To cheers of over 1,000 supporters, 30 Harvard University students ended their 21-day sit-in May 8 and declared victory. School officials didn't agree to their main demand — minimum hourly wages of $10.25 for 1,000 janitors, food service employees, and clerical workers who now make less than that. But the action did result in an agreement between Harvard and the AFL-CIO for a joint committee to review wage and benefit issues, a halt to the subcontracting of most jobs, consideration of wider health benefits, and contract renegotiation with 650 janitors. Most of all, it dramatically raised public awareness of the working poor in the midst of today's so-called champagne economy (graph below). Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), speaking through a cellphone from the U.S. Senate floor, told the crowd in Harvard Yard, “You have signaled new hope to countless low-wage workers across America.”
The story also brings good news for CTA's Focus on Sweatshops. Recent student activism at Harvard began with protests against sweatshop conditions in companies that manufacture clothing with the Harvard logo. Then, since 1998, the students broadened their effort and sought justice for Harvard's own low-wage workers. They eventually rallied around $10.25 as an hourly minimum because in 1999 the Cambridge, Mass., City Council declared that to be the city's official living wage.
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| From the campaign of labor rights newsletter |