Word: pslm
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...some members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM), the living wage is not a matter of charity—it is a matter of justice. To view the living wage as simply one among many good causes for which Harvard could write a check, to view Harvard’s workers as doe-eyed unfortunates and PSLM as their Sally Struthers, is both insulting and inaccurate. These students aren’t asking President Lawrence H. Summers to give higher wages merely as free alms for the good of his soul, but because the workers deserve them. The workers...
...least, such was the impression given by one of the concurring statements to the report of the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policies (HCECP). The statement—signed by both of the committee’s PSLM members, among others—quotes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the effect that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family...
...literature, PSLM cites a variety of studies, placing the adequate wage in the Boston area between $11 and $22 per hour. That range alone should give us pause—the highest figure is a full 100 percent above the lowest. The difficulties become even clearer when one considers the studies’ differing methodologies and mutually contradictory assumptions. Some studies state that rent should never require more than 30 percent of income, and that the cheapest 40 percent of housing will always be inadequate for families’ essential needs. Others assume that it is enough for workers...
...actually adequate? Even if one finds the right to a decent wage to be obvious, there’s nothing obvious about what that wage should be, or what it should buy at Boston prices. If there were, wouldn’t the smart people who composed the studies PSLM cites have generated numbers in a somewhat narrower range...
Faisal I. Chaudhry is a Harvard Law School student and a member of PSLM. Edward Childs is chief shop steward for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union Local 26 and a cook in the Adams House dining hall. Both were members of the HCECP...