The Chronicle of Philanthropy
July 26, 2001

A Low Blow For Low-Wage Workers
By Pablo Eisenberg

Dear Larry:

It's been only a few weeks since you replaced Neil Rudenstine as president of Harvard, but this letter can't wait. Harvard -- along with a bunch of other colleges and universities -- ought to be downright ashamed of itself, in no small part because of Mr. Rudenstine's insensitive leadership. I hope you'll do better.

For two years the university has strongly resisted the pressure of students, labor unions, and some faculty members to pay all low-wage workers on campus at least $10.25 an hour -- the bare minimum needed to raise a family and have a decent standard of living. The financially strapped city of Cambridge managed to establish a minimum wage of $10.25. Yet Harvard, with an endowment of more than $19-billion, couldn't find the money or the heart to pay its lowest-paid employees a similar amount.

Mr. Rudenstine should have praised the people who protested this outrage, instead of criticizing them for their concern about social and economic justice, their sense of fairness, their civic engagement.

After all, hasn't a Harvard professor, Robert Putnam, been beating our civic drum so successfully about the need for involvement of citizens in nonprofit associations and the activities of our democratic institutions, including universities and colleges? Your predecessor implicitly criticized Harvard for having done a good job at promoting active, caring citizens. Let's hope you don't do the same.

As you know, Larry, the drive to increase wages and benefits at universities and colleges is part of a "living wage" campaign being fought in cities and towns throughout the country. The aim, of course, is to help low-pay workers and their families lift themselves out of poverty or near-poverty. Unions, grass-roots organizations like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and other nonprofit groups and coalitions have successfully put pressure on governments to pass living-wage ordinances in 65 municipalities. Another 75 campaigns are under way, according to Jen Kern, director of the Living Wage Resource Center at ACORN. You can bet that the movement will gather momentum during the next few years.

Harvard and many other nonprofit institutions should be a part of that movement -- and not, as Harvard has been, an obstacle to its success.

Face it, Mr. Rudenstine set a terrible example.

In a defensive letter to the Boston Globe, his public-relations spokesman, Paul Grogan, who will soon be taking over as head of the Boston Foundation, wrote that only 400 employees -- mostly security guards, dining-hall workers, and janitors -- earned less than $10.25 an hour. He failed to mention that several hundred other employees who work for Harvard subcontractors also earn less than that -- some as low as $7 an hour.

Mr. Grogan's argument that only a relatively small number of people's lives are at stake made Harvard look petty and mean. So much nastiness over so little money.

Why did Harvard deny its most vulnerable employees a modicum of dignity and justice? Is it the lack of importance given by Harvard administrators to the low-wage workers who enable the university to function? Is it the arrogance of academe, or its class snobbery?

Was it, perhaps, Mr. Rudenstine's determination not to be pushed around by students and protesters?

The committee that he established last year to study the issue concluded that it was preferable to offer low-paid workers training and education benefits rather than higher wages. Did its members ever ask themselves how those workers could properly feed, clothe, and sustain their families on their miserable stipends? In Marie Antoinette fashion, the committee proclaimed, "Let them eat books." And Mr. Rudenstine went along, denying them the package of wages and education they rightly deserve.

It was a positive development when Harvard recently agreed to pay its food-service workers a decent wage and to establish a new commission to study how to treat the rest of the low-wage work force at Harvard. The report is due later this year.

Those moves may have been enough to call off a student sit-in at the university's administrative offices, but Harvard still did wrong by planning to wait until the end of the year to make any decisions about raising the wages of all its underpaid workers.

For two years Mr. Rudenstine and his colleagues fought to avoid doing the right thing. Think of all the money and staff resources that were spent on this rear-guard action that might have been channeled into wages for Harvard's underpaid workers.

Now please don't get me wrong, Larry. I'm not singling out Harvard. It has plenty of company in higher education. Many of your colleagues at sister institutions with enormous endowments have followed a similar path, some for a much longer period of time. The typical institution of higher education treats its low-wage workers poorly, refusing to give them decent wages and benefits.

Even the University of Wisconsin, which began a "living wage" policy in 2000, still pays a minimum wage of only $6.50 an hour. It's due to rise a mere 25 cents an hour next month.

To reduce already-low pay and save money, many institutions have hired for-profit custodial companies that seem not to care about fair wages and decent working conditions. When criticized for the wages of such employees, universities and colleges shrug their shoulders and say that is the responsibility of the contractors.

At the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, 914 workers made less than $8 an hour last year, according to student organizers. Many of them worked for a for-profit contractor, Broadway Services, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the university and its health-care system. How's that for double dipping: simultaneously reducing wages and then making a profit for doing it? After prolonged pressure from students, unions, and grass-roots organizers, Johns Hopkins agreed to set a wage floor of $7.75 an hour for health-system employees by 2002. Those wage figures do not even meet the living-wage level of $8.03 set by the city of Baltimore in 2000.

When the University of Southern California hired outside contractors to do much of its low-wage work, its employees lost the discount they had received on tuition at the university. After a long fight with students and grass-roots organizers, the university now provides a minimum of $8.66 an hour for custodial workers employed directly by USC's main campus.

Bucknell University pays its dining-service workers $6.75 an hour, while janitors at Northwestern University, after a long organizing campaign, will receive a minimum of $8.45 by September of 2003. And the list goes on.

Larry, the attitude of Harvard and many other institutions makes us wonder whatever happened to the good old values that universities were supposed to represent and pass on to their students: a respect for democracy and its notions of justice, fairness, and equal opportunity; a concern for disadvantaged constituencies and individuals; the importance of the common good and public interest; and a sensitivity to community concerns.

Unfortunately, many institutions have become quasi corporations, consumed by impersonal management, bottom lines, and greed, cocooned from the important public issues and debates of the outside world. The moral leadership they once exerted on our public life has disappeared.

We are left with colleges and universities that have impressive campuses, good teachers, growing endowments, and excellent sports programs. But they are no longer greater than the sum of their parts. They stand tall financially, but stand for little.

People had expected more from Harvard than a petty resistance to fair wages for those at the bottom of the economic scale. Neil Rudenstine and his colleagues let us all down. Workers, students, faculty, fans, and those who care about social and economic justice. What a pity.

Just something to think about, Larry, lest you get too comfortable in your new job.

Pablo Eisenberg is senior fellow at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and a member of the executive committee of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. He is a regular contributor to these pages. His e-mail address is pseisenberg@erols.com.