The Harvard Living Wage Campaign: Origins and Strategy

A member of the Harvard living wage campaign explains its internal development. Begun in 1998, the campaign drew inspiration from the global justice movement, organized labor’s reawakening, and the flowering of college anti-sweatshop groups. Locally, it responded to a decade of attacks on Harvard workers’ livelihoods and unions, as well as the enactment of a living wage ordinance by the city of Cambridge. The article recounts the campaign’s organizing strategy and tactics, its oppositional relationship to the Harvard administration, and the university’s response. Finally, it discusses the campaign’s limited victory on wages and contracting policies, as well as its significance for campus unions, students who participated, and student-labor mobilization beyond Harvard.