Janitors’ Wage Still Not a Living Wage, PSLM Says

Although Harvard janitors ratified a contract Friday increasing their hourly wages to at least $11.35, members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) said yesterday that the new wages remained “inadequate.”

The janitors’ agreement, reached after six weeks of negotiations, raises wages to $11.35—$11.50 for janitors with three years at Harvard. By October 2005, the starting wage will go up to $13.50, with $14 per hour going to those with three years on the job.

Though union leaders called the agreement a victory, PSLM members issued a statement Thursday saying Harvard’s final offer of $11.35—while an improvement—was still “unresponsive to [janitors’] expressions of need.”

“I think the wages that were settled on were clearly inadequate to bring janitors out of poverty,” said PSLM member Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04. “I’m disappointed that Harvard continues to refuse to take poverty off the bargaining table.”

Elfenbein said that despite PSLM’s call for a wage floor of $10.25—the living wage established by the City of Cambridge—throughout last spring’s Mass. Hall sit-in, during actual negotiations these past weeks students realized “the numbers we’d been calling for were not sufficient.” Since the sit-in, the living wage increased to $10.68 with inflation.

“I think it was a mistake for students to fight for the Cambridge living wage as a moral standard for Harvard,” she said. “The Cambridge living wage is not a scientifically determined minimum that will suffice in this area.”

Elfenbein was among nine protestors for higher wages arrested for blocking traffic on Mass. Ave. at a demonstration last Tuesday.

The starting wage agreed to by the janitors union also exceeded the pay rate recommended this winter by the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies (HCECP), which suggested that Harvard offer starting hourly wages between $10.83 and $11.30 for its low-paid workers.

Service Employees International Union Local 254, which represents Harvard janitors, had asked for starting wages of $14 per hour.

Despite falling short of that goal, union leader Rocio Saenz called the contract a “great step on workers’ rights” as talks concluded last Wednesday.

Members of HCECP said the final terms of the negotiations were similar to what they had intended in issuing their report, which University President Lawrence H. Summers largely accepted in January.

Professor of Education Marcelo Saurez-Orozco, who served on the committee, called the outcome of the negotiations “successful” and a “step forward.”

Matthew Milikowsky ’02, one of two undergraduates on HCECP, said he believed the new contract offered “appropriate” pay raises and said PSLM offered a “moving target” as its definition of a poverty wage.

“We’re at a range that is considerably above what [PSLM] indicated, but they’re still not satisfied,” he said. “They never seem to indicate when they would be satisfied.”

PSLM members have maintained that just as their call for a $10.25 wage was meant only as a starting point, the HCECP recommendation of a $10.83 to $11.30 range was not intended to be effectively a wage ceiling.

Still, the wages outlined in the new contract will raise the pay of most Harvard janitors. According to the HCECP report, 89 percent of contracted custodial workers and 82 percent of Harvard custodial workers earned less than $10 an hour last year.

The agreement also requires contractors to pay workers comparable wages and benefits and includes a health care plan that does not require worker co-payments.

The contract was ratified by a large majority of Harvard janitors at a meeting Friday.

PSLM member Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’03, who attended some of the contract talks, said he didn’t oppose the ratification but believed it came because janitors felt “they [didn’t] have any other choice.”

“It could be said that whereas workers accepted the wages in the sense that they agreed to the contract, by no means did workers think that those wages were fair or adequate,” Skomarovsky said.

Skomarovsky said he believed Harvard might have made more concessions if the negotiations had continued.

“It’s through continued protest that the janitors were able to win $11.35 to begin with,” he said. “I don’t have much doubt that through continued demonstrations and support from the Harvard community that they would have been able to win significantly more.”

Harvard spokesperson Joe Wrinn declined to comment on PSLM allegations that the new contract still offered janitors poverty wages.

Union officials could not be reached for comment over the weekend.

The University has begun talks with dining service workers and security guards and will officially reopen their contracts in the coming weeks. PSLM members say they will also be involved in these negotiations.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.