She says Summers’ appointment has also changed the playing field for the PSLM members campaigning for a living wage.
Summers, says Elfenbein, is “conscious of a need to appear open to the response of the community” on labor issues.
But his response to the Katz Committee’s recommendations will prove to be the real test, Elfenbein says.
Sweat-Free
While members of the living wage campaign keep a close eye on the Katz Committee, proponents of PSLM’s other movement, Harvard Students Against Sweatshops (HSAS), say they are gearing up after a quieter semester.
HSAS has long agitated in protest of Harvard’s membership in the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a consortium founded by manufacturing companies such as Nike to monitor working conditions in foreign factories.
HSAS members criticize FLA because its governing board is made up of representatives from the companies it intends to supervise.
Through a series of actions and even a striptease, the group has urged Harvard for three years to join the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), a group run by labor and human rights organizations.
Although one of the PSLM’s demands when they stormed Mass. Hall last spring required the University to join the WRC, later the demand seemed to fall off the radar.
“It was a living wage sit-in—that’s what the issue was,” says HSAS member Alexander B. Horowitz ’02. “WRC membership was definitely secondary.”
Particularly in light of the Coop’s recent licensing deal with Nike, Horowitz says membership in the WRC monitoring group is even more important.
“We’ll keep pushing with a mix of pressure and education,” Horowitz says. “Until we join, we’re complicit in suppressing information.”
In addition to pushing for WRC membership, HSAS will join with students nationwide to campaign for higher wages for tomato farm-workers in Florida who harvest tomatoes used at Taco Bell.
The group says this could mean phone calls, a letter-writing campaign or direct actions and protest against Taco Bell later this year.
“We’ll continue to support all workers who request student support,” Horowitz says.
—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Ross A. Macdonald can be reached at jrmacdon@fas.harvard.edu.