Boston Globe Gets Early Retirement Details Before Harvard Employees

In a letter sent Monday, February 13 (see below), Marilynn Haussman introduced the early retirement packages and said "details will be available on Wednesday."  Today, Tuesday, February 14, the Boston Globe published an article (also below) that has details already.  Why this discrepancy?  Why does the media learn about this before those workers who are affected?

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Dear Colleagues,

I write today to let you know that beginning on Wednesday, February 15, Harvard will offer a Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program (VERIP) for eligible staff members in the Harvard University libraries (Harvard Library).  Generally, library staff members who are age 55 and over, have 10 or more years of participation service, and are participants in a Defined Benefit or the Defined Contribution Retirement Plan are eligible for this program.  Local Human Resources offices will distribute personalized information packets to eligible staff members beginning on Wednesday.  Eligible staff members will have 46 days to consider this offer.  During this time, a range of support services will be provided to help each person decide whether retiring makes sense.

The Library leadership has been working since 2009, beginning with the Library Task Force and then the Library Implementation Working Group, to create a strategy and structure to support the future of Harvard’s libraries given the profound changes occurring in research libraries and scholarship in the digital age.  At every step of the way, we have been aware of the needs of our staff whose work supports the University’s mission every day.  We are sensitive to the effect of these decisions on those who steward one of the most important collections in the world, support our faculty, researchers, and students, and who rely on the University for their livelihoods. 

With these thoughts in mind, the 2012 VERIP is designed to be a totally voluntary option that will offer choice and financial support to qualifying employees who may wish to retire.  Eligible staff members will receive individualized retirement benefit statements, and will be assisted in their decision-making through group information sessions and individualized retirement counseling.  Full details will be available on HARVie (http://harvie.harvard.edu) beginning on Wednesday.

We are grateful for the service, dedication, and contributions of our library staff, and wish those who will retire all good things in the next chapter of their lives.  

Sincerely,

Marilyn Hausammann
Vice President for Human Resources

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Harvard to offer voluntary buyouts to 275 as part of push to modernize library

E-mail| Print | Comments (22) 02/13/2012 4:36 PM

By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff

Some 275 Harvard University employees will be offered voluntary buyouts in the school’s first concrete move toward modernizing its decentralized library system, university officials said today.
Workers there have worried about involuntary layoffs, which they were told to expect during a contentious set of internal meetings in January that led to protests – most recently, the “occupation” of a library café on Sunday by students and labor activists.

But the packages offered today are “totally voluntary,” said a letter from Marilyn Hausammann, the university’s vice president for human resources.

The targeted employees are largely 55 and over, with 10 or more years’ experience at Harvard. The buyouts will be offered starting Wednesday, and employees are due to make their decisions by April 2. The packages will offer a payment equal to six month’s pay plus two weeks of pay for each year of service in excess of 10 years, up to the equivalent of one year’s base pay.

On Friday, Harvard announced a sweeping overhaul of its library system, including the consolidation of services and the shuffling of many of its 900-plus employees. The college said the changes were necessary to bring the system, the world’s largest academic collection, up to speed in the digital era.
“The new Harvard Library improves a fragmented system by promoting university-wide collaboration,’’ library officials said in a statement today. “It will enable Harvard to invest in innovation and collections, make decisions strategically, reduce duplication of effort and leverage the University’s buying power.

“As Harvard works to respond to the evolving expectations of the 21st century researcher, university leaders have been acutely aware of the needs of Library staff who support the University’s mission every day,’’ it continued. “With this in mind, the University is implementing a generous, voluntary early retirement program that will both offer incentives to qualifying employees who wish to retire and help the Library meet the needs of its new organization.’’


Mary Carm ichael can be reached at mary.carmichael@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mary_carmichael.

Globe article on Layoffs

Harvard plans to consolidate library, reshuffle employees

By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff

Harvard University revealed its long-awaited plan for restructuring its library system this morning, calling for “changes that affect staff at every level” that are likely to include consolidating many services, reshuffling some employees, and offering buyouts to others.

Details will be finalized over the next few weeks, according to a statement from Provost Alan Garber, but the plan will surely include “adjustments in how and where many staff members perform the work that has made the library one of the university’s greatest treasures.”
With dozens of semi-autonomous branches, the library is the world’s largest academic collection, a point of pride at the school. But its size and structure have resulted in redundancy and held back efforts to adapt in an age of digital technology and increasingly expensive academic journals.

The plan calls for consolidating services across the branches -- from access to digital preservation -- and developing systemwide policies on what materials are acquired and how students and scholars can retrieve them. It also suggests that the branch libraries’ information technology staffers and resources be combined with those of the university as a whole.

“It replaces a fragmented system of 73 libraries spread across the schools with one that promotes university-wide collaboration,” Garber said in the statement.

Many of Harvard’s suggested changes have already been implemented at other universities, such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which overhauled its library system a decade ago amid budget cuts, eliminating many print journal subscriptions and shrinking its staff by 20 percent through an early retirement plan.

On Wednesday, Harvard President Drew Faust released a lengthy statement expressing both her love as a scholar for the university’s library and her concern that it is falling behind.

Its decentralized organizational scheme “has left us unable to make integrated strategic decisions about the digital future, so that we have not kept pace with essential new technologies,” she wrote in a letter to the Harvard community “It has led to duplications in services and acquisitions; it has caused us to miss economies of scale; and has produced overhead costs that are significantly higher than those of our peers.”

The new plan, based on two years of internal study, is designed to bring the library up to speed.
But many Harvard librarians said they felt left out of the loop, and some said staff cuts could hurt the library.

Rumors that the plan might call for massive layoffs have provoked a fearful outcry among the librarians -- especially after a series of contentious meetings in January, during which employees said they were told to fill out skills profiles and expect both voluntary buyouts and layoffs.

After those meetings, the surprised librarians took to Twitter, with one complaining that “all of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired,” a statement that circulated widely on the Internet that turned out to be untrue.

Some 70 protesters -- including librarians, but also Occupy Boston participants and student labor activists -- held a rally in Harvard Square Thursday, chanting, “Hey, Harvard, you’ve got cash. Why do you treat your workers like trash?”

Librarians outside Harvard were also awaiting the changes with concern.
Steven Bell, a librarian at Temple University, wrote that the fury over change at Harvard might stem from the university’s stature and cultural resonance.

“The restructuring may not diminish the strength of the collections or services, but there is a strong emotional connection to what these academic libraries mean,” he wrote in the magazine Library Journal. “At your institution or mine, eliminating branch libraries may cause some departmental ill will, but ultimately it is seen as sensible and necessary. At Harvard, it is perceived as an ill-conceived tearing of the cultural fabric.”

A blogger named Chris Bourg, an assistant university librarian at Stanford University,” wrote that as Harvard goes, so might other universities: “If massive layoffs can happen at Harvard [with its huge endowments], then no academic library is safe.”
 

Mary Carmichael can be reached at mary.carmichael@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @mary_carmichael.

Harvard says cash holdings climb to $1b

By Beth Healy, Globe Staff  |  October 20, 2010

Harvard University more than tripled its holdings in cash and US Treasuries, to $1 billion, by the end of fiscal year 2010, following sharp investment losses during the financial crisis that left the nation’s richest institution temporarily cash-strapped.

Harvard, in its annual report for the 2009-2010 year, ending June 30, said it made “significant progress’’ reshaping the university’s pool of operating funds “to be more readily available, and less susceptible to illiquidity and market fluctuations.’’ Harvard said it started to put the money in safer, shorter-term investments, starting in fiscal year 2008 and will stick with that strategy over the next year.

The university’s top financial officials said in the report that Harvard had made progress in responding to changed economic circumstances. “Nonetheless, we must continue to be vigilant in managing our finances in order to ensure that Harvard can fulfill its mission even with the continued uncertainty that surrounds us,’’ they wrote.

Read more »

Harvard's Endowment reports 11% Increase in FY2010

Harvard Gazette:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/09/harvard-endowment-posts-strong-positive-return-2/


Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/09/10/a_new_year_at_harvard/

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Harvard discloses pay for endowment officials

Harvard discloses pay for endowment officials

By Beth Healy, Globe Staff  |  May 18, 2010

The chief of Harvard University’s endowment earned nearly $1 million for her first six months on the job in 2008, according to a tax filing made public Monday, as global markets plunged and dragged the fund down with them.

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Harvard receives $20.5m gift for new Asia studies center

Harvard receives $20.5m gift for new Asia studies center

Will fund program on Indonesia

Benefactor Peter Sondakh and David T. Ellwood, Harvard Kennedy School dean, at the center’s signing ceremony. (Tony Rinaldo for The Boston Globe)

By James F. Smith Globe Staff / January 7, 2010

Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world and the largest Muslim-majority democracy. Yet even at Harvard University, Indonesia has remained among the less studied major Asian nations, overshadowed by China, Japan, and Vietnam.

That is about to change, thanks to a fortuitous connection between an Indonesian business magnate and the Asia expert who heads the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A $20.5 million gift - described as one of the five largest in the school of government’s 74-year history - is funding a new Institute for Asia and a new Indonesia program.

The Kennedy School yesterday announced the gift from the Rajawali Foundation, the charitable arm of PT Rajawali Corp., one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates. The company, founded in the early 1980s by owner and director Peter Sondakh, is a major player in cement, retailing, palm oil, hotels, and other industries.

Professor Anthony Saich, director of the renamed Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School, said in an interview that the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and the new Indonesia Program within it would allow an array of education and research initiatives.

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Harvard ignored warnings about investments

Harvard ignored warnings about investments
Advisers told Summers, others not to put so much cash in market; losses hit $1.8b

By Beth Healy
Globe Staff / November 29, 2009

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing - or mismanaging - its basic operating funds.

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Boston Globe announces Top 100 employers - Harvard doesn't place

The Globe 100's top places to work
 http://www.boston.com/jobs/topworkplaces/2009/globe100_top_places_to_work/
The Globe invited more than 1,000 companies to participate in the second annual Top Places to Work. Of those, 269 organizations went all the way through the process, allowing us to conduct a confidential survey of their workers. Research partner WorkplaceDynamics of Exton, Pa., specialists in employee engagement and retention, contacted more than 160,000 employees at those companies, and received surveys from 86,000 individuals. Each was asked to grade their organization's performance according to 24 distinct statements, ranging from "This organization demonstrates it values employees during difficult times" to "It's easy to tell my boss the truth."

Harvard Buys Updike Archive - What budget cuts?

Harvard buys Updike archive
Collection includes late writer’s reviews, letters, manuscripts

John Updike, as a senior at Harvard, in 1954.

By Tracy Jan Globe Staff / October 7, 2009

Harvard University has acquired the manuscripts, correspondences, and other papers of John Updike, a celebrated member of the Class of 1954 who kept a Harvard library card and frequently visited the campus to research the contemporary culture that enlivened his acclaimed fiction.

The university will announce today that Houghton Library, Harvard’s primary repository for rare books and manuscripts, will house the John Updike Archive, making the library the center for studies on the life and work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and prolific novelist, poet, and critic. College officials would not disclose how much Harvard paid to acquire the papers of Updike, who died in January at 76.

“John Updike is a terribly important American, given his cultural and literary achievement,’’ said William Pritchard, an English professor at Amherst College who chronicled the writer’s life and work in “Updike: America’s Man of Letters.’’ “It’s an extraordinary thing that his university is where his papers have landed.’’

Lined up, the entire archive stretches 380 linear feet. It spans 1,500 books, including Updike’s collection of his own work, published in foreign languages and English, as well as books Updike reviewed - with his pencil marks underlining the text, making notes in the margins, or bracketing a particularly well-turned phrase.

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Globe Article

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/22/union_workers_take_to_streets_to_protest_layoffs_of_janitors/

Union workers take to streets to protest layoffs of janitors

Bedardo Sola, who recently lost his $17-an-hour janitorial job, spoke at a Boston Common rally in support of laid-off workers. (Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)

By Kathy McCabe Globe Staff / March 22, 2009

Bedardo Sola left El Salvador 10 years ago, hoping to find a good job and medical services for his wife and 4-month old daughter.

Now Sola, laid off from his job as a contract janitor at Harvard University, said he worries how he will pay for the operation his wife needs to save her sight.

"My family is the most important thing to me," Sola, 42, said in Spanish through a translator. "I felt so proud working at the most prestigious university in the world. Now I worry."

Sola joined an estimated 1,000 union workers and supporters yesterday who marched from Boston Common to Copley Square, to protest the layoffs of janitors and other service workers in Greater Boston.The Service Employees Union International Local 615 in Boston, which represents contract janitors at Harvard and downtown office buildings, organized the 90-minute rally and march.

"Today we want to send a message across Boston," Rocio Saenz, president of Local 615, said at the late-morning rally. "For a long time, many of the businesses [downtown] have enjoyed the prosperity. They have enjoyed the benefits that workers have not."

The janitors' layoffs are reflective of what other lower-wage workers are facing in the recession, Saenz said. "We need to get the message out to the business community that they cannot balance their books on the backs of workers," Saenz said in an interview during the march.

Union workers and supporters pledged to stand together, as they marched past empty office buildings, holding signs and chanting "Si Se Peude," or "Yes You Can." One message - "Don't act out of fear" - was aimed at Harvard Real Estate Services and at corporations the union says oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill pending in Congress that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Sola is one of eight janitors laid off March 16. Another round of layoffs is expected April 1, the union said.

The janitors are not Harvard employees; they work for unionized companies that have custodial contracts with Harvard. To control costs, the university has reduced the number of its vendor contracts, Kevin Galvin, a university spokesman, said in an e-mail.

In the statement, Galvin said the reductions were "a necessary step in response to the unprecedented fiscal challenges that we are facing at Harvard."

The university, like many others, has suffered steep losses to its endowment amid a meltdown on Wall Street. The endowment, which was $36.9 billion last June, lost at least 22 percent in the fall, and is expected to drop further, according to past Globe articles.

Harvard froze salaries for faculty and staff this year, offered early retirement to 1,600 workers, and is reviewing major construction projects, Galvin said.

Sola worked for a company called OneSource, which is owned by ABM Industries of New York. A spokesman for ABM said yesterday that the laid-off janitors will be covered by their union contract and could possibly be placed in another job.

"We constantly evaluate whether such individuals can be deployed among our other worksites," Tony Mitchell, vice president of corporate communications wrote in an e-mail. "We will continue to communicate with the union and remain wholly committed to maintaining a constructive dialogue in the mutual best interests of employees and customers alike."

Sola said he earned $17 per hour cleaning the Peabody Terrace complex at Harvard. He received 100 percent healthcare coverage, but those benefits stopped when he was laid off, he said.

He said he understands the university has lost money, but noted "The buildings are still open," he said, sporting a Red Sox coat and a purple SEIU flag. "I'm fighting for my job."

Kathy McCabe can be reached at kmccabe@globe.com