Word: pslm
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...workers’ wages have increased significantly. But most of the unions have since put down their picket signs and concluded deals with the University, leaving the liberal student activists searching for a new cause. The heady days of Tent City are gone, and the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) is struggling to redefine its purpose. Its recent activities, including a bake sale and rallies for security guards, have failed to capture the interest of the student body. PSLM is squandering its time, energy and credibility...
...PSLM accomplished a great deal during the sit-in, and also during wage negotiations earlier this year. It brought the University to the bargaining table, bolstering the workers’ cause by inciting widespread student protest. A Harvard committee composed of students, faculty, workers and administrators found that low-paid workers’ real wages had dropped over the past two decades and recommended that they be raised above the Cambridge living wage, to $10.85-$11.30 per hour—well above the $10.25 per hour that the Massachusetts Hall protesters initially demanded. The University agreed to renegotiate several contracts...
Despite these accomplishments, PSLM has lost both credibility and visibility as its campaign has dragged on. After the janitors’ union accepted the minimum $11.35 per hour wage, PSLM maintained that the new wages still did not provide for a decent living, even though it claimed otherwise last year, when $10.25—and then $10.68—was its stated goal. Shifting its aims so unapologetically—one PSLM member said, “the numbers we’d been calling for were not sufficient”—significantly eroded student support...
...parting zingers, directed at the various groups and people who have made Harvard such a fascinating and absurd place to write about. The list is too long anyway to do them any kind of justice—so I will just say hail and farewell to (among others) the PSLM, the BGLTSA, the editorial board of this fine paper, everyone at Tufts, Neil Rudenstine, Cornel West and yes, poor Suzanne Pomey. Without these fine people and their antics, I might have been reduced to writing about dining hall food, or the UC, or Tim McCarthy, Quincy House?...
Which brings me back to the Beren Tennis Center on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Harvard’s still going strong on the athletic side of the Charles River, no matter what ridiculous things are happening with Cornel West, ROTC or the PSLM. Freshman Jonathan Chu and junior Oli Choo will represent Harvard next week in the tennis NCAA tournament, along with women’s player Courtney Bergmann. Track and field studs Chris Lambert and Nicky Grant continue to set records well into reading period. The baseball team’s seniors will compete in the NCAA tournament...