Photography of
Skip Schiel
Living Wage Campaign
An Online Photographic Exhibit
(added March 1, 2002)
(by an unidentified photographer)
Part of a nationwide campaign for wages that would allow workers to live in the communities they serve, Harvard students occupied an administration building for nearly one month. The result: a committee to investigate pay scales of Harvard's lowest paid workers—janitors, guards, and the like. The recommendation: to increase wages to the local living wage level, approximately $10 hourly in Cambridge Massachusetts. Harvard is the richest university in the world, with an endowment of over 17 billion dollars.
Skip Schiel, living near the university, photographed during and after the occupation period, April 2001.
April 2001
Harvard University
All images and text (below) copyright Skip Schiel, 2002
November 2001
Holyoke Center, Cambridge
Justice for Janitors
Martin Luther King Jr's birthday
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Justice for Janitors: A Rally & march in honor of King's dream & struggle
Service Employees International Union
A union of cleaning and maintenance workers—as well as doormen, handymen, concierges, porters—who keep buildings and communities humming.
The union is diverse, representing members from 60 countries who speak 25 languages.
And united by pride in work, and a desire to make a better living and a better life. Together: strong, never defeated.
Writing by Skip Schiel:
The building take over
A stirring building take over at Harvard, by students, in support of the Living Wage Campaign. Some 50 students have been in an administration building (Massachusetts hall) for nearly a week, demanding that Harvard—with an endowment exceeding 17 billion dollars—pay everyone a min of $10.25 hourly, calculated to be a just-get-by wage for the Boston area. Many, some 1000 workers, both directly employed by Harvard or employed by subcontractors, earn less. Outside, tents are springing up, at last count, some 40 of them, filled with overnight supporters....
