Sweatshop Movement, Living Wage Campaign Forge Different Paths to Success

It was in the cold of January, as most of Harvard hunkered down for exams, when a small group of students affiliated with the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) began holding meetings Tuesday nights at the Phillips Brooks House. From this core group of students, the Living Wage Campaign was born.

This year PSLM also spawned another activist group, Students Against Sweatshops, that aimed to force the University to mandate minimum labor standards in the factories where its apparel is manufactured.

But like many siblings, SAS and the campaign have taken different routes in their evolution. The two groups' styles in negotiating with the University are studies in stark contrasts.

SAS is currently in negotiations with the administration. The University agreed to SAS's demand of "full disclosure" of factories that produce Harvard apparel. Together, Harvard and the student activists are haggling over the details of independent monitoring.

The Living Wage Campaign, though, is unwilling to negotiate. While the University attempted to placate the campaign by forming an interfaculty task force to analyze its employment practices, the campaign continues to hold visible protests and publicly build support for unconditional surrender--a $10 per hour minimum wage for all workers.

The split between the two movements was first clear at the March 9 Rally for Justice outside of University Hall, in which SAS and the Living Wage Campaign, along with the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, united in their call for Faculty support.

SAS received notice that the University would respond to its demand for disclosure during the rally. PSLM leaders are now working with the University to establish a suitable monitoring system. While Harvard has proposed using the Fair Labor Association for monitoring and Price Waterhouse Coopers as an accounting firm, PSLM is holding out for a truly independent monitoring system.

"I think this re-opens the possibility for us to work more closely with Harvard," said Daniel M. Hennefeld '99, a PSLM organizer, on the day of the Rally for Justice.

Compared to the SAS's demands, the campaign's wide-sweeping mandate is unprecedented.

The campaign's goals were explicitly stated in a February 17 letter addressed to President Neil L. Rudenstine and Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 and delivered to Rudenstine during his monthly office hours in February.

"In this spirit, we ask that you meet...[and] discuss a timeline and strategy for the implementation of a single outcome: that all employees of Harvard University, in all of its faculties and schools, including subcontracted workers, earn a minimum of $10 per hour," the letter reads.

The letter only received an explanatory reply from Director of Labor and Employee Relations Kim A. Roberts '78, so the Campaign organized a rally for February 26. The rally began outside of the Science Center and culminated with a march through the Yard to Mass. Hall.

The multiple living wage rallies have been both loud and quietly passionate. At the first, Christopher J. Vaeth, a campaign organizer and second-year divinity school student, spoke about the moral imperative of the campaign.

He recounted a conversation he had with two employees shoveling snow outside of Memorial Hall late at night as he was headed home after planning the protest. They encouraged him that justice was on his side.

"We can bring pressure to bear on the administration until they grant us that meeting," Vaeth said at the rally. "We've the moral high ground."

Perhaps because members of the campaign feel they are fighting for a worthy cause, they have not been appeased by concessions from the University. They deemed a March meeting with Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III a positive step, but do not regard it as progress towards their ultimate goal.

Some concessions, in fact, only strengthened the campaign in its refusal to yield on its demands.

The campaign used an unprecedented labor "snap-shot" provided by the University to back up its claims, even though the University had intended the gesture to show that only a small number of Harvard employees earned less than $10 per hour.

The "snap-shot" for the week of February 20 showed that out of a total of 13,113 "regular employees"--wage-earners who work more than 17.5 hours a week--only 358, or just 2.7 percent, earn less than $10 an hour. Yet, out of 1,361 "casual employees," 669 or 49 percent made less than $10 an hour.

Casual workers are classified as those who work full-time for less than three months or less than 17.5 hours per week. They typically receive lower wages and no benefits. The snapshot did not include subcontracted workers who are brought into Harvard by outside firms.

"Essentially the numbers are bolstering our claims," said Aaron D. Bartley, a campaign organizer and first-year law school student. "There is an inordinate amount of casual labor going on. The fact that half of them are making less than $10 an hour says a lot."

The willingness of the interfaculty task force to analyze the issue pleased campaign members. They were even granted a meeting with Fineberg. But the campaign has not let up in its attempts to humiliate the University publicly, the strategy it believes will ultimately lead to success.

"We know that what makes Harvard give in is public embarrassment," said Amy C. Offner '01. "In the past, this has been what's been effective."

The growing visibility and strength of the campaign has won it ever-growing faculty support, adding to its momentum.

At the February rally, only one faculty member spoke, Harvard Law School Professor of General Jurisprudence Duncan M. Carter, who Bartley had personally approached to ask for support.

Slowly, as the campaign gains recognition, more faculty members sign on. Campaign members initially gained support by approaching their professors personally and by soliciting support from passing Faculty members during the March 9 rally.

These efforts gained a core of 15 Faculty members including Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West '74, who even gave the Campaign a $50 check.

From this core group and with West's contribution, the Campaign decided to solicit all Harvard faculty for support with a six-page packet.

The original 15 living wage supporters have now swelled to over 115. The campaign can brag the support of such diverse faculty members as Institute of Politics Director Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, to Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy Mary Jo Bane, a former Clinton administration adviser.

"If they don't respond to what the faculty are asking them to do, I don't know who they'll respect," said Greg R. Halpern '99, a campaign organizer.

The campaign says it will continue to exert pressure on the University through increased faculty support, to solicit progressive alumni over the summer, to conduct a "respectful" protest at Commencement.

"This is the most significant wave of activism since the 1960s," West said at a May 11 rally. "It shatters the stereotypes that young students are not concerned with what is right and just."

While both the sweatshop campaign and wage campaign have infused their rhetoric with their moral imperatives, they also have attempted to redefine who exactly is included in the "Harvard community" and what level of respect--financial and otherwise--they deserve.