Nathan Marsh Pusey -Harvard President 1953-1971
During the next half hour you'll see glimpses of Harvard past and present which will indicate what nine generations of Harvard men have done to make the Harvard college we know. We hope all also they will show why now a tenth generation must in it's turn renew, strengthen Harvard College

Occupation, the story of the Harvard living wage sit-in

a film by.....

Consuelo Tizon, Harvard Janitor
Well, I work two jobs, all the time live in Boston, yes. I;m a single mother, and you know I work so hard, at least 14 hours a day. Somtimes I work Saturdays too. So my daughter was alone most of the time, and because I can't afford to pay a babysitter, I was really unfair all the time, very stressful raising my daughter by phone. Hiding in the office to tell my daughter her assignments in school. I imagine it happened with all my co-workers, we felt for a long time lost workers. We not have a place to complain.

Ben Affleck
Harvard University is the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere. It possesses a real estate empire and an endowment worth almost 20 billion dollars. It is the second wealthiest non-profit institution in the world, after the Vatican. In the last fifteen years, while Harvard’s endowment tripled, the university cut labour costs by breaking campus unions, outsourcing jobs, and slashing wages and benefits for Harvard's lowest-paid workers. Harvard is the third largest employer in Massachusetts. In 2001 Harvard enjoyed a budget surplus of 120 million dollars - yet paid more than 1000 workers poverty wages.

Frank Morely - Harvard Janitor
You get to the point where you don't need a degree to know you're getting screwed, to put it bluntly.

(Monique - Harvard Janitor - text of testimony)

I’m from Haiti. I have four children, two boys, two girls. I live in Malden now. The money we make doesn’t go far.

My family, they see me every weekend, but that’s it. I speak to them on the telephone. When I wake up in the morning, they’re still asleep. I have to be here at 8:00 a.m. If you want to take care of your family, you better work two jobs. One job can't take care of nothing. You know, no parents are ever home. And then the kids can get into trouble.

January 2001
Molly on megaphone
We should all be outraged at how Harvard workers are treated. It's unfair, and we won't stand for it.
(chants)
What do we want?
A living wage!
When do we want it?
Now!

Molly's voiceover
Three years ago the Harvard Living Wage Campaign started to speak with campus service workers. We found that they couldn’t support themselves and their families on Harvard wages. We had faith that as we brought the truth about working conditions to the University’s attention, it would respond. But despite gathering petitions, building a community coalition and urging President Rudenstine to act the university made no real improvements. And in February, 2001 after releasing a report calling for education programs rather than wage increases, the president declared the issue closed.

Poster text:
In 1994, 58% of Harvard Security Guards earned more than $14/hr. In 2001, 58% of Harvard Security Guards earn less than $10/hour. None earns $14/hour.

From 1994-2001, the average rent in Boston doubled.

It's time for a Living Wage.

Without success we had tried everything to convince the administration to implement a living wage. Reasonable dialogue and community pressure failed. It didn’t seem like there were any options left. In early February, we started planning an occupation of Massachusetts Hall.

Old man Harvard voice
In the Yard, you may see Harvard's President as with Mrs. Conant he walks towards his office in Old Massachusetts Hall.
(plaques on Mass Hall ...important?)

During the last two months of preparation, we arranged civil disobedience trainings, convinced reporters to come inside with us and organized a team to co-ordinate support actions on the outside. Unions said they would try to support us if we get in, but legally they can’t be involved with planning civil disobedience. But as we’re secretly gathering in a nearby basement, we’re afraid that occupying the president’s offices could mean the end of the campaign. Even if we manage to get into the building, we’ll probably be arrested and dragged out, and we worry that such a dramatic escalation may alienate the broad base of support we’ve already built.

Aaron Bartley's voice
If we're not under arrest, but the police are trying to remove us, we do esist, but if we're under arrest we let go and we can choose to go limp or not.

[rumble]

Someone given the secretary our letter to support staff? People have letters ready for HUPD (the police). Please put a letter under this door, somebody.

(chants) What do we want? A living wage! When do we want it? Now!

Jesse's in front of the door
We're not blocking the door. We're going to leave this position in three minutes. We just want you to take that three minutes, and look at our list of demands. Maybe have some kind of conversation with us.

Police woman
No, you have to move

Fineberg (administrator)
I'll take your... papers, but I can't talk to you.

Police woman
You need to clear the doorway.

Harvey Fineberg, Harvard Provost, $245,000 per year

Fineberg Talking
Many times during the year, I've been asked to talk about the living wage and we've always done it. I have office hours every two weeks that are open, and I'm prepared to talk to people, but I'm not prepared to talk under these circumstances.

chants
Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you! (as he is leaving)
What do we want....

Police woman (with hand over video camera)
You have to go if you're not affiliated with Harvard.

Maple - from behind camera
I'm a supporter of a living wage

Police Woman
It doesn't matter. If you don't leave you're trespassing. Trespassing! You gotta go.

chants resume
We will not be divided! We will not be divided!
What do we want? A living wage

Miranda, reading
Here's a Harvard story for you. I used to make $11.92. And now I'm done to just about $9.90. I lost all my seniority, my vacation time and my retirement money.

Jean Phane speaking outside
The reason why I'm here today is to tell Harvard University, they got the money, and they got to pay us fairly.

chants
What's outrageous? Harvard's wages! What's disgusting? Union-busting!

Molly's voice
I'm in the window to your left, I'm waving. And I've got with me right now 47 other people in the building. 47 other supporters of this living wage. A number of members of the HUPD (police), and it looks like the administration has cleared out completely. I hope you all said goodbye to President Ruudenstein and to Mister Harvey Fineberg as they exited.

The administration released a statement saying they will not speak with us while we’re occupying a building. They’ve stationed police at the entrances and we’ve heard rumours that they might drag us out tonight. Despite the threatening atmosphere, some dining hall workers said they’d come by after their shift to show their support.

Ed Childs
Food is our business, so what we did is bought pizzas. And we marched in formation to Mass Hall. And the police stood in front of us and says, "Nothing gets in." And we yelled at them, "Whatever it takes, whether it's through the front door or the windows, we will feed our students."

And within 30 seconds there was a call by the police, and we were allowed to bring the pizzas into the front door. By the next morning, it had spread right through our ranks, everybody knew now what we had done, and we had formed an alliance now that was not to be broken.

Day 2
Greg reading
You all have met Frank by now, he's a custodian. Like many people at Harvard, he works 80 hours a week, he sleeps 4 hours a night. So I'm going to share some words from Frank.

I've been wearing a custodial uniform now going on 20 years. I always say the only thing we don't have is a number across our backs. It's amazing how much abuse people will take. They just sit back and take it. I finally realized that as long as there's people willing to take it, there's people willing to kick us. Just 'cause they're in the position to do it. I call this place the reservation. We're allowed to think how mad we are, we just better not say it. And that's what we're doing here today, to say what Frank can't say.

chants...

Molly's voice
It seems the administration doesn’t want public attention for carrying us out in handcuffs. But the police are under orders to make life unbearable and we constantly struggle to keep control of space in the building. We must fight to open windows so we can speak with supporters outside, keep police from entering our conference room and hold onto the bathroom. We keep watch all night so we’re not caught off guard and dragged out.

Day 3

Amy's voice
The administration is being dishonest. They're refusing to negotiate. The only negotiations that are going on right now are absurd negotiations between students and police officers about who can be in what room, who has access to the bathroom, they're about space. We didn't go in there to talk about space, we went in there to talk about a living wage. We went in there to get a living wage and we expect the administration to talk about a living wage and we expect these absurd space negotiations to just stop, now.

Privately workers tell us how badly they need better pay. Since the start of sit-in, however, their managers threaten to dock their pay, fire or even deport them if they come to the protests. But for us the occupation can only succeed if it empowers workers to speak out publicly and take action.

Elaine Bernard Harvard Trade Union Program
There are a number of people who said, well, why not the janitors, why aren't the janitors sitting in. Well, if the janitors had sat in they would have been arrested in 5 minutes flat. Their union, those who had a union, would have been under superfines and all the rest of it.

The law clearly prohibits doing this, and the University would have felt very free to put the full power of their authority on these very vulnerable workers. On the other hand, with the students doing it on behalf of these workers, the University needed to be a little more cautious and so I think it was a valid, not a substitutionist, it was a solidaristic action and strategy which made a lot of sense.

Bob, custodian (written text)

I’m depressed now and I was oppressed before. See, I was born in Alabama back in 1935—long before King came.

See, this work is a self-inflicted wound. It just is. I get home from my second job around 11:30 p.m. In bed around midnight.

I’m up again before 4 a.m. so I can be back here in the morning. It’s just a rhythm, that working. Same old, tired, same old.
It’s just a rhythm.

Happiness, I know —it’s got to stem from something outside this working. I know I got to have something else to make me happy, but there’s only 24 hours in the day.

Ari's voice
We have to sing really loudly so that they can hear inside, okay? ["no!"] Yes!

Singing
Okay ready? 1, 2,3
My bubi (grandmother ) and my zeide (grandfather) would be proud of me, Standing up for justice and for liberty. Grandpa would sit me on his lap, grandma would give my cheek a kiss. And say, "Give the boss a kick for me, right in the tuchus (butt)!"
Sweatshops, dirty crowded and hot. Sweatshops, faster! Work till you drop. With the union they may gain but sweat labour still remains, so we're back again to fight another day...

Molly's voice
Many of us first became involved in labour issues through United Students Against Sweatshops, a national campaign to make Universities like Harvard accountable for the overseas sweatshops that make University licensed apparel. As we’ve gotten to know workers on campus, we’ve come to realize that they face many of the same obstacles as those in sweatshops: union busting, poverty wages, lack of benefits, and long working hours. We’ve come to understand the Living wage struggle as one piece of the larger, ongoing struggle to resist corporate-driven globalization.

Elaine Bernard
I think there's an important link between the struggle for a living wage and the anti-globalization struggle. And the key thing is that both of those campaigns are saying that human values and values of equity, values of democracy, values of justice should supersede markets. That the market is not the sole arbiter of what's acceptable. That in fact the market should not determine all of our relationships.

Day 5
Maple walking in building
Alright, it's 7:30 everybody, it's time to get up.

Molly's voice
Rather than cracking down it looks like the administration is waiting us out. They bet that we’ll have to give before they do. A few protesters have left and we don’t know how long we can sustain the occupation. Although the rallies outside are growing, local news has only run a few short pieces on the sit-in.

Aaron Bartley's on the phone
Hey David, this is Aaron Bartley. I'm calling from the sit-in at Mass Hall. Just want to speak to you about what's happening internally at the Globe. Just trying to get a sense of why we're being shut out, since you wrote the last article last Wednesday, which I thought, by the way, was a good article. Um, please give me call back. Even if they've kinda taken the story away from the business section, I'd just like to get your view on what's... wrong.

Greg in the bathroom
I think it's possible that we won't have any access to any of those higher people anymore. They might just not want to come in here. In that case, the only people we do have access to are the people who do their work for them, their secretaries. And I think, I'm not saying we definitely need to do this, but one way to keep their work from getting done is to make their secretaries' job a little more difficult to do.

chants
1,2,3,4, Harvard pay a little more 5,6,7,8, Living wage just can't wait.

Police
Make a hole... make a hole, thank you.

Maddy' in the bathroom
It makes me feel a little uncomfortable to use secretaries' extreme discomfort on the job as a way of getting to their bosses, because I think the magnitude of the pain we're inflicting is going to be dulled many times. I don't think that their bosses care about their secretaries' welfare as much as we should, although admittedly that's not our purpose. I just think we should try to think of other ways of reaching them.

Matt in the bathroom
I sort of feel like we're in the long haul here. And I think it's really important to focus on what's actually going to affect them, what's going to force them to meet with us. And from my perspective that's broader student support. I think that was a really good sign that the dining halls are behind us. Trying to motivate people on the outside to disrupt the campus on the outside if that's possible. And also focusing on things that embarass them publicly.

Paul, on the mic outside
Get your sleeping bag, toothbrush and tents, and help us make an even more visible presence of the living wage sit-in. Solidarity.

Amy on mic
So that's right we're starting a tent city, out here tonight, starting at our vigil at 8 p.m.

Sisters of Kumbaa (singing)
Till we get a living wage, I'm gonna let it shine...

Molly's narration
We’ve realized that our occupation of the building cannot win a living wage by itself. Our civil disobedience has to spark further action. The administration still tries to ignore us, but with each passing day pressure mounts as the community starts to take over Harvard Yard.

Roona outside
This tent city is probably one of the most important parts of this action. This sit-in, partially because it provides for the kids in the inside, who are sort of cloistered from the world, a visual representation on the outside. But also, frankly, it's an eyesore. Harvard Yard was not meant to have 70 green and blue and red and purple and black... tents in the middle of it.

Day 8
Voice of Joe Wrinn- Harvard Spokesperson
We hope that as time goes they'll see where the university is, what a progressive employer it is, and we'll be able to stand on our record for the past 375 years.

Ben Affleck's voice
With momentum building, Harvard’s administrators begin to fight back. They cut the public address system’s electricity, intimidate workers by videotaping their participation, and try to lock supporters out of Harvard Yard. The Harvard News Office launches a public relations campaign, refusing to count outsourced workers as Harvard employees, calling the sit-in coercive and claiming that free classes serve workers’ needs better than higher wages.

Joe Wrinn on TV
We believe it's always a balancing act when it comes to the social pressures on a university. Our main responsibility is to the core mission, which is teaching and research. We think a better way to lift people out of lower paying jobs is through education, free education, during the workday, to give a longer range potential for improvement.

Reporter
Why not both? We're talking about 20,000 a year. I wouldn't want to live on that, and I doubt that you would, with a family. So at 10.25 an hour, that's $20,000 a year. Why not both?

Joe Wrinn
Yes, we could do booth, I mean both if we chose to, but we chose to concentrate on education as we think a more expedient way to raise people into better paying jobs.

Rhonda, dining hall worker
Financially I’m OK now. I was able to move out of the projects, but, you know, after paying taxes and daycare and car insurance, that’s when you start going to food pantries and soup kitchens and you start trash-picking for clothes and toys and furniture. It’s fun, trash- picking. It’s shopping.

I mean, my kids don’t really think they’re poor. When we go to a soup kitchen, they think they’re at a restaurant. We stick around until after dinner’s served, too, so we can get a doggie bag to take home. Why not save it? Waste not, want not.

Alex on cell phone
Hi this is Alex Horowitz, I'm calling from Harvard University for Robert Reichauer. I'm calling from the living wage campaign, and we're speaking with the board of overseers. We've already spoken with many members of the board of overseers already and we were hoping to speak to Mr. Reichauer as well..if he can give us a call back here, the number is...617... 512... 2477.

Molly's voice
We’ve been organizing the community around this issue for three years. That’s what we need to return to: calling students to attend our three daily rallies, pressing alumni to withhold donations, and co-ordinating solidarity actions with workers and Unions around the country. Hundreds of formerly passive supporters are becoming active and politicized, putting pressure on Harvard that we could never have exerted ourselves. Workers speak in front of the building, the Ruckus Society runs civil disobedience trainings, and clergy conduct religious services in the yard. Thanks to the work of supportive professors, over 300 faculty members have thrown their weight behind the living wage too.

Juliet Schor, Professor of Women's Studies
The letter had a big impact on administration I believe because what it did was send a very strong signal to them that the faculty were not supporting their position.

Day 9
This is the CBS evening news, with John Roberts.
Harvard students are demanding higher pay... for hundreds of campus workers.

Molly's voice
Poverty wages at Harvard are gaining national attention. This is just what we are aiming for, but the issue's high profile may backfire. The business executives who comprise the Harvard Corporation and have final authority on this issue don't want this kind of labour precedent set. It may inspire similar actions against other employers.

President Pusey
It is impossible for anyone to be long at Harvard without becoming conscious of the history that is everywhere about him. There are many evidences of this. The colonial buildings, the art itself, the old college pump, the names in Hollis hall. And we have many priceless treasures. There is none more priceless than the Charter of the College itself, which was given by the general court of Massachusetts in 1650 and under which it still operates, the oldest instrument of incorporation in the Western hemisphere.

Ben Affleck's voice
The charter establishes the Harvard Corporation as the university’s highest governing board. The group answers to no one, and its 7 members choose their own successors. Corporation members also serve on the executive boards of the world’s largest companies, including Exxon-Mobil, Corning, McKinsey, Coca-Cola, Tricon Global, and J.P. Morgan among others. They direct corporations associated with extensive environmental, labour, and human rights abuses: the Azurix Corporation privatizes water supplies worldwide; Dyncorp provides the State Department with mercenaries in Colombia; Enron, under investigation for defrauding thousands of employees, violently suppresses peaceful resistance to its Indian power plants. Every two weeks these seven people meet to oversee the university.

Maple
We are here once again to ask the Harvard Corporation why they refuse to meet with us, why they've ignored our letters, and why they continue to block the implementation of a living wage.

Hebert ("Pug") Winokur—Director, Enron ($8,000,000 per year)

Man in Scarf
Mr. Winokur, why do you continue to pay Harvard workers poverty wages?

Pug
I'm sorry, I'm a little late and I apologize.

Molly
I was wondering if you would talk to us for just a second

Pug
I'm really late, I'd love to but I...

Day 9

John Sweeney, President of AFL-CIO
Here's the truth. Instead of helping the workers who clean the classrooms, serve the food, and care for the grounds here, live the American Dream, Harvard University is perpetuating an American nightmare, and the Harvard Corporation must accept full responsibility.

Anna Burger, Secretary of SEIU
I first want to salute the students who have put themselves at risk, to stand up, to speak out, to put a face on the people who are often invisible in our society.

Conseulo on mic
We can't work anymore like that. And we work hard to make comfortable offices, clean toilets, and nice cafeterias!

People like me, a janitor, they never talking loudly like I did, or march in the street complaining. But it's something different, I never did something like that in my whole entire life, I never thought I could speak in public like that, I never thought I have the courage to do it . But the courage not from me, the people around me gave me this courage, support, you know. And, like I said in the beginning, I didn't care if I lost that job, really. But at least we lost it fighting.

Day 13

Dorothy Austin
The president has decided that he wishes to address all of you in person. This will not be a time when we will engage in substantive issues; that will remain for a later moment. But the president thought it was very important, given the power of this moment, to convey to you his thoughts in person.

Student
Do you know what time that will be?

Dorothy Austin [smugly]
Right now.

Rudenstine
I think this is an important matter of principle, if we got to the point where the crowds are out of control and people are getting hurt I'll do my best as a citizen to keep it calm. But I cannot give in and if the university is at such a point where people say it is so badly off that we must give in, I'll resign, and you'll deal with the next person.

No justice, no peace...

Dan Rather
Harvard's president met with protesters for the first time yesterday; officials say the students could face serious academic discipline.

Ed Childs
The students were sitting in for us. The consciousness of the living wage, that was for us. And so we says, well, these are our children sitting in for us. We cannot let them take the blows that was meant for us.

Anchor (not Joe Shortsleeves)
A student sit-in for higher wages for university employees turns into a rally in Harvard Yard.
Seven's Doug Luzader is live on campus.

Doug Luzader
It's going to be a pretty big event here, you see all the students behind me waiting for another big group of students to arrive. Further over here, to your right, you see the actual building students have taken over. About 40 students still are inside there, they can't leave because if they do, police will not let them back in.

These are Sky High Four pictures of a student protest that started withing the past hour, marching now in the streets They're demanding higher wages for non-faculty employees.

What do we want? A living wage. And when do we want it? Now.

Reporter
Today it was the janitors' turn to protest. Several dozens of them are marching from Harvard Yard over to Holyoke Hall to confront the director of Harvard office Harvard's director of labour-employee relations. They're demanding that $10.25 per hour. One of those protesting, a janitor who currently takes home $319 a week after taxes.

Frank
Right now I make $10 and hour that's with over 4 years service here. I started at $8.05 an hour.

Reporter
Can you live on that?

Frank
No, only reason I'm living now is because I'm eating up money I had in the retirement fund.

TV voice over
Massachusetts has the 3rd highest cost of living in the nation, behind New Jersey and Hawaii. It costs 13% more to live here than in the average state, and the Boston area is even higher than that. Now, the U.S. minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, in MA it's 6.75, the highest in the nation, but in Cambridge, where Harvard's located, the city has an ordinance requiring city workers to make $10.25 an hour. Students estimate that paying a living wage to all university workers would cost Harvard about $10 million a year. That's about a half-percent of the interest Harvard makes on its endowment.

Joe Wrinn
When you compare anything against $19 billion it looks like it's affordable, and affordability isn't the direct question.

Molly's Voice
Workers are now taking the sit-in as their own, speaking out forcefully and organizing their own actions for the first time in decades. Hundreds of custodians and dining hall workers from the Harvard Medical School joined the cause with a campus march of their own. Workers say they want to tighten their bond of solidarity with the students. and won't go away until they're guaranteed a wage increase.

Jean Phane
We're going to continue the rally, as long as people are here listening to what we have to say, we're gonna be here.

Joe Wrinn
I think it's in everybody's interest to move on from this and continue this dialogue outside of an occupied building.

TV Lady
Several hundred students came to today's rally, and recently they've gained some pretty powerful support. Yesterday Senator Kennedy came here, and they also have the support of the AFL-CIO.

Ted Kennedy
There is no power, and, ah, no immovable object that will not move.

TV Guy voice
Administrators say they won't negotiate until protesters leave the building. But the protesters aren't budging, making it likely they'll leave either in victory... or in handcuffs.

Molly's voice
At first we thought time was on the administration’s side. And it’s true that as time passes people slowly have to leave. Our numbers have fallen from 50 to 29 students. But pressure grows daily: there’s an around the clock presence in the yard, alumni are holding actions at Harvard Clubs in NY, DC and Chicago, Faculty are demanding meetings with the President and labour unrest is spreading to new areas of the University.

Beth Germano
There is no sign of letting up here on the Harvard University campus—in fact, the heat is rising. You can see the tent city that is still set up behind me here in Harvard Yard, as students support workers from cooks to custodians get a better paycheck. In fact, tonight one workers' union did find support in the protest.

Janice Loux
Are you willing to support your negotiating committee to authorize a strike?

TV Lady voice
Labour tensions hit another peak at Harvard University. These cafeteria workers could now walk off the job in a matter of weeks.

Ed Childs
When families have to decide to feed their children or take them to a doctor, to fill a prescription or pay the rent.

TV Lady voice
And so they marched into Harvard Yard which students have occupied for 2 weeks supporting the fight of university labourers for a living wage of $10.25 an hour.

Jean Phane
I am here representing the custodial workers in local 254. I know some people at the medical area in custodial who works here for 20 years and still making 9 dollars and 40 cents. [boos] So Harvard, you need to wake up. So, again people, I thank you very much, the students for coming out today, and my name is Jean Phane, and I'm gonna fight for a living wage!

2,4,6,8 living wage just can't wait.

Red Ed Childs
You couldn't even hear what was being said, it was so loud. And they took it upon themselves to be that loud. Because they were letting out their emotions—in support of the students, but also now they had the ability to let out the anger they had at their employer, Harvard University, and with thousands behind them— "and now we can get you." Y'know? Everything you've done to me and my family, I'm coming to get you now.

Molly
The administration has asked us to submit a tentative list of our demands but still insists it won’t directly engage in negotiations.

Ben McKean
This has to be done fast, is the other thing.

Harvard University should commit to the principle of a living wage for all workers at the University, whether hired directly or hired by outside firms, and should put in place an enforceable implementation mechanism. The living wage consists of three parts:

1. $10.25 base wages adjusted annually for cost of living increase

2. health insurance that is equivalent to health insurance offered to Harvard professors

3. benefits—and this one's important because it's not clear how much of this we want to have—benefits including free child care, two paid sick days for every 45 days work, 2 paid vacation days for every 45 days work, access to a formal grievance board, and two months of paid parental leave.

Lynne
I just want to say, we should keep things in there that we don't really want, we need to be able to give and take with this so the more things we know we can give up, let's leave 'em in there, let's fill it with those kind of things.

Aaron Bartley
So John Hiatt, the general counsel of the AFL-CIO, Sweeney's lawyer, the most prominent labour lawyer in the country, has agreed to be our negotiator, based on... yeah.

Molly
Now that our AFL/CIO liaison has opened lines of communication, President Rudenstine has agreed to enter into negotiations. We follow their progress and relay our positions by conference call. The President is so afraid of appearing to have caved in that the talks are secret.

Elaine Bernard
I think the University came to appreciate that it was very useful to have organized labor because to bargain you need an organized party. It reminds us one of the advantages—i hate to say it —for employers with unions is that unions give you an organized voice. And if you contract out, union bust, or other wise make it impossible for workers and students to have an organized voice, you don’t shut them up—you just get “collective bargaining by riot.”

Ed Childs
And I'll tell ya, every dining hall worker at Harvard University, all 550 of them, feel that this is the process. This sit in, that these students are doing, is our process, that is our negotiations, and we're gonna continue fighting with the students here.

Ben Affleck's voice
As the energy, popularity, and militancy of the campaign grows, more and more workers risk their jobs to participate. Harvard’s negotiating position weakens. As the threat of wildcat strikes and spreading civil disobedience continues, the students and workers force the administration to negotiate a settlement. Only one week after President Rudenstine pledged to resign before giving in, community pressure finally compels him to accept a moratorium on outsourcing, unprecedented wage increases and a committee to overhaul university labour policies.

Reporter lady
There are hundreds here now rallying in Harvard Yard. Students and the school administration have reached some kind of agreement, but until they post their positions on their web sites, no one is going to leave that building behind me.

Matthew
It's... it's... it's... it's up here. It's up. [cheers]

[Sí se puede...]

WBZ guy
For 21 days they have occupied Harvard Yard and part of the administration building. Today, the students earned a victory for 2000 Harvard employees.

Ed Childs
Now we struggled together, it shows you what unity can do. We actually can take on Harvard University and win.

Consuelo
I'm full of emotion right now. Because I waited for this moment. To have those kids, they are unbelievable. They are my inspiration, my heroes.

[Fuertes somos ya...]

Jean Phayne's voice
You know, people who fight together usually have a special bond. Before we had fought together, we may be just, hello buddy, how are you, things like that, but now, there's a closeness.

Ben Affleck's voice
Since May 2001, worker-student alliances have founded more than 40 new living wage campaigns on campuses nationwide. The struggle continues.

Titles
In June 2001, Harvard’s president convened a committee to study campus wages. On January 29, 2002, he accepted several of its recommendations, including a one-time wage increase to a minimum of $10.25/hour and wage parity between directly hired and outsourced service workers

Despite these huge gains, janitors, guards, and dining hall workers will still be paid far less today than they earned 10 years ago.

Credits
The end.
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