Harvard panel urges raise for low-paid workers

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- A Harvard panel recommended Wednesday that the world's richest university give its lowest-paid workers an immediate raise, reporting some seven months after students sat in to demand better treatment for custodians, cafeteria workers and guards.

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The 19-member committee of faculty, students and employees found that such workers at the nation's oldest seat of learning saw their real wages decline in the last seven years as the university outsourced services.

"We believe the right solution is to fix the system, not gut the system," Harvard economics professor Larry Katz, who chaired the panel, told reporters.

He said the university should continue to use outside contractors "to get higher quality, to improve efficiency, for innovation and expertise, but not use it to get around one's obligations to collective bargaining and to lower wages to the lowest common denominator."

The Katz panel unanimously recommended that Harvard President Lawrence Summers, secretary of the treasury under former President Bill Clinton, reopen negotiations with the unions representing the workers to raise their pay to "at least in the range of $10.83 to $11.30 per hour."

The committee also called for the adoption of a "Harvard parity wage and benefits" policy to cover on-campus contract workers, thus raising their pay and benefits as well.

But the committee did not back an across-the-board permanent living-wage floor.

Its report estimated that the proposed raises for approximately 1,000 workers -- both direct employees of the university and contract workers -- would cost in the range of $1.9 million to $2.9 million a year.

The panel did not suggest how Harvard should fund the raises, but Katz noted that some 18,000 students attended the university's schools. Tuition for undergraduates this year is $34,269.

Harvard's endowment stood at $18.3 billion in June.

Summer's predecessor, Neil Rudenstine, who oversaw an increase in the endowment of more than $1 million a day during his 10-year tenure, set up the panel after students staged a 21-day sit-in at his office.

The protest, demanding that Harvard pay its workers a living wage, received international attention, as well as support from U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, former Vice President Al Gore, and actors Warren Beatty, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

The students ended the longest sit-in in the school's history May 9 after Rudenstine agreed to form a committee to review the wage issue.

More formally known as the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies, the panel collected payroll information from the university's personnel records and compared Harvard's wage scales to those of other schools in the Boston area.

A report released Monday by Harvard alumni who supported the student protest said hourly wages for custodians at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were $14.39, at Boston University $14.97 and at Wellesley College $15.26. Harvard pays a starting hourly wage of $9.65 an hour to its workers.

It will be up to Summers to approve any wage increases, Katz said.

In a statement sent to the media, Summers called the Katz committee's report "a comprehensive and very constructive document that outlines a promising direction for the future."

But he said he would not act on its recommendations before a period for comment ends January 18.

Comments came in almost immediately. The Harvard alumni group, in a statement, described the proposed wage increases and parity pay proposals as "merely a quick fix."

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