Thursday, April 25, 2013
Harvard Crimson Article on 4/23/13 Protest Against Racist Layoffs In Harvard's University Financial Services (UFS)
Employees, Students Protest Against University Financial Services, Citing Discriminatory Layoffs
Alex L. Chen '16 and Gabriel H. Bayard '15, members
of the Student Labor Action Movement, protest layoffs in University
Financial Services outside the Holyoke Centre on Tuesday.
Around 25 Harvard employees and students gathered in
front of the Holyoke Center on Tuesday afternoon to protest what they
allege to be the discriminatory layoffs of three workers at University
Financial Services.
The protesters marched in a circle in front of the Holyoke Center with signs bearing the slogans, “Harvard is not poor!” and “Harvard, don’t discriminate!”
UFS informed a group of employees in March of last year that they were entering a six-month period during which their work would be evaluated, according to a letter received by Sarah Tate, one of the notified workers who was later laid off.
“The next six months will be considered a transition period...your continuation in this role...is contingent upon your work performance and skills development meeting the needs of your expanded role,” wrote Human Resources Officer Michelle A. Roach in a letter to Tate.
Geoffrey P. Carens, a library assistant who is two of the laid-off workers’ representative in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, said that the workers were evaluated based on their speed of completing assigned work. He alleges that UFS did not lay off Caucasian workers who performed at a slower rate than the two workers he is representing.
Bill Jaeger, the Director of HUCTW, declined to comment on the allegations of discrimination.
Both of the laid off workers present at the rally emphasized their hard work and dedication to the University.
“I have been here ten years, loyal, working through vacations and when they call an emergency situation,” Tate said. “What offends me most is that there is no doubt in my mind that my performance level was great.”
The University does not comment on personnel matters, according to a University spokesperson in an email to The Crimson.
However, the spokesperson highlighted Harvard’s employment policies, which state, “in compliance with applicable federal and state laws and local ordinances, the University does not discriminate in the terms and conditions of employment”.
Carens said that the goal of the protests is to get the employees rehired.
“This is likely going be an ongoing campaign because management has so far shown absolutely no willingness to bend on their position that these people were laid off because they were too slow,” Carens said.
The protest was the third action this year on behalf of the laid off workers. Carens said that the group plans to hold a protest at Commencement in May if their allegations are not addressed by the University before then.
—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @cycahill16.
The protesters marched in a circle in front of the Holyoke Center with signs bearing the slogans, “Harvard is not poor!” and “Harvard, don’t discriminate!”
UFS informed a group of employees in March of last year that they were entering a six-month period during which their work would be evaluated, according to a letter received by Sarah Tate, one of the notified workers who was later laid off.
“The next six months will be considered a transition period...your continuation in this role...is contingent upon your work performance and skills development meeting the needs of your expanded role,” wrote Human Resources Officer Michelle A. Roach in a letter to Tate.
Geoffrey P. Carens, a library assistant who is two of the laid-off workers’ representative in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, said that the workers were evaluated based on their speed of completing assigned work. He alleges that UFS did not lay off Caucasian workers who performed at a slower rate than the two workers he is representing.
Bill Jaeger, the Director of HUCTW, declined to comment on the allegations of discrimination.
Both of the laid off workers present at the rally emphasized their hard work and dedication to the University.
“I have been here ten years, loyal, working through vacations and when they call an emergency situation,” Tate said. “What offends me most is that there is no doubt in my mind that my performance level was great.”
The University does not comment on personnel matters, according to a University spokesperson in an email to The Crimson.
However, the spokesperson highlighted Harvard’s employment policies, which state, “in compliance with applicable federal and state laws and local ordinances, the University does not discriminate in the terms and conditions of employment”.
Carens said that the goal of the protests is to get the employees rehired.
“This is likely going be an ongoing campaign because management has so far shown absolutely no willingness to bend on their position that these people were laid off because they were too slow,” Carens said.
The protest was the third action this year on behalf of the laid off workers. Carens said that the group plans to hold a protest at Commencement in May if their allegations are not addressed by the University before then.
—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @cycahill16.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Great piece by James Cersonsky in Labor Notes, reporting destructive changes in Harvard's Libraries
Harvard Library Workers Resist Top-Down Restructuring and Austerity
February 12, 2013 / James Cersonsky
.. ..The world's wealthiest university is squeezing workers with a new "shared services" model.
With an endowment of $32 billion, Harvard is the wealthiest university in the world. Upon rebounding from the recession, the university is remodeling all its dorms, expanding its online course program, and constructing a new science center. Its library workers, meanwhile, have gotten the short end of the stick.
Workers beat back threatened mass layoffs last spring, but are now enduring the consolidation of their work in a new “shared services” model that translates into bigger workloads and fragmented work relationships. Now, along with the rest of Harvard’s clerical and technical employees, library workers are mobilizing for a fair—and long-overdue—contract.
Evolving Expectations
With more than 55 miles of bookshelves, Harvard boasts the largest academic library system in the world. Its range of archives and specialized resources are a major draw for scholars and the backbone of the university’s academic culture.
Nonetheless, university leaders concluded last spring that the Library was lagging behind the “evolving expectations of the 21st century scholar.” Their restructuring initiative, launched with hype more typical of a social media IPO than of a library, has been a blow to workers and patrons alike.
In its initial cost-cutting, Harvard offered 280 workers an early retirement incentive, which 63 accepted—further shrinking a workforce already down to 900, from 1,200 in 2009.
Activists credit persistent action—including a March picket in the blinding snow and a rally during commencement—for holding the number of direct library layoffs below 10.
Staff cuts are only one plank of a broader shift in Library governance. At the recommendation of a management consulting firm and a two-year in-house study, the 73 libraries on campus have been merged into one “Harvard Library.”
A subset of workers—access services and technical services—have new duties, and in some cases new worksites, as part of a “shared services” structure. These workers run the Library’s bread-and-butter operations: cataloging books, responding to patron inquiries, supervising student workers, managing the library’s website, and processing book loans from other universities.
Through centralization, Harvard hopes to unify book collection, streamline user access, reduce costs, and, as Provost Alan Garber wrote in a campus-wide letter, “leverage Harvard’s buying power.”
Others see university policy differently. “This is not about some neutral process called ‘modernization,’ as the administration would have it,” says Rudi Batzell, a graduate student in history. Batzell thinks Harvard is shifting resources away from low-return fields—the humanities and social sciences—towards “more costly but also more profitable, high-return sectors, such as the hard sciences, pharma, bio-engineering.”
The data support Batzell. The university’s latest financial report shows an uptick in staffing for cell biology, chemistry, and applied sciences, but declines in the Library and other non-science divisions.
Shared Sacrifice
A “shared services” model often entails de-skilling. At a number of universities, converting to a shared-services model for academic departments has detached workers from their localized knowledge and stripped their workplaces of the relationships that help the departments function.
For example, a worker who deals with finances, student advising, and logistics for a particular department, and has years of ingrained department-specific expertise, could be reassigned to several departments to do only financial work. In the case of the University of California at Berkeley, shared-service workers are being relocated to a different building far away from the departments and divisions they used to serve.
“People who you’ve worked side by side with for years are classed as a completely different type of worker,” says Desiree Goodwin, a circulation supervisor and 18-year veteran who is part of Harvard’s new structure. “I just discovered that they are going to send me to work at another library for a few hours. You don’t work at a single site, you work at sites all over campus.”
Goodwin adds that she is no longer responsible for responding to inquiries from patrons about reference and research materials, which her professional library degree qualifies her to do.
Even before the libraries’ wholesale makeover, workers could cite issues with service after earlier rounds of restructuring and cuts. Smaller libraries are understaffed, often down to only one person on duty. The proportion of temp and student workers, who require significant training from permanent staff, has sharply increased. Outsourcing to external vendors and changes in cataloging have made filing and finding books more difficult.
Under the revamped system, workers face even greater workloads and new forms of micromanagement. Karen O’Brien says that this fall, for the first time in her 25 years at Harvard, managers are receiving notices of employees’ “error rates,” which, she says, could be a way of weeding out “under-performing” staff.
Under a similar push in University Financial Services, employees have been fired for not processing invoices fast enough. The logic of the performance measurements—employees must work at or above average speed 75 percent of the time—makes it impossible for everyone to succeed.
Meanwhile, most workers aren’t getting paid any extra to work under the new system.
Coordinated Resistance
The full-time non-managerial staff who remain at the Library make up a quarter of AFSCME Local 3650, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW).
The union has been without a contract since July 2012, and negotiations are stuck in the mud. According to staff organizer and former clerical worker Carrie Barbash, wages and health care are the main sticking points. Wages would remain largely stagnant under university proposals, and employee health plan contributions would go up—hitting lowest-paid staff the hardest.
Over the fall, workers gathered for rallies, flyered outside major Harvard events, and drafted hundreds of letters and holiday cards to the administration to push for a fair contract. This spring, Barbash says, the union is planning to bring in mediators while ramping up actions.
Last spring, rank-and-file activists staged rolling protests. “Many of the library workers who may have sat on the sidelines in the past came out in huge numbers,” says Geoff Carens, a reference and multimedia librarian and a leader of the Reform-HUCTW caucus. “The fact that we did the number of rallies that we did, particularly at commencement, probably held off the worst.”
The reform caucus, Carens says, has been around “pretty much as long as the local has existed.” It calls for more membership meetings, encourages pickets to defend workers, and opposes all layoffs.
Workers protesting the layoffs enjoyed support from students, faculty, maintenance and dining staff, and even non-union librarians and department managers.
Occupy Harvard, a collective of students and workers, waged an open-hours occupation at the Lamont Library Café for a week last February. There, students and staff hosted think tanks and workshops on the role of the Library and the needs of patrons and staff. They also phonebanked alumni and donors to speak out against the cuts.
A. Abbott Ikeler, a 1965 Harvard grad and retired English professor, wrote to President Drew Faust, “To dismiss outright, rather than retain and if necessary retrain, numbers of long-serving, hard-working library employees strikes me as an exercise perhaps worthy of a jumped-up, for-profit organization.”
Another source of resistance (whose membership overlaps with other efforts) is the Library Forum, founded last spring as a space for staff, faculty, and students to assert their stake in university policy.
Calling for “a library with a human face,” members wrote in an April vision statement: “It will look to the values of its own community of users and workers…and not to business consultants and statistical comparisons.”
James Cersonsky is a Philadelphia-based writer and labor activist. Find him on Twitter @cersonsky.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
1/30/13 Article from Harvard Crimson on HUCTW Contract Talks
HUCTW Urges University to Agree with Favorable Contract Negotiations
By Christine Y. Cahill, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and student supporters protested outside of Massachusetts Hall all day on Tuesday to urge the University to agree to favorable terms in continuing contract negotiations.
The previous contract between the University and HUCTW—which represents more than 4,600 non-faculty Harvard staff—expired July 1 of last year. Because the two sides have been unable to agree on the details of the new contract, the old contract is still in effect. The two largest points of disagreement in the negotiations involve salary increases and health care benefits.
“The salary increase that the University is holding us at is not good enough,” Linda Kluz, Communications Coordinator at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, said. “It doesn’t even meet the rise in the cost of living.”
At 5:30 p.m., 20 protesters stood outside Mass. Hall, holding signs bearing the message “Invest in the Staff.” Protesters were present all day Tuesday starting at 8:30 a.m., and the group plans to protest at the same time every Tuesday and Thursday until the negotiations are resolved.
“The University is for all of us,” said Susan M. Kinsella, an administrative coordinator in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology department who is also on the executive board of HUCTW. “We don’t want anything except for what we think we deserve as outstanding staff members that help keep the University going.”
In a statement released on Thursday, the University said that wage offers made by the University in negotiations with HUCTW were “clearly consistent with the internal and external job markets.”
The University also said that its pay to HUCTW members was “very competitive” according to benchmark comparisons with the external market.
People walking through the Yard stopped to speak with the protesters, to learn more about the contract negotiations, or to voice their support.
The Student Labor Action Movement has organized a Solidarity Hour from 4 to 5 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, during which SLAM members will stand with the protesters to show their support for the union’s stance in the contract negotiations.
“The lack of respect and dignity for workers is outrageous, especially in a country that has so much prosperity,” Elena F. Hoffenberg ’16, a member of SLAM, said. “It’s very upsetting for me to be a part of a community where workers are being treated in such ways, so I’m doing everything I can to change that fact.”
Other students got involved in the HUCTW protests through the Unite Harvard Wintersession program, which focused on progressive action and activism at Harvard and was sponsored by 14 different student groups. Participants in the program joined the first HUCTW protest last Tuesday.
“I’m standing in solidary with all the HUCTW workers because it makes me angry that Harvard isn’t trying to negotiate,” said Keyanna Y. Wigglesworth ’16, who participated in Unite Harvard.
—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu.
By Christine Y. Cahill, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and student supporters protested outside of Massachusetts Hall all day on Tuesday to urge the University to agree to favorable terms in continuing contract negotiations.
The previous contract between the University and HUCTW—which represents more than 4,600 non-faculty Harvard staff—expired July 1 of last year. Because the two sides have been unable to agree on the details of the new contract, the old contract is still in effect. The two largest points of disagreement in the negotiations involve salary increases and health care benefits.
“The salary increase that the University is holding us at is not good enough,” Linda Kluz, Communications Coordinator at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, said. “It doesn’t even meet the rise in the cost of living.”
At 5:30 p.m., 20 protesters stood outside Mass. Hall, holding signs bearing the message “Invest in the Staff.” Protesters were present all day Tuesday starting at 8:30 a.m., and the group plans to protest at the same time every Tuesday and Thursday until the negotiations are resolved.
“The University is for all of us,” said Susan M. Kinsella, an administrative coordinator in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology department who is also on the executive board of HUCTW. “We don’t want anything except for what we think we deserve as outstanding staff members that help keep the University going.”
In a statement released on Thursday, the University said that wage offers made by the University in negotiations with HUCTW were “clearly consistent with the internal and external job markets.”
The University also said that its pay to HUCTW members was “very competitive” according to benchmark comparisons with the external market.
People walking through the Yard stopped to speak with the protesters, to learn more about the contract negotiations, or to voice their support.
The Student Labor Action Movement has organized a Solidarity Hour from 4 to 5 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, during which SLAM members will stand with the protesters to show their support for the union’s stance in the contract negotiations.
“The lack of respect and dignity for workers is outrageous, especially in a country that has so much prosperity,” Elena F. Hoffenberg ’16, a member of SLAM, said. “It’s very upsetting for me to be a part of a community where workers are being treated in such ways, so I’m doing everything I can to change that fact.”
Other students got involved in the HUCTW protests through the Unite Harvard Wintersession program, which focused on progressive action and activism at Harvard and was sponsored by 14 different student groups. Participants in the program joined the first HUCTW protest last Tuesday.
“I’m standing in solidary with all the HUCTW workers because it makes me angry that Harvard isn’t trying to negotiate,” said Keyanna Y. Wigglesworth ’16, who participated in Unite Harvard.
—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Article from Harvard's Perspective Magazine: Mail Room Workers Under Attack
By Geoff Carens, Union Rep, Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), Member, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
For many years the Harvard Yard Mail Center was a good place to work and a good place to visit. An article from the Harvard Crimson documents the camaraderie which had helped make the mail room a welcoming place for the hundreds of freshmen who visited to pick up their packages from home. However, a change of management over the past few years has brought repeated complaints of discrimination, well-attended protests by workers and students, and a steady drip of negative publicity that ought to call the new management’s policies into serious question. For almost twenty-five years I’ve acted as an elected union rep in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). I’ve represented union members all over campus, and I have seldom seen such an unfair and unsympathetic approach on the part of managers towards the staff. Three workers’ situations in particular shed light on the many problems found in this workplace.
Marvin Byrd, a 62-year-old African American, has worked in the mail room since 1995. Although Marvin suffers from diabetic foot disease, causing him to need foot braces to walk, he has a strong work ethic and is never content to sit home and collect a disability check. Marvin has consistently sought to augment his technical skills by taking computer courses. Making ends meet on a part-time schedule in the lowest salary grade in our union has been difficult, so Marvin has often put in huge numbers of overtime hours during busy times.
In the spring of 2011, a new management team from Harvard University Mail Services (HUMS) presented Marvin with an ultimatum: he could either accept a cut in his limited part-time schedule or be laid off. On May 12, 2011, Marvin received a letter which forced him to pick one of three “options”: a cut from 29 to 25 hours per week, spread over six days; an even sharper cut to just 20 hours per week; or the unemployment line. The letter stated, “We need a response no later than Friday May 20, 2011. If no response, the layoff package will be the elected option.”
Marvin asked me to be his union rep, and we invoked the grievance procedure laid out in our union contract. We met over many months with two different teams of problem-solvers, each team including one representative from management and one from the union. Marvin and I offered specific proposals in an effort to seek compromise with HUMS administrators. However, throughout the whole process, management has not budged from their initial position. They never offered Marvin any choices other than the ones presented in May 2011, and he could not afford to lose his job or work only 20 hours per week. So, even though he is the oldest worker in the unit and the only one who must use braces to walk, Marvin was forced to accept a curtailed schedule of just 25 hours per week spread over a mandatory six day week. Marvin has a tough commute from subsidized housing in Lynn, made more difficult by his disability. He often gets just a few hours of work in the mail room before he must get back on public transportation for the long ride home.
Although HUMS management has stonewalled the union during the grievance process, Marvin refused to take their actions against him lying down. He filed complaints of discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, and disability at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). On a chilly day last December, a group of workers and students demonstrated against management’s harsh treatment of Marvin, but their approach since then has not changed. HUMS manager Betsy Shortell even emailed Marvin to accuse him of missing a meeting that she planned outside his work hours. Shortell wrote, “You missed a SCHEDULED hr meeting that we now have to come give just to you.” Although she later admitted Marvin wasn’t even supposed to be on duty during the meeting, some animus against him apparently remains. Marvin applied for a promotion from his entry-level job more than four months ago. Although his contract states that he should have received a reply in four weeks, management has still not given him an answer.
Like Marvin, Mamadou Ndiaye has worked at Harvard for many years. He has spent the past five of his fourteen years here working in the Science Center mail room. Mamadou is classified as a “less than half-time” worker, meaning he is not entitled to union membership, health benefits, Harvard contributions toward his retirement, tuition discounts, or any of the other important advantages which union membership brings. Despite his experience, he earns only $11.50 an hour. According to HUCTW’s contract, management’s use of less than half-time workers “should be exceptional and strictly limited, and never at the expense of regular benefited employment. In other words, everyone who does regular Harvard work on a regular basis deserves the benefit of regular employment.” If Mamadou worked 17.5 hours or more for longer than three months, his job could be converted into a regular union job with benefits. Instead he gets just 17 hours per week, as he has gotten throughout his time in the mail room.
Recently, Mamadou noticed two union jobs, whose minimum salary would be more than $16.50 per hour, posted online. After he made efforts to apply for the positions, they were removed from Harvard’s employment site, and Mamadou was told by management that they had been posted by mistake.
Like Marvin and Mamadou, long-serving employee Johany Pilar has suffered from a deteriorating working environment in the Science Center mail room. In late February and March, Johany, who is Latina and has worked in the mailroom since 1998, was repeatedly sexually harassed by a much older, married male co-worker. After Johany complained to management about the harassment, Shortell called and engaged in what struck Johany as victim-blaming. Johany remembers Shortell saying, “I can see you like to hug people,” as if Johany was somehow at fault for the unwanted advances and aggressive physical contact she had faced. Shortell instructed her to “…be nice, try to work together, try to work professionally,” with the person who had harassed her, and gave Johany the responsibility of training him. Feeling trapped, Johany reluctantly attempted to train this co-worker, but only faced more aggressive physical contact from her harasser. Ever since she first reported the unwanted grabbing and come-ons, Johany has been mistreated by HUMS managers.
This May, HUMS manager Chris Tolkacz demanded that Johany cancel a therapy appointment she had set up to cope with this sexual harassment and come to work instead. The pressure was so upsetting for Johany that she had a panic attack in the mail room, collapsed, injured her back, and had to be hospitalized. Johany’s doctor wrote that she could return to work after the hospitalization, but shouldn’t lift more than ten pounds for a week. Management refused to accommodate Johany’s back injury, demanding that she be cleared 100% before returning. As a result, Johany lost a week’s pay.
This wasn’t the end of Johany’s troubles. She tells me that Shortell confronted her in the mail room the morning of June 5, threatening an unspecified “big, big problem,” in the future. Three months later, Shortell made good on her threat, drafting an unfair disciplinary letter that specifically warned Johany that she could be fired. Johany had not received any discipline in 15 years of service at Harvard, until she complained of sexual harassment. Now, after standing up for her right to equal treatment on the job, that job is in jeopardy. She has filed complaints of gender discrimination and retaliation at the MCAD. And in October, she spoke movingly about her experience with rape culture and for fair treatment at work at a panel organized by the Harvard College International Women’s Rights Collective and several other groups.
Students, workers, and other community members have organized to support Johany. Eight student organizations and the Industrial Workers of the World signed on to an open letter to Harvard’s Labor Relations department decrying Johany’s treatment. On October 18, scores of workers and students picketed in support of Johany in front of the Holyoke Center; her co-workers Marvin Byrd and Mamadou Ndiaye, among others, spoke up for her at this demonstration. Her supporters held another spirited picket for her on November 16.
To date the only response from management has been a declaration stating that the mail room workers, including Johany, Marvin, and Mamadou, are now considered “essential staff,” expected to report for work even when the university is shut down during emergencies such as Hurricane Sandy. These workers were not considered “essential” until Marvin and Mamadou defended Johany in public. Mail room workers see this change in classification as just another example of the tit-for-tat retaliation, designed to undermine staff solidarity, which has characterized HUMS’s approach to management. The new policy will make things difficult for Marvin, as a result of his disability; for Johany, who has a heart condition; and for Mamadou, who has children who would not have school during such emergency days.
This is another bitter disappointment for workers in the Science Center mail room, who are becoming accustomed to such crushing news. One would think that all this controversy would pressure HUMS management to change their practices in a number of ways. For instance, HUMS would be wise to reinstate the previous mail room supervisor, HUCTW member Nassim Kerkache, who maintained a safe and equitable atmosphere. Management should remove the retaliatory discipline from Johany’s file and treat her much more sympathetically at work; they should grant Marvin’s request for promotion, which would be his first in 17 years; and they should finally extend to Mamadou regular employment with benefits. HUMS ought to rescind the new, punitive classification of mail room workers as “essential,” for the mail room workers do not do essential tasks like preparing food or insuring students’ safety. These small improvements would go a long way towards rectifying the conditions that have sparked so much angry protest.
Comments:
These are horror stories. It enrages me that the University solicits donations from alumni/ae and yet figuratively beats up on some of its lowest paid employees. It’s hard to understand what HU gains by bringing in such management teams. How much money can they save by nickel and diming hard working employees and further by harrassing them and trying to rid themselves of employees with disabilities? They don’t teach the “virtue” of this kind of behavior to their undergraduates. Shameful.
Colleen Gaines Clark R64
November 24, 2012 at 12:03 pm
We are reminded, yet again, of why Harvard needs a union.Tradition is all very well in some things, but Harvard’s long and disgraceful history of mistreating its lower-paid employees should be discontinued, like yesterday. What a disgrace!
Mary H
November 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Harvard top management is directing the harassment of more and more workers while at the same time, refusing to negotiate decent union contracts. The clerical and technical workers union should have had a contract agreement in place by the end of June. Instead, Harvard offers up proposals that will only force a further decline in living standards on thousands of workers at Harvard and we enter the holidays with no agreement and many of us feeling the loss of income as a result of no agreement. As the richest university in the world, instead of setting a high, moral standard in labor relations, the Harvard Corp. has decided to attack the living standards, livelihoods and working conditions of the very people who do the work to make the university function. This is grossly unfair and completely unnecessary given Harvard’s vast (and largely hidden) wealth. The way the mailroom workers are being treated, the way so many of us are being disrespected by Harvard’s rotten labor policies, will not be forgotten. Perhaps President Faust should compare notes with Neil Rudenstine regarding the Living Wage Sit In in 2000 and subsequent re-awakening of the unions on campus. I, for one, feel another occupation coming on. And it’s long overdue.
Jeff Booth
November 24, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Workers control! Workers control! Smash sexism and all other forms of oppression! One big union! A union for all workers!
Haywood
November 24, 2012 at 6:48 pm
For many years the Harvard Yard Mail Center was a good place to work and a good place to visit. An article from the Harvard Crimson documents the camaraderie which had helped make the mail room a welcoming place for the hundreds of freshmen who visited to pick up their packages from home. However, a change of management over the past few years has brought repeated complaints of discrimination, well-attended protests by workers and students, and a steady drip of negative publicity that ought to call the new management’s policies into serious question. For almost twenty-five years I’ve acted as an elected union rep in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). I’ve represented union members all over campus, and I have seldom seen such an unfair and unsympathetic approach on the part of managers towards the staff. Three workers’ situations in particular shed light on the many problems found in this workplace.
Marvin Byrd, a 62-year-old African American, has worked in the mail room since 1995. Although Marvin suffers from diabetic foot disease, causing him to need foot braces to walk, he has a strong work ethic and is never content to sit home and collect a disability check. Marvin has consistently sought to augment his technical skills by taking computer courses. Making ends meet on a part-time schedule in the lowest salary grade in our union has been difficult, so Marvin has often put in huge numbers of overtime hours during busy times.
In the spring of 2011, a new management team from Harvard University Mail Services (HUMS) presented Marvin with an ultimatum: he could either accept a cut in his limited part-time schedule or be laid off. On May 12, 2011, Marvin received a letter which forced him to pick one of three “options”: a cut from 29 to 25 hours per week, spread over six days; an even sharper cut to just 20 hours per week; or the unemployment line. The letter stated, “We need a response no later than Friday May 20, 2011. If no response, the layoff package will be the elected option.”
Marvin asked me to be his union rep, and we invoked the grievance procedure laid out in our union contract. We met over many months with two different teams of problem-solvers, each team including one representative from management and one from the union. Marvin and I offered specific proposals in an effort to seek compromise with HUMS administrators. However, throughout the whole process, management has not budged from their initial position. They never offered Marvin any choices other than the ones presented in May 2011, and he could not afford to lose his job or work only 20 hours per week. So, even though he is the oldest worker in the unit and the only one who must use braces to walk, Marvin was forced to accept a curtailed schedule of just 25 hours per week spread over a mandatory six day week. Marvin has a tough commute from subsidized housing in Lynn, made more difficult by his disability. He often gets just a few hours of work in the mail room before he must get back on public transportation for the long ride home.
Although HUMS management has stonewalled the union during the grievance process, Marvin refused to take their actions against him lying down. He filed complaints of discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, and disability at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD). On a chilly day last December, a group of workers and students demonstrated against management’s harsh treatment of Marvin, but their approach since then has not changed. HUMS manager Betsy Shortell even emailed Marvin to accuse him of missing a meeting that she planned outside his work hours. Shortell wrote, “You missed a SCHEDULED hr meeting that we now have to come give just to you.” Although she later admitted Marvin wasn’t even supposed to be on duty during the meeting, some animus against him apparently remains. Marvin applied for a promotion from his entry-level job more than four months ago. Although his contract states that he should have received a reply in four weeks, management has still not given him an answer.
Like Marvin, Mamadou Ndiaye has worked at Harvard for many years. He has spent the past five of his fourteen years here working in the Science Center mail room. Mamadou is classified as a “less than half-time” worker, meaning he is not entitled to union membership, health benefits, Harvard contributions toward his retirement, tuition discounts, or any of the other important advantages which union membership brings. Despite his experience, he earns only $11.50 an hour. According to HUCTW’s contract, management’s use of less than half-time workers “should be exceptional and strictly limited, and never at the expense of regular benefited employment. In other words, everyone who does regular Harvard work on a regular basis deserves the benefit of regular employment.” If Mamadou worked 17.5 hours or more for longer than three months, his job could be converted into a regular union job with benefits. Instead he gets just 17 hours per week, as he has gotten throughout his time in the mail room.
Recently, Mamadou noticed two union jobs, whose minimum salary would be more than $16.50 per hour, posted online. After he made efforts to apply for the positions, they were removed from Harvard’s employment site, and Mamadou was told by management that they had been posted by mistake.
Like Marvin and Mamadou, long-serving employee Johany Pilar has suffered from a deteriorating working environment in the Science Center mail room. In late February and March, Johany, who is Latina and has worked in the mailroom since 1998, was repeatedly sexually harassed by a much older, married male co-worker. After Johany complained to management about the harassment, Shortell called and engaged in what struck Johany as victim-blaming. Johany remembers Shortell saying, “I can see you like to hug people,” as if Johany was somehow at fault for the unwanted advances and aggressive physical contact she had faced. Shortell instructed her to “…be nice, try to work together, try to work professionally,” with the person who had harassed her, and gave Johany the responsibility of training him. Feeling trapped, Johany reluctantly attempted to train this co-worker, but only faced more aggressive physical contact from her harasser. Ever since she first reported the unwanted grabbing and come-ons, Johany has been mistreated by HUMS managers.
This May, HUMS manager Chris Tolkacz demanded that Johany cancel a therapy appointment she had set up to cope with this sexual harassment and come to work instead. The pressure was so upsetting for Johany that she had a panic attack in the mail room, collapsed, injured her back, and had to be hospitalized. Johany’s doctor wrote that she could return to work after the hospitalization, but shouldn’t lift more than ten pounds for a week. Management refused to accommodate Johany’s back injury, demanding that she be cleared 100% before returning. As a result, Johany lost a week’s pay.
This wasn’t the end of Johany’s troubles. She tells me that Shortell confronted her in the mail room the morning of June 5, threatening an unspecified “big, big problem,” in the future. Three months later, Shortell made good on her threat, drafting an unfair disciplinary letter that specifically warned Johany that she could be fired. Johany had not received any discipline in 15 years of service at Harvard, until she complained of sexual harassment. Now, after standing up for her right to equal treatment on the job, that job is in jeopardy. She has filed complaints of gender discrimination and retaliation at the MCAD. And in October, she spoke movingly about her experience with rape culture and for fair treatment at work at a panel organized by the Harvard College International Women’s Rights Collective and several other groups.
Students, workers, and other community members have organized to support Johany. Eight student organizations and the Industrial Workers of the World signed on to an open letter to Harvard’s Labor Relations department decrying Johany’s treatment. On October 18, scores of workers and students picketed in support of Johany in front of the Holyoke Center; her co-workers Marvin Byrd and Mamadou Ndiaye, among others, spoke up for her at this demonstration. Her supporters held another spirited picket for her on November 16.
To date the only response from management has been a declaration stating that the mail room workers, including Johany, Marvin, and Mamadou, are now considered “essential staff,” expected to report for work even when the university is shut down during emergencies such as Hurricane Sandy. These workers were not considered “essential” until Marvin and Mamadou defended Johany in public. Mail room workers see this change in classification as just another example of the tit-for-tat retaliation, designed to undermine staff solidarity, which has characterized HUMS’s approach to management. The new policy will make things difficult for Marvin, as a result of his disability; for Johany, who has a heart condition; and for Mamadou, who has children who would not have school during such emergency days.
This is another bitter disappointment for workers in the Science Center mail room, who are becoming accustomed to such crushing news. One would think that all this controversy would pressure HUMS management to change their practices in a number of ways. For instance, HUMS would be wise to reinstate the previous mail room supervisor, HUCTW member Nassim Kerkache, who maintained a safe and equitable atmosphere. Management should remove the retaliatory discipline from Johany’s file and treat her much more sympathetically at work; they should grant Marvin’s request for promotion, which would be his first in 17 years; and they should finally extend to Mamadou regular employment with benefits. HUMS ought to rescind the new, punitive classification of mail room workers as “essential,” for the mail room workers do not do essential tasks like preparing food or insuring students’ safety. These small improvements would go a long way towards rectifying the conditions that have sparked so much angry protest.
Comments:
These are horror stories. It enrages me that the University solicits donations from alumni/ae and yet figuratively beats up on some of its lowest paid employees. It’s hard to understand what HU gains by bringing in such management teams. How much money can they save by nickel and diming hard working employees and further by harrassing them and trying to rid themselves of employees with disabilities? They don’t teach the “virtue” of this kind of behavior to their undergraduates. Shameful.
Colleen Gaines Clark R64
November 24, 2012 at 12:03 pm
We are reminded, yet again, of why Harvard needs a union.Tradition is all very well in some things, but Harvard’s long and disgraceful history of mistreating its lower-paid employees should be discontinued, like yesterday. What a disgrace!
Mary H
November 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Harvard top management is directing the harassment of more and more workers while at the same time, refusing to negotiate decent union contracts. The clerical and technical workers union should have had a contract agreement in place by the end of June. Instead, Harvard offers up proposals that will only force a further decline in living standards on thousands of workers at Harvard and we enter the holidays with no agreement and many of us feeling the loss of income as a result of no agreement. As the richest university in the world, instead of setting a high, moral standard in labor relations, the Harvard Corp. has decided to attack the living standards, livelihoods and working conditions of the very people who do the work to make the university function. This is grossly unfair and completely unnecessary given Harvard’s vast (and largely hidden) wealth. The way the mailroom workers are being treated, the way so many of us are being disrespected by Harvard’s rotten labor policies, will not be forgotten. Perhaps President Faust should compare notes with Neil Rudenstine regarding the Living Wage Sit In in 2000 and subsequent re-awakening of the unions on campus. I, for one, feel another occupation coming on. And it’s long overdue.
Jeff Booth
November 24, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Workers control! Workers control! Smash sexism and all other forms of oppression! One big union! A union for all workers!
Haywood
November 24, 2012 at 6:48 pm
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