claiming the University is stalling on implementation of parity wages for outsourced janitors, and that employees on the SEIU negotiating committee have been subject to intimidation.

But with only the contracts of security guards and Harvard University Dining Services’ restaurant employees left to be negotiated, PSLM members simply have less to do on the labor front.

“This year had been very hectic,” says DiMaggio, “at least until a month or two ago.”

This has led some to question whether PSLM’s living wage campaign still has reason to exist.

A year ago, PSLM members had routinely promised an end to the campaign if the University were to accept a living wage.

“We’re not a student group,” McKean said in February 2001. “We’re a campaign and campaigns end.”