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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Harvard Students Sit In For Living Wage |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
23 Apr 2001
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Harvard students are sitting in to supprt a demand that Harvard pay all its emplyees at least a Living Wage. This sit-in raises the profile of the Living Wage as an issue. Here in Champaign County, the Champaign County Living Wage Association has been working to enact Living Wage ordinances. The level for a Living Wage here in Champaign County is currently $8.20 an hour or $17,056 a year. Please visit our website listed below to get involved. |
Students have been sitting in for over five days now. I think it is very appropriate that this action occurs during the FTAA meeting in Quebec. Having a Living Wage for everyone should be the first priority for the leaders there. Unfortunately, like the environment and other workers' rights, a Living Wage will be ignored until politicians are forced to act.
From the Introduction on the Harvard website:
Harvard students and faculty members enjoy the university’s wealth every day, as we use its libraries and labs, visit its museums, and live in its houses. Yet few of the service workers at Harvard share in this wealth: many struggle to support themselves and their families as the richest university in the world pays them poverty-level wages. In response to the growing problem of low-wage labor on campus, concerned students, workers, and faculty members came together in 1998 to form the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. Since then, we have made a single demand: anyone who works for Harvard, whether directly employed by the university or hired through an outside contractor, must be paid a minimum of $10.25 per hour, adjustable for inflation and rises in the local cost of living, and with benefits.
The idea behind a living wage with benefits is that people who work in our community should be able to decently live and raise their families here. This requires wages and benefits that take into account the area-specific cost of living, as well as the basic expenses involved in supporting a family. Our figure of $10.25 per hour with benefits is taken directly from the living wage ordinance approved by the city of Cambridge in 1999. It is the standard set by our community, one which Harvard can and should meet.
This report lays out the argument for a living wage at Harvard in three sections. In the first section, we present information on the spread of low-wage labor on campus, and the destructive consequences it has had for workers; we then argue that a living wage policy is an affordable and fair step toward eliminating low-wage labor. In the second section, we present and analyze the reforms which Harvard’s appointed Ad Hoc Committee on Employment Policies developed, and which have been adopted in place of a living wage policy. We argue that these alternative reforms are inadequate, and that some actually threaten to worsen working conditions on campus. In the third section, we present the words of six workers, transcribed from interviews, to give a sense of the experiences and views of the people who are at the center of this debate. |
See also:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~pslm/livingwage/portal.html
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Website for Champaign County Living Wage |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Apr 2001
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This is the website if you'd like to learn more about local Living Wage efforts. We have worked to put supportive representatives in office and expect to make progress in the near future with your help. |
See also:
http://www.prairienet.org/livingwage/
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