Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Saturday Morning News
Harvard Students Protest Employees' Pay
Aired April 28, 2001 - 09:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: For nearly two weeks, students at the prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge have been camping out in the office of the university president, protesting. They're demanding pay raises for Harvard's custodians, cooks, and other blue-collar workers.
Right now, many of these employees make less than $10 an hour, and students say Harvard is just perpetuating poverty conditions. The university doesn't quite see it that way.
Joining us this morning by phone, Harvard senior Amy Offner, one of Harvard's custodians, Frank -- he's asked us that we not use his last name -- and, in our Boston studio, Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn.
Thank you all for being with us this morning.
AMY OFFNER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY SENIOR: Thank you.
FRANK, HARVARD UNIVERSITY CUSTODIAN: You're welcome.
PHILLIPS: Frank, why don't we start with you, sir? And tell me, are you able to survive on $10 an hour?
FRANK: Not really. What I'm doing is, I'm cutting into money that I had in a retirement fund in order to clear up bills. I get $400 a week, and I clear $309, and it's just not quite enough to do it.
PHILLIPS: And how many years have you been dedicated to Harvard, sir?
FRANK: I started at Harvard in February of 1997.
PHILLIPS: OK, so you've been -- and you don't have kids. But I know your co-workers do. How -- what are families saying, your co- workers and friends who have kids?
FRANK: Well, it's almost impossible for them. I mean, both husband and wife are working, and it's even tougher for them to make ends meet because of the extra responsibilities.
PHILLIPS: So Mr. Wrinn, how is Harvard responding to these requests or demands that these workers should be paid more? JOE WRINN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY SPOKESMAN: Well, we looked into the area of wage compensation through a committee process approximately a year ago. We believe it's a balance of setting wages through the union negotiation process, but enhancing through benefits, programs of education, to provide the skills to get out of lower- paying jobs and onto better ones with a better future.
PHILLIPS: Now, that concept sends -- sounds terrific, education, of course, everybody wants people to be able to get into better jobs. But immediately, right now, how do people like Frank put food on the table and pay those bills? It takes time to get an education, and you've got to eat to survive.
WRINN: Well, I understand. What we do is allow workers to take those courses actually during the workday, so they are paid to work -- or they're paid to take classes during the workday.
PHILLIPS: So let me ask you, Harvard has a $19 billion endowment, and the governing board is made up of multimillionaires. Don't you think it would be pretty easy just to give these folks a raise?
WRINN: No, we believe we should keep our wage negotiations within the collective bargaining venue with our 10 unions. We believe also, though, as a responsible citizen, that it is a balance of what we should do for the community and for our workers. In addition to wages at or above the scale for these jobs, we also provide programs of affordable housing, after-school programs, and over 240 public service programs.
So keeping wages within the unions, supporting that with education, then spreading out to other programs, such as affordable housing, we think we strike that balance.
PHILLIPS: Amy Offner, senior at Harvard, why are you involved in these protests, and how do you feel about what Mr. Wrinn has to say?
OFFNER: Well, I'm involved because there are more than 1,000 workers on Harvard's campus who are paid wages as low as $6.50 an hour and were denied benefits. That's a wage to put a parent with one child below the federal poverty line. And there are many workers with whom we've spoken, with whom we've worked, who are struggling. They're working 90 hours a week. They never see their children. They face medical emergencies without benefits.
And our community has come together over the last three years to say that this is unacceptable. And we've tried to have a dialogue with the administration, and they've sat across the table from us and simply told us no. And so we've been forced to do this sit-in.
As for what Mr. Wrinn is saying, I'd like to correct a number of misconceptions that he's spreading. The first is that these wages are determined through union negotiations. Most of Harvard's underpaid workers are subcontracted or they're contingent labor. Many of them are not represented by unions, and they have no protection. Harvard knows nothing about balance when it deals with these workers. It gives them as little as it can get away with.
And as we've seen, that forces a lot of people into poverty.
As for the committee that Mr. Wrinn refers to, this is a committee that was appointed by the president. It consisted only of administrators and hand-picked faculty members. And so it's no surprise that that committee upheld the university line of saying, Poor people don't need a living wage. What they're saying is ludicrous. They're saying what poor people need is not money, but they need ESL classes. And that's a very disingenuous solution. Everyone supports ESL classes, but they don't pay the rent.
And moreover, it presents a very funny idea that the way to solve the problems of these jobs is to get people out of them. Surely there will always be janitors and security guards and cooks at Harvard, and so long as Harvard pays these people poverty wages, people will be living in poverty.
PHILLIPS: Mr. Wrinn?
WRINN: Again, we believe our wages are at or above the scale for these types of jobs. But I also might add, during the process of this sit-in, our president has offered to put all aspects of wages, benefits, and compensation on the table to discuss further. I -- we only ask that the students leave the building to do that.
PHILLIPS: Frank, Frank...
FRANK: Yes, yes.
PHILLIPS: ... what do you think about the education opportunities? I mean, can you work at this wage and continue to live happily and go to school?
FRANK: Well, I do have a couple of years of college in back of me already. But, of course, I'm a contract worker, and as a practical matter, if a contract worker, if you're doing anything, including trying to get the education that interferes with the workday, they are pretty quick to let you know it. Job comes first.
So it would -- you would -- if you wanted to take advantage of any of these things, you would be told, basically, you do those things on your time.
PHILLIPS: Do you think you would have gotten as far as you have now, sir, without the help of the students?
FRANK: No, we wouldn't have.
PHILLIPS: Mr. Wrinn, you say you're -- reports, I've read reports that Harvard is considering academic penalties for these students. Is that true?
WRINN: Well, that would run in the natural course of things. There certainly aren't any aspects of the guidelines for final exams to include students sitting in at an administration building. Again, it's day by day at this point. We hope it'll be over by then before we have to make those types of permanent decisions.
PHILLIPS: Amy, before we let you go, you're not letting your school work suffer, are you?
OFFNER: Well, we're all really committed to getting a living wage for Harvard workers. And I think these questions about punishment and about sort of, are we taking our final exams, are really pretty irrelevant to this question.
All of us are serious students, and we're at Harvard because we want to get a good education. But we're also members of this community, and we're citizens, and we're people who think justice is important. And we think that, you know, it's all right to take a week of our lives and work for something.
PHILLIPS: Joe Wrinn, Harvard spokesman, Amy Offner, senior at Harvard, and Frank, a custodian at Harvard, we will definitely continue to follow this, and we thank all three of you for joining us this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
