“Layoffs Are Not the New Crimson” - HUCTW and Supporters Rally Against Mass Layoffs at Harvard

“Layoffs Are Not the New Crimson” - HUCTW and Supporters Rally Against Mass Layoffs at Harvard

From OpenMediaBoston.org

by Ana Traynin (Staff), Mar-30-10

Cambridge, MA - About 80 people rallied outside the Holyoke Center administration building at Harvard University early Thursday evening in support for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. The group gathered to protest the recent announcement of five more union employees losing their jobs at the Sackler Museum at the end of June. The rally also expressed outrage at the continued layoff trend, highlighting the loss of over 340 union jobs since last year, last spring’s forced early-retirement offers and the hiring of temporary employees. It was the latest demonstration in the ongoing No Layoffs Campaign at Harvard.

Led by HUCTW Widener library representative Geoff Carens, the demonstration also attracted, among others, members of the USWA Local 8751 Boston School Bus Drivers Union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM), the Boston Socialist Alternative and the Harvard Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM).

“Now, we have a problem in our union because our laid-off union members – some of them haven’t found work at all and their jobs ended in June,” Carens announced at the beginning of the rally. “And a lot of other laid-off workers are having to work as temps without any sick time, any vacation time or meaningful benefits because they can’t get union jobs.”

Carens went on to describe the reasons he believes the university has no justification for the recent round of layoffs.

“Harvard University, in just the last quarter – in three months – collected $121 million in federal stimulus money. Last year, the University took in $600 million in gifts. And the endowment remains $26 billion, the largest endowment of any university on Earth. They are considered to be a non-profit. A non-profit that is sitting on a pile of money, $26 billion! What kind of non-profit is that?”

The rally picketed in a circle for nearly an hour outside the Holyoke Center building, chanting slogans such as “Harvard Workers Under Attack! What Do We Do? Stand Up, Fight Back!” and “Worker Student Power Power!” Several passersby stopped to take literature and show support.

Following the picketing, Carens again addressed the group and introduced other speakers, which included a member of the bus drivers union, other HUTCW representatives and Harvard SLAM members.
Phebe Eckfeldt, HUCTW representative and admissions office worker spoke about the demand for transparency about Harvard’s financial situation.

“We say, this is an educational institution, it’s not a giant hedge fund,” she said. “The staff – we should be the ones to audit Harvard’s books.”

Eckfeldt went on to address what the union sees as discrimination and human rights violations against laid-off workers.

“We have to make sure that Harvard doesn’t divide us by racism, by sexism, by agism, by lesbian and gay and trans bigotry,” she said. “Workers were laid off by sexist, racist managers who used the layoffs to get rid of women and get rid of people of color.”

Eckfeldt closed her speech by noting that the UN Human Rights Constitution guarantees a job as a right.
A Harvard SLAM member discussed the recent changes the group has observed in campus awareness of labor issues.

“The student body is waking up a little bit ,” she said. “The faculty is asking ‘Where is all the outrage?’ and they’ve been asking it in their own offices and not realizing that a lot of other faculty members are asking this. And we’re now piecing them all together, which is really exciting so I think this is going really great places.”
She also addressed SLAM’s philosophy in regards to working within the Harvard community.

“We are of the profound belief that this campus is not just students, it is not just faculty and it is not just HMC, a corporation. It is a giant community of people that are all equally integral to how this place works.”
To close off the rally, members of the Industrial Workers of the World led the gathered demonstrators in a rendition of union anthem “Solidarity Forever.”

Speaking after the rally, Jane Williams, another SLAM member, talked about why her group came out to the union demonstration.

“SLAM is opposed to layoffs and believes that Harvard can take creative alternatives to layoffs so we’re here to show our support,” Williams said.

Carens felt optimistic about the turnout for the rally, which had been planned weeks in advance.
“I was so thrilled that this many people came out and I think it’s a very hopeful sign for the future.”
HUCTW is currently negotiating a new contract with the university, with the current three-year agreement expiring at the end of June. Eckfeldt explained that the timing makes this demonstration particularly important.
“We wanted to come up with a show of union strength to tell Harvard that we will not accept any concessions, any cutbacks, any more layoffs,” Eckfeldt said. “We’re also here because whatever we demand as workers gets back to the students in a beneficial way. They have cut libraries, they have closed libraries, they have cut library hours, they don’t have hot breakfast anymore. They have cut back on the resources on the faculty. So all of these things negatively impact the students. That’s why we’ve united with the students and vice versa and also other unions on the campus who are facing layoffs and cutbacks.”

In an email response to the reaction against the upcoming layoff of five Sackler Museum workers, Daron Manoogian, Director of Communications at the Harvard University Art Museums, noted the summer museum renovations.

“The Harvard Art Museum is operating in a limited capacity while construction crews carry out a major renovation of the facilities on Quincy Street, and beginning July 1 the Sackler Museum galleries will be closed on Sundays and Mondays. The limited gallery space and reduction in operating hours means that we need fewer staff in our Security and Visitor Services departments during the renovation. Museum officials and the University's Labor Relations team are already working through the established impact bargaining process with union representatives to address these changes, and we are committed to doing what we can under existing labor contracts to minimize the impact these changes will have on a small number of museum employees.”
William Murphy, Director of Labor & Employee Relations did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Kevin Galvin, Director of News and Media Relations at Harvard University declined to comment on the rally.

One Worker's Story

Harvard Takes Advantage of Weak Economy to Lay Off Employees and Restructure

by Sheila Rish (Participant), Jul-10-09

• Op-ed

I am employed by Harvard University in their Fine Arts Library as an image cataloguing assistant and on Tuesday June 23, 2009 I and two other people in the image cataloguing unit were laid off. Seven employees were cut from my library, 30 positions from Harvard College Library overall. This was our “contribution” to the 275 job eliminations, plus reductions in hours to approximately forty other positions that Harvard announced in an early morning email to all university staff on June 23.

Harvard has targeted the libraries during the current economic environment as well as other areas of Fine Arts and Sciences and the law and medical schools. There will be a considerable reorganization and reduction of employees with no apparent thought for either the human cost to those people and their families or the cost to the faculty and student community in lost and diminished services. Harvard is treating the current economic crunch as an opportunity to be ruthless. It has chosen to implement drastic changes at warp speed, apparently assuming that the economic climate immunizes it from public censure. I feel at a loss to know what to do either for myself or to help anyone else.

Harvard administration has been beating the budgetary drums since last October, leading up to the prospect of personnel reductions. Many ominous memos have been issued concerning losses to the university’s still enormous endowment. Last February I was offered an early retirement package which I did not accept. I belong to a union called HUCTW (Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers), AFSCME local 3650, with approximately 4800 members. Until last May HUCTW denied that layoffs were pending. It encouraged relevant people to accept the buyout (30% of all eligible staff accepted) and has denied the implicit coercion. In late May HUCTW acknowledged that 1 to 2 percent of our membership would be laid off. Substantial numbers of exempt staff would be laid off as well. Dining hall and custodial staff (not HUCTW) had at this point already been laid off, and further layoffs of these workers are rumored for the near future.

HUCTW has declined to offer any resistance or to organize around the situation in any way. (Our contract has a no-strike clause, but obviously other things could have been done.) It has not joined efforts by the unions of dining service or custodial staff, UNITE-HERE and SEIU, to support their members. It has not opposed layoffs, merely proposed to moderate them (for example, it suggested something called “voluntary layoffs” as an alternative?!) Here is an example of voluntary layoffs: In mid-June, 32 faculty secretaries employed at Harvard Law School were called to a meeting presided over by human resources, a departmental manager and an HUCTW official. They were told that two among them would be laid off but were offered a 24-hour “grace period” during which individuals could volunteer to be laid off, thus sparing their colleagues. This is HUCTW’s version of solidarity.

It operates on a philosophy called “jointness” which stresses a partnership relationship with management and is highly conflict averse. They have tried to minimize publicity so that less affected staff would not realize the extent of what was happening. They have tailored communications to small groups so people in one work area will not know what goes on elsewhere. Information has been largely through employee grapevine. HUCTW officials abruptly scheduled a post-impact bargaining meeting with their members in my library one day before layoffs were implemented. (I learned informally that a similar meeting was called for employees at Radcliffe the same day.) In deference to management’s wishes, they refused during that meeting to tell us who would be cut or when the cuts would be implemented.

Our contract has neither a seniority clause nor job security clause. There is, in the alternative, something called “work security” which involves 60 days notice and a kind of supplemental unemployment insurance in which the laid off worker can receive pay and benefits for a certain length of time if s/he proves to the satisfaction of a management case worker that s/he is aggressively job hunting. Ultimate there is severance, the amount based on the employee's years of service. However if you do find a job within 2 years the severance must be repaid on a prorated basis, making this in effect a partial loan. This system makes a target of older, longer-service employees, and gives the employer considerable leverage over employees it lays off while imposing relatively light financial consequences.

Harvard plans further budget reductions a year from now with probable further staff reductions. Employees thus far spared are afraid for their jobs. It matters deeply -- to those laid off, to those not laid off, to the community in which Harvard is embedded, and most of all to the living community which Harvard comprises -- that Harvard's administration and Harvard’s largest union learn accountability. Harvard must learn that maximizing it’s endowment is not its mission. And HUCTW, paralyzed by fear of damaging its relationship with management, must learn that its true principal is its membership. Both are accountable to every employee for the harm caused by their decisions, and accountable to the scholars and students who rely on the university’s weakened academic resources. They are accountable.

Open Media Boston coverage of the rally

Harvard University Workers Demonstrate Against Mass Layoffs

by Jason Pramas (Staff), Jun-26-09

Cambridge, MA - Over 100 unionized Harvard University workers, students and supporters held a campus rally on Thursday in protest of the mass layoff of 275 employees earlier this week - representing 2 percent of Harvard's 16,000-person workforce. Organizers said that as the richest university in the world, with billions of dollars in its endowment, Harvard "owes more to community residents than mass layoffs."

Geoff Carens, a union representative in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, minced few words about the situation on the ground, "I think today's action shows that Harvard's callous efforts to kick workers to the curb is going to bounce back and bite them. We drew a large, noisy crowd of workers, students, faculty, and community members in summer - typically a very tough time to mount a demonstration! The rally was called very quickly as layoffs only started hitting the workers this week. The desperation and panic that many laid-off workers feel seems to be hardening into a determination to fight in many cases.

"We had participation today from activists in Allston-Brighton who have opposed Harvard's take-over of their neighborhood. The number of students who rallied was truly remarkable given that the great majority of them aren't even in town. We even attracted summer school students and high school students. Probably the majority of attendees were clerical union members. Our demonstration struck an important blow for workers' rights on campus, and pointed the way for the future. They say lay off? We say back off!"

The Harvard administration, for their part, indicate that they are doing everything they can to preserve jobs.

Kevin Galvin, director of news and media relations at Harvard said, "Harvard has taken a number of steps to reduce compensation costs, which account for half of our annual operating budget. We have frozen salaries for faculty and non-union staff this year, offered a voluntary early retirement program in which more than 500 employees participated, and strictly limited hiring. Unfortunately, we are facing a projected 30 percent decline in our endowment, and those steps did not generate the savings we needed to achieve in order to avoid the reduction in force that was announced this week.

"University officials have worked closely with the unions representing workers at Harvard to provide them with relevant information about the financial challenges that the schools and the central administration are facing, and to offer them opportunities to suggest alternatives to layoffs. By the time the process is complete, it will have included about 75 impact bargaining sessions over more than four weeks.

"Our staff reductions have been spread evenly across our workforce. The average participant in the Voluntary Early Retirement Plan had an annual salary of $67,000, and about half the participants were hourly employees and half were exempt administrative and professional staff. Again with the reduction in force announced Tuesday, about half of the positions eliminated are administrative or professional positions and almost all of the remaining positions are clerical or technical jobs. Service and trade workers will be largely unaffected."

Carens remains undeterred by such arguments, "Harvard's riches, high profile and marked tendency to act like a rapacious corporation will make it a magnet for bad PR, and larger and larger actions like the one we held today. I wouldn't be at all surprised if much more dramatic initiatives follow in the coming months. What the oligarchs of the Harvard Corporation, and Goldman-Sachs, don't realize is that they are helping to forge a steely coalition of union members, unorganized workers, students, professors, and residents."

Rally organizers plan to call further actions against Harvard's layoff in the coming weeks.

The event was peaceful with a light presence of Harvard Police. There were no arrests.