Harvard dining workers are making more than young journalists under new contract

Harvard may be unwittingly depriving newsrooms around the country of young talent willing to work long hours for low pay right out of college.

The Harvard Crimson reports that the new contract between the university and its dining services workers – who have been on an unprecedented strike for three weeks – guarantees them “at least” $35,000 a year.

Union members approved the contract 583-1 Wednesday night. Before the vote, union president Brian Lang said: “It’s a testament to when working-class people make a decision to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘Enough is enough, and we’re not gonna take it anymore.'”

MORE: Harvard students hoard food ahead of dining workers’ strike

If starting pay hasn’t drastically changed since I got my first journalism job in D.C. in the mid-2000s – at a time when print was healthier, MySpace was ascendant, and Twitter and BuzzFeed didn’t yet exist – then Harvard dining workers are going to be earning thousands more than a typical college graduate will earn in her first couple years in journalism.

And even more when dining workers’ health benefits are included.

PayScale’s most recent survey of journalist salaries from January says the median salary is just over $38,000 a year – but that figure for entry-level journalists is $34,400, and for entry-level reporters (a narrower set), it’s under $34,000.

MORE: Columbia grad students whine about new $15 minimum wage

There’s no city-specific data for Boston, but the median entry-level journalist salary in obscenely expensive New York – full of well-paid financial journalism gigs – is still under $40,000. And PayScale says nearly a fifth of entry-level journalists in its survey had no health insurance.

A journalist friend in New York told me his first full-time professional gig in the Big Apple in 2007, when he was also in his mid-20s and a college graduate, paid $12 an hour. (He didn’t make staff for four years.)

One of the oft-predicted effects of steep minimum-wage hikes, such as Seattle’s $15-an-hour plan, is that they will attract older and better educated workers to hourly jobs, leaving those younger and less experienced with less secure, lower-paying work.

The Crimson doesn’t define what “full-time” means for Harvard dining workers, but if it’s 40 hours a week, they are earning nearly $17 an hour – minimum, not including health benefits – under the new contract.

If you want to save up money, eager young writers, consider starting in the dining hall and not the Globe.

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