June 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Think Big about the Living Wage

Paul Shannon is Program Associate of AFSC's Peace and Economic Security Program. He coordinates a series of popular education forums on economics.

"There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer"

--Martin Luther King,
Where Do We Go From Here

"Everyone has the right to work.... Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration insuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity."

--Article 23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It was certainly something you don't see every day: Cafeteria workers at Harvard University sneaking food to students sitting in at the University's Administration building;

Harvard students occupying the building for 21 days, risking their graduation and even their enrollment at the University, demanding a living wage of $10.25/hour for those cafeteria workers and all employees at Harvard;

National and state leaders of the AFL-CIO embracing the Harvard students and thanking them for their determined stand that would improve the lives of working people throughout the nation;

Eloquent rhetoric condemning corporate globalization, privatization, and outsourcing, and calling for a new day for working people and for the planet;

Mobilizations by Harvard faculty, citizens of Cambridge, religious leaders, and protesters just returning from Quebec--all converging on Harvard Yard over and over again to support the sit-in;

Leaders of union locals representing Harvard service employees and the rank and file members of those unions organizing support actions and thanking the students from the bottom of their hearts;

Senator Ted Kennedy urging the students on and organizing powerful Harvard alumni to support the students' cause, personally handing out literature at the door of an alumni meeting;

Politicians of every stripe coming out for the students and urging Harvard officials to accede to their demand for a living wage;

Local, national, and international media coverage and actions in solidarity with the Harvard students in other states and other countries;

Immigrant workers, white people of white working-class backgrounds, anti-globalization activists, and privileged students of every shape and color--all watching the barriers that usually separate them melt away under the warm sun of a felt experience of a common humanity.

Solidarity, friendship, community, victory: it all seemed to come together at Harvard this spring. Time will tell whether the agreement with the university won by the sit-in turns out to be the victory that it certainly appeared to be at the "coming out" celebration on a beautiful May afternoon in Harvard Yard. And it remains to be seen whether the broad coalition of new allies brought together by the bold action of the Harvard students represents a new stage in movement formation that catapults the growing movement for social and economic rights to a new level.

What is clear though is that these Harvard students were able to unleash the power of the "living wage" to tap into basic human feelings about fairness, to catalyze excitement, and mobilize numerous constituencies to act for justice in an unjust world. These events at Harvard and the inspiration they stirred in the hearts of many should cause us to consider that the "living wage" may be a tool that can help us win greater economic equality at the local, state, and national levels--and even within the global economy.

The beauty of the living wage strategy to promote equality through "upward leveling" of wages is that it can bring together constituencies who can't agree on other methods for promoting greater social justice and fighting poverty. Whatever their differing opinions on using taxes and government programs to help low-income people, most people of good will across the political spectrum believe, as we saw at Harvard, that if you work 40 hours a week you have the right to be paid enough to live above a bare subsistence level. They feel that people who work should make enough to provide their families with food, clothing, shelter, health care, child-care, and education. Long before the Harvard action, a number of organizing efforts in cities around the country had already experienced the power of the logic of the living wage to win campaigns to raise the wages of low-income workers. (In fact, it was the decision of the City of Cambridge to establish a living wage of $10.25 that gave impetus to the Harvard sit-in.)

Another creative feature of the living wage is that it can easily be linked to the very particular problems and struggles being fought at an institutional, community, state-wide, or national level. At Harvard the students skillfully wove their living wage demand into a fabric of issues that have been of concern at their institution, such as the outsourcing of jobs to private contractors, and other specific collective bargaining points. The agreement reached with the University included mechanisms for dealing with this broader range of issues. But it was the easy-to-understand demand for a living wage that drove the effort.

The living wage can also provide a state-wide or national umbrella that gives unity to local organizing efforts. It can provide a broader focus for local efforts to get a union contract or run a union organizing campaign, or to obtain health care benefits or higher wages at a particular company. As a next step in Massachusetts, students and activists working on living wage campaigns at colleges and in cities across the state could join forces to push for Representative Pat Jehlen's legislation for a state-wide living wage.

On the national and statewide level the living wage can easily be linked with state and national efforts to raise the minimum wage, to re-assert the right to organize unions without intimidation, to bring back the eight-hour day, to push for a single payer health care system, and to stop the assault on working people and our planet coming out of the Bush administration, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

The living wage could also become a centerpiece of our efforts to create greater equality in the global economy. It gives coherence to a matrix of issues such as sweatshops, structural adjustment, cross-border union organizing, debt forgiveness, and child labor Here's how it might work:

First, popular organizations and justice-oriented NGO's use the international forums in which they now meet to give visibility to the principle that in a world characterized by such unparalleled wealth, every human being in every country has the right to employment at a living wage.

Second, since what constitutes a living wage varies from one country to another, these organizations would collaborate to determine what a living wage is in each country. (For instance, in a country like China where the government subsidizes health care and housing for workers, the living wage would be less than it would be if working people have to purchase these services with their wages.)

Finally, while working to codify these international living wages in regional and international bodies, they collectively insist that every corporation setting up shop around the world pay the living wage for that country or face an international boycott of its services or products.

Perhaps it's time to think big about the living wage. Perhaps an international living wage campaign can provide that elusive strategy that galvanizes popular forces around the world to effectively coordinate their attack on poverty and growing income disparity. Perhaps the living wage will help us give greater visibility, as it did at Harvard, to the insanity of a world in which so many of our neighbors live near or far below a subsistence level while others uncork bottles of wine at $10,000 a pop in restaurants on Wall Street.

And perhaps the coming together of so many diverse constituencies in Harvard Yard to proclaim community may serve as a microcosm of a great in-gathering of peoples around the world, creating the just community in which every person matters.

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