From: Benjamin L McKean (mckean@fas.harvard.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 01 2002 - 15:25:02 EST
Hey folks,
It's a busy week for us here at Harvard. Yesterday, President Larry
Summers announced wage raises for lower-paid employees and a parity wage
policy -- but not a living wage. Meanwhile, campus corporate watchdogs
HarvardWatch released a stunning report about Harvard's ties to Enron
(www.harvardwatch.org). Plus Saturday is the premiere of a documentary
about our sit-in last spring (www.enmassefilms.org), and Tuesday is a
major rally for our janitors.
I've included some information about the Saturday and Tuesday events if
you're in the Boston area, as well as news articles to give a more general
update if you're interested.
thanks very much,
ben
harvard students against sweatshops / harvard living wage campaign
PS Apologies as always for the cross-posting.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
--> THIS SATURDAY, see the world premiere of "Occupation", a documentary
about last spring's living wage sit-in. Narrated by Ben Affleck,
with never before seen footage from both inside and outside, this is
an event not to be missed! Directors will be there to answer
questions. 7 and 9 PM at the Harvard Film Archive, 26 Quincy Street.
--> Also, janitors have begun renegotiating their contract with the
university, and Harvard is again trying to make them accept miserable
wages. A strong student presence is essential to ensuring that Harvard
doesn't shortchange the people who make this a livable place for us
all. Please join us on Tuesday, February 5, at 10am in the Sheraton
Commander Hotel (16 Garden St) for the next round of negotiations.
Thanks for your support.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< See the WORLD PREMIERE of >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
____ _____ _____ _ _ _____ _______ _____ ____ _ _
/ __ \ / ____/ ____| | | | __ \ /\|__ __|_ _/ __ \| \ | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |__) / \ | | | || | | | \| |
| | | | | | | | | | | ___/ /\ \ | | | || | | | . ` |
| |__| | |___| |____| |__| | | / ____ \| | _| || |__| | |\ |
\____/ \_____\_____|\____/|_| /_/ \_\_| |_____\____/|_| \_|
a film about the Harvard Living Wage Campaign sit-in
directed by Maple Razsa and Pacho Velez
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> THIS SATURDAY <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Playing at the Harvard Film Archive at 7PM and 9PM
--------------------------------------------------
Direct Action at 8PM Reception at 10PM
-------------------------------------------------
Celebrate Our Coalition | Continue the Struggle
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< www.enmassefilms.org >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
********** ALSO **********
Come support Harvard's Janitors as they fight for a better
contract with the university:
-----------------------------
SEIU 254 CONTRACT NEGOTIATONS
10AM TUESDAY FEBRUARY 5
SHERATON COMMANDER HOTEL, 16 GARDEN ST
--------------------------------------
Your watchful presence is crucial in insuring that Harvard
does not get away with shortchanging the people who make
this place livable. Help make Justice for Janitors a reality.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.livingwagenow.com www.livingwagenow.com www.livingwagenow.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUESTIONS? Email pslm@hcs.harvard.edu
---------- NYTimes on living wage struggle ----------
February 1, 2002
Harvard President Backs Raises for Low-Wage Staff
By PAM BELLUCK
BOSTON, Jan. 31 Moving to resolve an issue that has dogged the university
for months, Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, said today that he
would support substantial raises for its janitors, gardeners, security
guards and other low-wage workers.
Mr. Summers accepted the recommendations of a commission that called for
base wages of $10.83 to $11.30 an hour. Out of 13,000 workers at Harvard,
about 400 earn less than $10.25 an hour. Several hundred employees of
outside subcontractors and temporary employees also make less than that;
some are paid as little as $8.50 an hour.
The new pay rates, however, still fall short of the "living wage" that
students and other protesters have demanded. They had estimated the
"living wage" at $15 to $20 an hour to support a family in Boston.
The wage issue spurred the longest sit-in at a Harvard building, a
three-week occupation last spring of the first floor of Massachusetts
Hall, which houses the university president's office. About 40 students
camped out outside the office of the president, then Neil L. Rudenstine.
Some 400 faculty members signed a letter supporting the protesters, and
the students also won the support of the state's two United States
senators, the Cambridge City Council and labor leaders. In response to the
protests, Mr. Rudenstine appointed a 19-member commission.
The commission did not recommend, and Mr. Summers did not endorse, setting
a fixed "living wage," and "living wage" advocates said they would
continue their campaign.
"Janitors at Harvard will still be making less than they made 10 years ago
and won't even approach many other universities' wages," Minsu Longiaru,
an organizer with the Harvard Workers' Center, said in a statement.
"There's a lot of questions that still remain, and Larry Summers really
needs to answer those questions and answer them pretty soon," said Arin
Dube, another student protester.
Mr. Summers agreed with commission recommendations that the raises be
negotiated through collective bargaining with unions. The initial wage
increases are likely to cost several million dollars a year.
In a statement, Mr. Summers said he also wanted to encourage scholarly
work on "issues relating to income inequality and the challenges faced by
lower wage workers."
---------- Boston Globe on Harvard's Enron ties ----------
[for more info, see www.harvardwatch.org]
Students eye Harvard link to Enron
Says school may have profited by hedge fund's short selling of shares
By Beth Healy and David Abel, Globe Staff, 2/1/2002
A Boston hedge fund that manages part of Harvard University's endowment
appears to have reaped millions of dollars in profits by shorting shares
of Enron Corp., or betting the stock would fall, starting last summer.
The hedge fund, Highfields Capital Management, in August held 1.2 million
Enron put options worth $58.8 million, according to a filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Such options give an investor the
right to sell shares at a future date, and make money on a stock's drop in
value. In a November SEC filing, Highfields reported another round of bets
that Enron would fall, with 2.3 million put options worth $62.6 million.
It's not clear how much Highfields gained on its bets, but Enron shares
plunged 15 percent to $49 in the second quarter of last year and slumped
by nearly 50 percent in the next three months, to $27. The embattled
Houston energy trading company filed for bankruptcy protection last month,
wiping out the value of its stock for most shareholders, including its own
employees.
A Harvard student watchdog group, HarvardWatch, yesterday estimated
Highfields gained at least $50 million on its short selling. The group
alleged Highfields and the university may have improperly profited because
of connections to a member of Enron's board, Herbert S. Winokur Jr.
Winokur, who runs a Greenwich, Conn., investment firm, holds three Harvard
degrees and is one of seven members of the university's highest governing
board. He also sits on Enron's board and chairs its finance committee. He
has been asked to testify before a Senate subcommittee investigating
Enron's collapse.
Emma Mackinnon, a freshman at Harvard who works with HarvardWatch, said
the group has urged Harvard president Lawrence Summers to suspend Winokur
from the governing board, and to investigate whether he shared insider
information with Highfields. Mackinnon said the group has no evidence that
Winokur tipped off Highfields to Enron's troubles. But the well-timed
short selling seems ''quite a coincidence,'' she said, ''particularly
given Winokur's fiduciary responsibility to Harvard.''
Neither Winokur nor Highfields executive Richard Grubman could be reached
at work late yesterday. A story in the Globe last month detailed an April
conference call in which Grubman, who suspected trouble, challenged
Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, on the company's
financial state. A Harvard spokesman said the university had not yet
studied HarvardWatch's allegations but stood by Winokur.
''Mr. Winokur is a valued member of the Harvard corporation,'' said Joe
Wrinn, the spokesman. ''We understand that he is assisting in the Enron
investigations now underway. The university is reviewing the situation for
any developments that have a genuine bearing on Harvard.''
Wrinn said the Harvard Management Co., which oversees Harvard's total
endowment, does not participate in investment decisions made by
Highfields, ''including its Enron investments.''
It's not clear how much Harvard may have benefited from Highfields's Enron
bets. Highfields manages more than $4.8 billion in total assets. Harvard's
$18 billion endowment first invested $500 million with start-up Highfields
in 1998 and has since invested more.
HarvardWatch also alleged in its report yesterday that Harvard's Kennedy
School of Government had been swayed to do policy work on Enron's behalf
after receiving large contributions from Enron executives. Harvard
declined to comment on the allegation.
Beth Healy can be reached by e-mail at bhealy@globe.com; David Abel at
dabel@globe.com.
This story ran on page F1 of the Boston Globe on 2/1/2002.
Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
---------- Boston Globe on living wage struggle ----------
Harvard to hike its lowest wages
By David Abel, Globe Staff, 2/1/2002
In a long-awaited decision, Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers
yesterday promised that the university would boost the wages of its
lowest-paid employees above the ''living wage'' that scores of students
demanded in protests last spring.
However, Summers ruled out setting a permanent wage floor, the rallying
cry of the students who spent three weeks last spring occupying the
university's main administrative building and camping out in tents across
Harvard Yard.
In endorsing a report on campus wages issued last month by the school's
special living-wage committee, Summers said he would direct university
lawyers to negotiate a salary increase for nearly 1,000 Harvard employees
who earn less than $10.68 an hour, the living wage set last year by the
city of Cambridge. The lowest-level campus employees, he said, should earn
between $10.83 and $11.30 an hour.
Instead of permanently pegging Harvard wages to the city's cost of living,
Summers said he agreed with the report's recommendation that the
university establish a ''parity wage policy'' that would guarantee
contract employees the same minimum wage as union members. As of Sept. 1,
contract employees accounted for more than 60 percent of those earning
less than Cambridge's living wage, and their low pay was a major focus of
last year's protests.
''The proposals of the committee, once implemented, will improve
materially compensation for lower-wage service workers at Harvard - and
break new ground in defining the relationship between employees and
contracted workers doing similar jobs,'' Summers said in a five-page
statement announcing his decision.
The students who occupied Massachusetts Hall last spring acknowledged that
the president's move would help workers, but said he did not go far
enough. They contend he snubbed several of the committee's
recommendations. And because Harvard's wage increase is a one-time raise
that they say falls below the minimum $14 hourly wages offered by MIT,
Boston University, and Wellesley College, they vowed more campus protests
as early as Saturday, when students plan to release a film about the
sit-in.
Missing from Summers's announcement yesterday, students said in a
statement, was the ''fair bargaining'' clause of the parity wage plan,
which they said would prevent future erosion of workers' wages. They also
said the president avoided adopting a recommendation that would prevent
the university from blocking employees from joining unions.
''Today, Larry Summers has shown not only that he is not going forward but
that he is taking a few steps back,'' said Arin Dube, an economics
graduate student who spent part of last spring in Massachusetts Hall.
''The recommendations that he has accepted will no doubt improve the lives
of workers on campus, but equally important, the policies he is not
instituting will ensure that the struggle will continue.''
The president declined to comment on his decision.
Over the years, the wages of much of Harvard's 15,000-member workforce
have not kept up with inflation. According to the report last month, the
salaries of Harvard's low-wage employees - mostly janitors, security
guards, and parking attendants - saw a 10 to 15 percent drop between 1994
and 2001, when adjusted for inflation.
The committee blamed the wage decline on Harvard's practice of hiring
lower-paid contract workers and using them as a negotiating tool to keep
union wages down.
In his statement yesterday, Summers said he agreed with the majority on
the committee, who held that the best way to prevent a decline in future
wages was through ''parity,'' or keeping contract workers' wages even with
those of union workers, rather than by establishing a wage floor.
''Such a [wage floor] plan addressed the symptoms and not the causes of
the problem,'' Summers said in quoting the report.
A parity policy instead of a ''rigid policy'' of a wage floor, he said,
''will provide important protection for workers while ensuring flexibility
for all parties in the face of changing economic circumstances.''
In addition to wages, Summers said the university intends to bolster
education programs for workers, and said Harvard has hired an outside firm
to assess the affordability of the health plan it allows lower-paid
workers to buy into. Members of the committee yesterday said they hope the
university ultimately improves its benefits program.
''It wasn't a charge of my committee, but I hope the university goes
further in providing health benefits,'' said Lawrence Katz, an economics
professor who chaired the special living-wage committee. ''This is an
issue for some of the lowest-paid employees. The university might consider
lowering the co-pay for those workers during collective bargaining.''
Some student complaints about the president's announcement may be resolved
by April, when Summers said the university will have a complete parity
wage and benefits policy. Harvard will publish the policy in May.
In the spring of 2003, Summers said, the university would issue the first
annual report on how it is paying its workers.
''It is important to recognize that all who work at Harvard, regardless of
rank or position, contribute in vital ways to the teaching and research
mission of this great university,'' Summers said. ''It is essential that
our employment policies and practices reflect this principle.''
David Abel can be reached by e-mail at dabel@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 2/1/2002.
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