Harvard labor: then and now.
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In May of 2001, about 50 students occupied Massachusetts Hall. Many more gathered outside.
It was the high point of the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, spokesman for the administration, Joe Wrinn claimed that there were “only seven” workers at Harvard who made less a living wage. One of the cooks turned to me and asked, “They’d let all this happen to avoid paying 7 people?”
The sit-in led to a temporary slowing down of what was then a 30 year long campaign to outsource labor. [It started with the painters in the early seventies.] N. Gregory Mankiw has been heard to characterize outsourcing of jobs as “importing service”. This is clearly not the case when Harvard outsources jobs like painters, janitors, cooks, and security guards. These jobs cannot be phoned in from Bangelore. I suppose you could clean a toilet with a remote controlled robotic arm, but I guess that’s not ready for market yet. Administration’s outsourcing is replacing employees with a living wage and benefits with contract workers who are paid less and have little if any benefits.
Also resulting from the sit-in was the formation of what was informally known as the Katz Committee to study low wage workers on the Harvard Campus. There were public hearings and meetings for a full year. The Committee was curiously able to find about 993 workers making less than the living wage that Joe Wrinn didn’t know about. That’s an error of … oh … about 14185%, but who’s counting.
In March of 2003, the chair of the committee, Professor Lawrence Katz gave a talk with slides [graphs] at the Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy in which he reviewed the results obtained by the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies. Dean David Ellwood pointed out that, “administration was totally transparent about labor practices.” I objected that Joe Wrinn had said “only seven” workers below the living wage and HCECP found 1000. Somewhat testily, Dean Ellwood corrected me. I said, “administration was totally transparent DURING THE WORK OF HCECP.” It is well he take no responsibility for the “transparency” of administration during the “casual” era. This was an era almost as long as the history of HUCTW culminating in there being 2000 unbenefitted, untenured casuals filling 1000 FTE positions. There were 3000 union members at the time. One fourth of the bargaining unit jobs were filled by contingent workers. And as of the time of Dean Ellwood’s remarks, Sally Zeckhauser had caused the HCECP website to be removed after an appropriate “problem solved” posting. When I asked Professor Katz for a copy of his paper [and the graphs], he informed me that it was, “A talk, not a paper.”. It seems that the laws of economics [and supporting evidence for them] are eternal except when the application is what Harvard actually does.
The late Polly Price once remarked at the Arco Forum that Harvard is the largest [by quite a bit] employer in Cambridge and the fifth largest employer in the state. It is reasonable to ask if Harvard can reasonably be assumed to be a price taker in the local labor market. LWC presented evidence that Harvard is clearly not. Yet administration continues to justify it’s policies on the claim that it is. The HCECP claim of the necessity of retaining “market discipline” is a subtler, but equivalent claim. That was true from the moment its recommendations appeared. A separate question is the adherence to or erosion from the recommendations since then.
Jack Trumpbour writes so beautifully that it would make Hemingway cry. Hemingway once said, “I’ve never yet known a good writer that was also a good talker.” That’s Jack. But if you read his book,
“How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire,” you’ll probably want to talk to him. Only once has he disappointed me and I think it’s repairable. He said something like every time we get a victory they take it back later. You’re surprised by this? Administrators spend all their time excercising and trying to extend their power. The rest of us have better things to do. We express our power when we feel we have no other choice. As long as administration and the Fellows operate like a black hole for information, there will be constant recidivism. We must recharter the University.
So what is the status now of low wage workers at Harvard?
It’s a nice day out. Why don’t y’all go for a walk in the yard late afternoon.
-r
In her own word and images.
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[Update: Jehane came to the screening. Her documentarian’s sense of ethics and accuracy was inspiring. My subtitle {below} is a bit unfair and my memory of the scene mentioned a bit flawed. In the interest, of open discussion. I will leave this post otherwise alone for the record. I will create a new post with full correction. But Jehane liked the idea of me being proud of her and I am.]
Harvard Alumna shines light on our government’s efforts to control the news of the Iraq war.
Tonight 6:00 PM @ KSG
In Jehane Noujaim’s film ‘Control Room’ there is footage from the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad. They were on the roof of the building. The reporter had a helmut and flak jacket on. You could see the fear in his eyes. The producer in Doha, Qatar told them to turn the camera around over the city. Absolutely nothing going on on the ground – no explosions, plumes of smoke. Next you see two F-16’s flying level across the sky totally alone. A sudden downward tilt and moments later you see debris obscuring the frame as the camera tumbles. Then snow.
Jehane, an Egyption-American, said on Charlie Rose that she did not know if it was intentional or not. In the movie, the producer in Doha is interviewed. There was no doubt in his mind. Mine either. My government murdered that man and his colleagues to shut them up. Jehane was both incredibly shrewd and incredibly brave in this. It was an honor to keep the books on the shelves for her.
Jehane, may I be proud of you?
-r
World War Four! – HUH! – YEAH! – What is it good for?
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Say it again y’all !
With all due respect to artists who covered this song, the original by Edwin Starr has an intensity unmatched. And yes the orginal was about “War” generally not specifically “World War Four”. I apologize for being unable to resist the additional alliteration.
What happend to World War III?
Is it a good thing to talk about WW IV [link to appear]
What is it good for? A lot folks think absolutely nothing. Scott Ritter thinks bombing of Iran will commence this summer. He was right about Iraq’s nuclear program. Can the DoD wage a war with Iran without a draft? I don’t think so. Where will they go first? Not Harvard. Roxbury. And people know it. Some folks gathered there to talk about what to do.
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| Roxbury Community College – a center for learning in a not so affluent neighborhood. |
The best pedagogy possible. It can happen anywhere. It takes time. A living wage helps. Three jobs doesn’t. |
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| Academics in bloom. | Activists empaneled. |
For What It’s Worth IV
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The CIA and Department of Homeland Security were due at 3:00 PM – a recruiting mission. At 2:40 PM, two HUPD motorcycle officers were at the front door of the Science Center, HUPD SUV 291 was parked between SciCtr and Memorial Hall, and a patrol car next to Thayer Hall. By 2:58, the motorcycle officers were gone. Dean Judith Kidd had joined an assemblage of students and told them that the demonstration could go forward.
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| It did. | Professors Zerner,Higonnet,Womack,Nakayama,Cavanaugh. All have feet. I have bad aim. |
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| Nancy from the ACLU | The panelists made their case. |
A ghost detainee makes hers. Women detainees are even ghostlier in the media.
In her own words,
“There are female detainees who have been raped and abused horribly,
taken into custody because they are relatives of male ‘suspects’
(their independent legal status from men in their lives totally annihilated
in the process). Unfortunately these female detainees have been
completely ignored by the US mainstream media as well as the
US anti-war movement, and I’m tired of female activists as well as
actors in Iraq being erased.”
Apology offered. Lesson learned. Case NOT closed.
Everybody look what’s goin’ down.
For What It’s Worth III
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
For What It’s Worth II
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SEIU pickets Cambridge Hyatt
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The white hat is Jeffry. [Sorry, had to show the sign :)]
[Left] Tom Potter HUCTW (self identification only)
and Harvard Socialist Alternative
Working both sides of the driveway.
Desiree Goodwin vs Harvard
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1:03-cv-11797-JLT
Desiree Goodwin
vs.
The President and Fellows
of Harvard College
Harvard Administration works in mysterious ways
its blunders to conceal
Boston. Jackie Benson Jones, Special Assistant to President Lawrence H. Summers, testified that she was told to stop working on an internal probe of Ms. Goodwin’s afirmative action complaint because the case had gone to the General Counsel’s Office. This confirmed allegations made by attorneys for Ms. Desiree Goodwin, that Harvard Assistant General Counsel Eileen Finan had compromised the integrity of proceedings before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by having secret talks with the Commission even before Ms Goodwin approached them. This followed a surprise motion on Monday, which excluded about half of the witnesses for Ms. Goodwin. In the second week of trial, outside counsel for Harvard administration, supervised by Ms. Finan, filed a motion to exclude witnesses that had been on the witness list well before the beginning of trial. “This is unfair surprise!” exclaimed Attorney Jon Margolis, of Rodgers, Powers, and Schwartz. “In thirty years of practice, I’ve never seen anything like this!” The usual practice is for the witness lists for both sides to be frozen before the trial begins.
Women and Creativity
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Two examples submitted for your approval and consideration – here in the Berkblog Zone.
Faith married a long time friend. Mr. Faith married really, really
well, In fact, at one point, the ‘not quite decided to be Mr.
Faith’ was told by another long time friend of mine, “If you
don’t marry her I will”. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but
it might have been while we were all anarchist swimming in Spy Pond.
They were a two career couple struggling with just how New Age they
were going to be. Her job was not the career she had imagined for
herself in her youth [ She had had the creative urge from early on],
but it seemed to meet her basic need. Eventually they decided to
try to make baby. I think it was more her idea than his, but I don’t
actually know. When she became pregnant her job became just fine thank
you very much. When she lost the baby, her job and everything else in
the universe became without form and void.
There was light again, then dark. Light. Dark. I don’t know the exact
number. Maybe I shouldn’t. But eventually the lamp stayed lit. My
brother, 1944, was “Gee honey I don’t know if I’ll make it back.”
I, 1947, am an accident of enthusiasm at being back. But the daughter
of Faith was anything but an accident.
———
Lisa is a stay at home mom and quite proud of it, thank you very much.
She was an analyst and may be again. But for now, raising the kids is
enough — almost. She blogs her life and is a significant
contributor to the advancement of blogcraft.
———
So tell me now, is there a relationship between the gift
of creativity a woman has in her womb and the gift of creativity she
has in her mind? Should we [or could we] try to create a partition if
nature thinks otherwise?
The old bachelor by the door who looks after things.
randy.f
What is a University supposed to be about?
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… especially one that fancies itself the greatest steward of the humanities in the world?
You
can click the picture for a 2x enlargement. Even so, You can’t see it,
but in the upper right hand corner, Paul Gauguin wrote three questions:
Where do we come from?
What are we?
Where are we going?
{I
will put up the original french [I’ll clip from the Web 🙂 ] after I
enable French Characters on my [I’m ashamed to say] WinXP.}
As
we sit on the brink of World War III, this last seems most pressing.
Much like the NBER assessment of the economy, we won’t know until we’re
a bit farther down the road. WWW III is actually a small worry compared
to the extinction of our species which we seem to be signing up for.
We’re in deep s**t and could use all the help we can get. Honest
science can help. I say let’s invite the women. [Gee that was a bit
awkward!] Let’s ask the women to help us. [Would a truly efficient
market ignore more than half of the talent pool?] It’s not enough to
wait till University, but it’s a start. Let’s get cracking shall we? We
don’t really know how much time we have.
Professor Stephen, who
recently left us, would be very sad. He quotes Charles Darwin, “If the
misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our
institutions, great is our sin.” Not only are we mismeasuring man,
woman, and child, but we are mismeasuring [or in some cases not
measuring when we should and could] homo economicus as well. Let’s look
at this more carefully shall we? Before we reduce any more economies
and our own to feudalism. A ray of hope is Professor Stephen, who is
still with us. Others though, including some of the most influential in
the University, have, I fear, caused Harvard’s sin to be huge.
I don’t really know why Professor Cornell is no longer here. I did not know him personally. Still I miss him. Google points
me to context of the quote from Professor Charles. He believes that
slavery is a greater sin than what might be caused by the market. Like
Professor Michael, he believes there are moral limits to markets. I
will ask, [real soon now] has ‘market’ ever been defined without
explicit or implicit moral limits? And have the definers been honest
about their purpose?
I apologize to Professor Diana. Her
sweet, beautiful misapprehension was not of the business model of this
University, but a hopefully small portion of our fellows. I will tell
you. And I would like to tell about the day that Professor Margaret
took on all the faculty on Observatory Hill to say what honest
empiricism required her to say.
But what do I know?
I’m just the guy by the door who looks after things.
Nighline asked, “Why do you come to the meetings?”
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After all we have all this super woopie do e-comm gear. Several answers Here’s the first in three parts.
1. At MIT they say that getting an education there is like getting a
drink from a firehose. [MIT was significant in the invention of the net
– the IMP or primordial router was invented there. ] Getting a drink
from the Web [or it’s blogosphere subset] is even harder. Talking
to another person or small group can help. Ordinary Websites are fairly
static. They respond to their visitors in limited controlled
ways. They are mostly one to many.
2. But Nightline sez, you can talk to people on the net. Yes you can
but each tool has different properties. Blogs are basically one to
many, but they do allow more interaction from visitors. Forums
are more democratic. E-mail is truly bilateral. They allow more
symmetric communicaton. People have more freedom to attune their
messages to their recipients. BUT all these tools have a
significant time delay. They are interactive, but not immediate [some
are unsychronized -email, blogs and forums – IRC is just a bit tedious.]
They are all relatively uninflected e.g. no tone of voice.
3. Face to face exchanges between people are geographically limited.
You have to be there. Face to face is both interactive [modulo
civility] and immediate. It includes tone of voice and body language.
[Could bilateral video do this? Maybe some day.] The essential skill of
the new age is not to master a specific tool or tools, but to
understand their different limitations and the relationship between
them*. More important is to understand the talents and limitations of
your audience and yourself. And finally the relationship between the
people and the tools. Berkman Center for what?
*The boundaries between different tools are at the moment too sharp. We
need software that allows communicants to move more freely between
different modes. More in a future post.
Iraq War Veterans Tour
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Veterans returning from the Iraq War are touring eastern Massachusetts. It is sponsored by Iraq Veterans against the War and Military Families Speak Out. The kickoff was Sunday Jan 30 at Faneuil Hall.There was a vigil outside and testimony in the Great Hall.
More pictures. Click on the thumbs to get full pages.
Last night Kelly Doughtery of IVAW and Nancy Lessin of MFSO spoke at Harriet Tubman House in Roxbury. I’ll put up some pictures for you. Fen’s first law of blogging: a blog account and a digital camera doesn’t automatically make you a journalist.
The tour is coming to Harvard on Friday – Science Center D 4:00 PM.
-r
Was the Iraq Election a Sucess?
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Only twenty some bombings reported. A quiet day? Are the media telling us the whole story? Were the reporters able to get to the story? Afterall the whole country was locked down. What has happened to us that we think that only twenty bombings is a good day?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Going into it, I wondered how the US Military would be able to able to achieve what has eluded them for two years. Randi Rhodes theorized that this shows they could have done it all along. There are possible theories that might not be entirely tinfoil hat. Perhaps the desire to have the Iraqi military on point has compromised operations. But, I think Juan Cole has the right answer. The U.S. Military proved that they can produce a relative calm for a one day national holiday when all transportation is shut down. [Unless the lock down prevented reporting of a lot of incidents.] The question is, what happens when the demands of commerce require allowing greater freedom of movement? We are there to rebuild the economy right? Juan thinks the newly elected officials will all have to move to the Green Zone or they will be killed. I wonder how many inked fingers will be chopped off.
At the moment, the insurgents are only the Sunni. Presumably the Kurds think they have a reasonable deal with the new government. And al Sistani seems to think he negotiated a good deal for the Shia. Will this hold up? Is the U.S. presence any more than stage directing a civil war?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Ok. The election was a success. So bring the troops home already!
HUCTW and the Internet
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Harvard’s Union of Clerical and Technical Workers refuses to use the web to keep it’s membership updated about what’s going on. They have had a domain registered [http://www.huctw.org] for several years, but it has been either dark or parked all that time. Union leadership argues that they get anything they want posted by “Harvard”. In this case, “Harvard” actually means administration. Kris Rondeau says that “Harvard” is good about learning to everyone except us [HUCTW]. Well, when it is routinized and controlled by administration what can you expect? On the other hand, workers who have direct relationships with faculty can have a much better time of it. Take for example our own Berkoblog facilitator Wendy. In this case, “Harvard” is Berkmeister John Palfrey. Wendy seems to have learned quite a lot. [Thank you sir.] Kris Rondeau made her career on her relationship with Ann Taylor. Ann was an administrator, so Kris’s relationship was with administration. Also, Ann’s gone. In addition to years of no progress on the learning front, living in the past cost us $2 million in wages. HUCTW should not forfeit learning issues to administration. In many cases, learning issues means technology. Our presence on the web – leadership and rank-and-file – is the quickest way to make clear to all that we are capable of learning the important new tools. The administration will continue to claim being “progressive”. Their program of deskilling jobs for the purpose of outsourcing and turning over older workers for younger – to cut salary costs – will continue. Unless, that is, we make the cognitive dissonance so apparent that it cannot be ignored.
A more developed and polished argument will eventually appear at: http://www.openhuctw.org .
-r
Am I the laziest Berkoblogger?
While I am definitely a contender, I spoke to Jesse at Votes, Bits, and Bytes. He said there are even lazier Berkobloggers. Gollyee!
Was I too generous to the Dems about war?
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This is way overdue. Dowbrigade woke me from my lethargy. Right after Jon Edwards’ speach it looked like the Dems were going to be a little more anti-Iraq war. Very quickly it became apparent that the Dems are strongly in pursuit of the few voters in the undecided middle. They have been trying to fashion a platform that does not alienate the large number of anti-war voters, but at the same time does not give ground to the right wing claim that opposing the war is being soft on terrorism.
I saw Richard Clarke on TV – don’t remember where. He argued that the intelligence apparatus should be fixed so that we can have a preemptive war on North Korea if we need to. One of the great spokespeople that preemptive war on Iraq was not justified and did not help the “war on terror”, nonetheless views preemptive war as an essential tool for nuclear non-proliferation. Is that “sensitive imperialism?” Where are the Dems really?
DowBrigade has incisively shown that recent US MiddleEast Policy has been about oil. It has been about oil from the beginning of our large scale use of Arabian oil in the 50’s. We had not one but two wakeup calls in the 70’s. I say support the troops: use less oil and bring them home.
I suspect that Anonymous [who I think has now been revealed] is right that getting out of Iraq, while necessary, will still require several years of war. Even if President Kerry moves us in the direction of getting out, there is sure to be disappointment in him. I won’t be happy either, but I’m concerned about the possibility that history might regard the current epoch as the beginnings of World War III. [DowBrigade is a sunny optimist pangloss type compared to me :).] During the Cold War we all thought WWWIII would be a binary superpower conflict about an hour and a half long. WWW III may ramp up more like WWWII. The huge difference though is that the Arab world doesn’t have the same cohesive nation-states. They cannot be counted on to line up to fire their muskets. WWWIII will look like much much more of what we have now.
I am descended from a goyishe guilt-based religion with bad experience in Germany. I am Pennsylvania Dutch. That fact notwithstanding, Happy New Year DowBrigade and all the Children of Israel.
-r
The Dems on War: Looking back on Iraq, looking forward to Sudan?
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Last night, Jonathan Edwards gave the most complete elaboration of the Dems platform so far. For this item, I’ll just talk about the plank on war. Despite the decision to avoid explicit Bush bashing, there was substantial criticism of the prosecution of the ‘war on terror’ so far and a promise to do things differently. The current Bush position does not – on the face of it – sound that different. I don’t remember whether it was during the speach or elsewhere* that one of the J’s said that Bush had adopted their position. The real difference, of course, is that it’s hard to believe that the Bush administration has a genuine desire or the ability to carry out this position. WMD’s? Flowers and sweets? Reconstruction will pay for itself? [Where is the $20 Billion of Iraqi oil money anyway? ] Iraqi sovereignty? Well the several flavors of insurgents aren’t buying it.
Edwards talked about a build up of the military. Clearly this is largely in response to Rumsfeld’s insistence on his ‘invasion lite’ scheme despite a lot of contrary advice from the professional military. ‘Invasion lite’ has suffered substantial ‘blowback,’ the brunt of which has fallen on the people wearing the ‘boots on the ground.’ Certainly they deserve to come home. The Dems hope to come up with new young people to replace them. [Elsewhere, I will argue that all possible Iraqi futures involve tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths above and beyond the 16,000 already dead. Let’s choose a future that doesn’t involve our young people.]
There is also a clear concern about electability in this plank. Party strategists don’t want to risk being too antiwar. If the polls are right and the electorate is split, a balancing act is called for. But if a man straddles a fence, it’s best he have long legs or he might get his nuts crushed. [Maybe this is an argument for a woman president.] Dems may be willing to go a little to the left with Edwards’ “Two Americas”, but on war they are going to continue to cling to the center. [But is there a there there?]
Meanwhile, looming on the horizon is also the spectre of an armed UN intervention in Sudan. How will the American left respond to US participation? Could the US conceivably say no and still hope for UN support to ‘Internationalize’ the war in Iraq. I suspect that the Kerry people started to think about this a while ago. “Preemptive war is sometimes necessary, but Iraq was not.” Is part of the proposed military build up in anticipation of a “police action” in Sudan? Will it turn out better than Somalia or will it be “Battleship Down?”
*Watching TV, while streaming Air America Radio and reading blogs on the Internet, may not be the best way to get a coherent view of what’s going on 🙂
Birth of a new state. It’s name be Confusion.
No I’m not talking about the bogosity in Iraq. I’m talking about
this blog. Somebody posed interesting questions for new bloggers:
1. Who are you?
At age 57, I am still totally bereft of clue. Some people accuse me
of being anti-clue, but that is clearly false. Anti-clue is only a CP
transformation away from clue.
My full legal name is Philip Randolph Fenstemacher. Philip,
however, means “lover of horses” which doesn’t very
well describe somebody who only uses public
transportation. Randolph, means “shield wolf” or “protector”. I’ve
always liked that and as fate would have it, I ended up working
security for the Harvard College Libraries. If you’ve been in any of
them, there’s a good chance I’ve looked in your bag as you left.
Officially I’m called a Doorchecker, but people don’t seem eager to
steal the doors. Most of the time I’m protecting the collection, but
sometimes I protect the people. Call me Randy.
2. What’s this site about?
My coefficient of clue on this one is the same as above. Although,
it has occurred to me that in a universe governed by quantum mechanics,
clue cannot really be exactly zero. Uncertainty requires zero-point clue.
Shortly , I plan to make my way towards the Center for High
Energy Metaphyics. However, I will stop short at the Center for Quantum
Blogodynamics [aka the Berkman Center] to see ‘sup? Hopefully they will
help me figure out what this site is about.
3. How can people send you feedback?
Well e-mail works. I suppose Manila will give me niftier things. We’ll see.
wlyb?!
-r
