Lessons From The Living Wage Campaign

The 2002 film “Occupation” tells the story of Harvard students’ 21-day occupation of Massachusetts Hall, a student dormitory and administrative office building that houses the office of the University president. The occupation was the boiling point of a four-year campaign for a living wage for all Harvard employees.

Aaron D. Bartley, a member of the living wage campaign, voiced these frustrations in an op-ed a year before the occupation:

“Why, after countless public events organized by students and workers, a petition signed by more than one thousand students and 150 faculty--including professors across the ideological spectrum from Cornel R. West ’74 to former Sen. Alan K. Simpson--and several resolutions passed by the Cambridge City Council has President Neil L. Rudenstine failed to commit to a living wage?”

Examining the history of the Harvard living wage campaign provides us invaluable lessons for the labor struggles ahead of us on campus.

Last fall, student workers overwhelmingly voted to certify the Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union. HUWU will represent undergraduate and graduate workers in the Harvard Library System, Dining Services cafes, as well as interns in several offices on campus.

As HUWU prepares to bargain with the University they should look to the Progressive Student Labor Movement, which launched a living wage campaign at Harvard in the late 1990s. That campaign was a part of a nationwide effort responding to decades of neoliberal policies that outsourced jobs, attacked labor unions, and slashed workers’ wages and benefits.

The PSLM’s demands were clear: Every campus worker must receive a livable wage, then defined in Cambridge as at least $10.25 per hour (just over $19 per hour in today’s money). In the fall of 1998, they began collecting information by talking directly to workers and educating community members on Harvard’s low pay. After organizers requested a meeting with Rudenstine, the administration dismissed them, claiming Harvard’s wages were deemed fair.

Then, some traction. A report by Harvard intended to deflate the living wage campaign backfired. According to the report, nearly half of temporary and part-time workers at Harvard made less than $10 an hour. Organizers also exposed that the report excluded data on Harvard’s growing dependency on outsourced, subcontracted labor.

As they met with more administrative dismissal, organizers continued to build a broad base of support that could hit the boss on multiple fronts.

The Cambridge City Council passed an ordinance that established a wage of $10 per hour for all Cambridge city employees and later threatened to refuse approving building permits to Harvard until they complied. Faculty involved themselves in the fight, too, with 115 members endorsing the campaign’s goals. The campaign also organized 100 alumni to withhold donations to Harvard until they adopted a living wage.

The PSLM’s tactics were effective because they were grounded in a larger strategy. This escalation plan did the work of exhausting all “respectable” forms of persuasion (surveying, petitioning, request to bargain) before taking more confrontational approaches (rallies, disruptions, other direct action).

Because they had organized a disciplined, incrementally escalatory campaign, PSLM could justify what students did next: occupy Massachusetts Hall.

Members of the PSLM began a sit-in at Mass. Hall on April 18, 2001. As these students used their bodies to defend the dignity of Harvard workers, the workers showed up for them. Nearly 250 dining workers mobilized for the protesting students outside Mass. Hall. Ed Childs, a dining hall worker, ensured the students received food for the night, saying:

“Food is our business. And so what we did is bought pizzas and we marched in formation to Mass. Hall. And the police stood in front of us and says ‘nothing gets in.’ And we yell back at them ‘whatever it takes, whether it’s gonna go through the front door or the windows, we will feed our students.’ And within 30 seconds — a call by the police — we were allowed to bring the pizzas into the front door.”

The students inside Mass. Hall understood that Harvard works because the workers who they were fighting with and for do. But this act of camaraderie by Harvard’s dining workers provides even more precious knowledge. When we put in our all fighting for what our community members need and deserve, they will come out for us. We gain so much more than we could ever lose by choosing to stand with each other in locked arms.

Several victories came out of the living wage campaign.

A month after the sit-in, dining hall workers ratified a new contract that ensured no worker employed for more than one year will earn below $10.25 an hour. In March of 2002, Harvard janitorial workers won a contract that ensured workers were paid at least $11.35 per hour on the job. Later that year, the new contract for the Harvard guards union captured a wage of $11.15 per hour for its membership.

The living wage campaign underscores the power of students and workers standing in solidarity with one another. It is a story of how necessary centralized organization, strategic planning, and unwavering commitment are to realizing our ideals.

As new labor campaigns approach, it is relevant now more than ever that we learn from the praxis of solidarity and perseverance that defined the living wage campaign.

Prince A. Williams ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a History concentrator in Adams House. His column, “A People’s History of Harvard” runs bi-weekly on Fridays.