| |
|
from NewsLink, Vol. 5, No. 3, Spring 2001
Harvard Square is quieter now that the student sit-in at Massachusetts Hall is over. For three weeks in April and May, students demanding a “living wage” for Harvard University's lowest paid workers staged a high profile, celebrity endorsed protest that drew support from elected officials and organized labor and drew coverage from papers across the country.
The campaign for a living wage had been centered thus far on U.S. cities and counties (including Boston and Cambridge), the aim being to force firms doing business with local governments to pay workers at some level deemed to represent the minimum wage needed to support a family. The Boston ordinance defined the wage as one “sufficient for a family of four to live at or above the federal poverty level” and set the wage initially at $8.23/hr.
Now the campaign was extended to the country's most prestigious university. The 30 student protestors wanted a commitment from Harvard to pay workers the $10.25/hr. set by the City of Cambridge.
Harvard responded initially by defending its employment practices, saying that none of its full-time employees makes less than $10.25/hr. in total compensation and that, of all its 13,500 regular employees, only seven make as little as $8.05/hr. Harvard appeared to concede that some of its contract workers make less than this but pointed out that many of these workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements.
In the end, the protestors' 21 days of behind-the-barricades action brought some results. The university agreed to establish a panel to study the issue and pledged not to subcontract further work.
The problem with living wages.
Although Harvard might have shown surprising fortitude in standing up to the protestors, it would have been justified in showing far less sympathy than it did. The reason is that the living wage campaign has nothing to do with assuring families a living wage and everything to do with benefiting workers who already live well above the poverty line.
First and most obviously, a university, even a richly endowed university, has an obligation to use its resources wisely. Students do not pay tuition and alumni do not donate funds to conduct a social policy of income redistribution. Rather, they pay – or at least so we hope – for instruction, research and the other things universities are created to do.
The 'living wage' threatens to turn unskilled workers into who work for $6/hr. into unemployed workers who work for nothing at all.
And then there are the workers themselves. Suppose an employer can hire a worker to do a job for $6/hr. While the employer might be content to hire a low-skilled worker to fill that job at that wage rate, it might very well decide to hire a different, more highly skilled worker if it is compelled to pay $10/hr. instead.
While a city contractor or group of protestors might force an employer to pay some workers to do a job for $10/hr., no one can guarantee that the worker actually hired to do that job will be the $6/hr. worker for whom the “living wage” was intended.
The living wage threatens to turn unskilled workers who work for $6/hr. into unemployed workers who work for nothing at all.
By driving up the cost of labor, a living-wage ordinance or policy discourages an employer from contracting with a nonunion vendor and weakens employer resistance to union demands for higher wages. Thus the living wage benefits union workers who have protected jobs and who make far more than the unskilled worker who might lose his job because the living wage is mandated.
Wages ultimately depend on worker productivity, as enhanced by technical progress and the willingness of entrepreneurs to save and take risks, not on someone's good intentions.
DAVID G. TUERCK
dtuerck@beaconhill.orgNewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2003. All rights reserved.
HTML format revised on 7/3/03 1:09 PM