Library Staff Raise Concerns at Panel Discussion

By Dan Dou and Samuel Y. Weinstock, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Jennifer S Shi

Janet Katz, a senior research librarian at the Harvard Law School Library, speaks about the recent cost-cutting measures at Harvard libraries. She was one of the speakers at the Harvard Forum on the Future of Libraries on Tuesday.

At a panel discussion on the reorganization of Harvard’s library system, faculty members and library staff members voiced many of the concerns pertaining to librarians’ job security, the future quality of the library system, and communication and commitment from Mass. Hall that have all plagued the reorganization effort since the January announcement that the restructuring would involve staffing cuts.

During the discussion on Tuesday, University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 said that there had been “a series of catastrophic misunderstandings” during the reorganization process but assured the crowd that “those of us in the library take this [dialogue] very seriously.”
He said that “the impression [among staff] that there would be sudden, brutal, [and] massive layoffs” was not true. At this point, he said, administrators “don’t have any idea of what the size of the staff will be.”

More than four weeks after announcing that the library would shrink its workforce without revealing how many workers it would cut nor how it would select them, the University offered long-time employees a voluntary retirement package in February.

History professor Lisa M. McGirr called upon the University to think beyond financial cares when making decisions about the size of the staff.

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“Harvard is, and should continue to be, more than that,” McGirr said. “Efficiency can be a good thing and doesn’t require layoffs—we should proceed with great care and caution.”

But the discussion on Tuesday covered topics beside the looming threat of involuntary layoffs which has sparked numerous protests on campus throughout the semester.

Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers Director Bill Jaeger, who was unable to attend the forum, said that he perceives the University’s message to have moved away from the subject of layoffs since the “stark announcement of January 19.”

“I think the ongoing conversation among the library staff is changing and is less concerned about avoiding layoffs and more concerned about other parts of the library organizational design that are also really important,” Jaeger said.

The conversation on Tuesday followed that tack.

Darnton acknowledged that stakeholders are concerned about service quality from the library and said he shared those worries.

“I was upset to see that services had declined in many ways,” he said.

But he said that the University’s support for the libraries has not decreased; if it had, he said, he would have resigned.

Janet Katz, a librarian on the panel, said she was specifically anxious about the cataloging of volumes in the near future.

“I know how excellent HOLLIS is,” Katz said about the library’s online catalog system, “and I just hate to think it would become any less.”

Panelist and classics professor Richard F. Thomas said he had been disappointed by the level of faculty and librarian involvement in the decision-making process thus far. “We need more than just conversations between the people who are putting [in] the system and librarians,” he said. “We need actual input from librarians who are willing to give it and have the expertise to give it. I think librarians and faculty embrace change, but that change has to be change that doesn’t diminish the quality of the libraries in all media.”

—Staff writer Dan Dou can be reached at ddou@college,harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.

Labor Notes Article on Harvard Libraries

Harvard Layoffs Threaten the University’s Backbone: Libraries

by Joshua Koritz | Fri, 03/30/2012 - 3:17pm

Harvard has 73 libraries that comprise the largest private library collection in the world. The library system attracts researchers from around the world, a major draw for attracting the best faculty in all fields. From ancient maps to personal effects to photography collections, not to mention millions of books and journals in multiple languages, the materials of Harvard’s libraries are the keystone supporting billions of dollars in research grants awarded to the Harvard community each year.


Such a large collection is unusable without librarians and library staff to catalog materials and help researchers sift through the mountains of information. Most research using the Harvard library would be impossible without the aid of library workers.


Yet the Harvard administration feels its libraries are a drag on finances, as they do not directly create revenue. Library closings and staff reductions have been part of a continued corporatization of the university, begun under former President Larry Summers (who later was appointed to head President Obama’s National Economic Council). The focus on revenue and serving corporate ends has accelerated under current President Drew Faust’s recession-bound tenure.


In January, Harvard called a “library town hall” to announce that “the library workforce will be smaller than it is now”—by July. The news fell like a bombshell on close to 900 employees, both union members and managers, who still do not know how many people will lose their jobs.

Jeff Booth, a library assistant for over 25 years, said, “It affects you physically. You think that the prospect of losing a job is just a mental thing, but it makes me physically sick when I think that in six months I may not know how I’ll be able to help my children.”


Harvard libraries have already seen layoffs. In 2009, the administration laid off more than 275 workers. In every department, workers were asked to take on more tasks. Harvard claimed poverty as the recession caused its endowment to fall from $36 billion to a mere $25 billion. But in fiscal year 2011 the endowment grew 21.4 percent to $32 billion.

Library for the 21st Century

Harvard set the goal in 2009 of “creating a library for the 21st century.” Many assume this means removing books because “everything is online now.” However, more books are published in print now than ever before and often electronic resources require just as much labor to provide as physical resources.


The role of a library is constantly changing, but it continues to require substantial human labor.

Harvard’s present library system grew as schools and departments created their own libraries in order to focus service on a specific community.


The transition emphasizes centralization of “shared and technical services” such as interlibrary loan, cataloguing, and preservation. But in the past “shared services” has meant fewer jobs and bigger workloads.


The 2009 layoffs hit libraries particularly hard; 21 percent of library staff either took early retirement or were laid off. Workloads increased for those left.


Ed Dupree, 57, an assistant librarian for 19 years, describes the changes: “My workload has doubled since the layoffs of ’09, and gotten more complex. I do my old duties plus those of my former supervisor, who took the forced retirement. My department is backed up and service has inevitably declined.”


The service problems mean longer waits for materials, frustrating searches undertaken without aid or appropriate resources, and in some cases materials being mis-categorized and effectively lost forever.


Another longtime worker complained of the dumbing down of his job since 2009: “Many of the meaningful tasks of my work have been outsourced.”

How to Respond?

At the next meeting of the library transition team, the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, a rank-and-file group of members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers/AFSCME 3650 (HUCTW), met the downsizers with a picket of 20.


The No Layoffs campaign reached out to local media and the Cambridge City Council. The Student Labor Action Movement and Occupy Harvard took up the cause and formed close working relations with the campaign.


Even without official union endorsement, more than 200 workers, students, faculty, and community members demonstrated against layoffs on February 9. SEIU and UNITE HERE (the second and third biggest unions on campus) were invited and sent unofficial messages of support.


Three days later, Occupy Harvard began a week-long occupation of the main undergraduate library. Students camped out in the café area and used the space to host discussions with library staff and the No Layoffs Campaign.


The HUCTW leadership, which champions a policy of jointness with management, never reached out to any of these groups. Instead, it met with library transition leaders “to get more information and express our serious concerns. …In our union’s experience, it is nearly always possible to meet the same ends without any involuntary layoffs.”


The HUCTW contract is set to expire June 30, yet HUCTW officials insist that layoffs are not a primary concern for upcoming negotiations. HUCTW members have no way of challenging this outlook except through outside channels, as twice-yearly membership meetings rarely turn out more than 1 percent of the membership.

---

Joshua Koritz is a member of HUCTW who has worked in the Harvard library system for six years. You can show your support for Harvard library workers by sending a letter of protest to president@harvard.edu with a copy to huctw.info@huctw.org and harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com.

The Profit Margin of a Library: Harvard’s Corporatization

The Profit Margin of a Library: Harvard’s Corporatization

By Sandra Y.L. Korn

Two weeks ago, Harvard University Library administrators held a town hall meeting to announce major, imminent changes to the structure of the Harvard University Library. Helen Shenton, executive director of the Library, announced to a bewildered and shocked audience of library employees that the restructuring would involve “voluntary and involuntary layoffs,” and that the workforce “would be smaller.”

In the next week, both Harvard University President Drew Faust and University Provost Alan Garber sent out emails to the entire Harvard student body explaining the planned changes to the library system. Faust described the importance of making “strategic decisions about the digital future” and reforming the libraries to move into the technological age. Garber discussed the ways in which the restructuring would allow innovations to benefit library users.

Read more »

Open Letter to HUCTW Leadership from the No Layoffs Campaign

The following is a letter sent to the HUCTW leadership (Bill Jaeger, Tasha Williams, Donene Williams, Carrie Barbash, info@huctw.org, Laura Ebenstein, Pam Mullaney, Lynnwang Delacey) on Friday, March 9, 2012.  As of today, we have not received a reply.  Any response to this we plan on publishing in its entirety here as well.

Dear HUCTW members, elected leaders, and organizers,

We, the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, consisting of many HUCTW activists and rank and file members are sending this letter to urge action and cooperation in fighting library layoffs.

On January 19^th, 2012 Harvard announced that they intended to reduce the Library workforce. While you began your discussions with Harvard about the downsizing, the No Layoffs campaign started a public campaign to draw attention to Harvard’s plan to lay workers off.  We:

·         Rallied against a Harvard “Community Conversation” with Occupy Harvard students and concerned community members (Jan. 25)
·         Rallied/protested with 100+ union members, students, faculty and community members Feb. 9^th in Harvard Square
·         Picketed on Feb. 16^th in support of Occupy Harvard site in Lamont (see OCCUPY BOSTON link below)http://www.occupyboston.org/2012/02/15/layoffs-campaign-picket-harvard/
·         Reached out to the Cambridge City Council for support opposing Harvard layoffs/bad business practice
·         Engaged with Harvard’s SLAM movement (Student Labor Action Movement) and OCCUPY Harvard movement
·         Reached out to media
·         Initiated petitions to support Research Librarians and to oppose Layoffs
·     Picketed with scores of supporters on March 1, during a snow shower.

Union members want coordinated, united action against these layoffs.  We all want to see HUCTW mobilizing its membership and working with the No Layoffs Campaign, SLAM, Occupy Harvard, UNITE-HERE and SEIU.

We welcome the recent open letter and that you have just announced some outreach but we seek clarification on how exactly you see the plan unfolding. The open letter described the problems with Harvard's plan, but did not describe what our response will be. We call on you (as leaders of HUCTW) to initiate and support visible actions and aggressively establish coalitions with other unions on campus.  We hope that you will expand on your written communications with members by calling an emergency membership meeting with quorum so that we can plan a campaign.

Our publicity and all this exposure has had an impact on Harvard. Bill Murphy has admitted as much. This is evidenced in the administration's attacks on OCCUPY Harvard’s free speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmdtfKAtdfY  and by their refusal to even meet with staff (canceling an open meeting and making it an online chat).

We ask you to:

·         Call an emergency, campus-wide membership meeting (with quorum) to plan out how HUCTW will fight this round of layoffs
·         Organize visibility actions and encourage HUCTW members to attend
·         Support No Layoffs events and initiatives
·         Reach out to work with OCCUPY Harvard and SLAM students on campus
·         Build active coalitions with other unions on campus
·     Immediately set a date for the largest possible rally of HUCTW members against management's threats to cut the jobs of library workers.

We all agree that a Library Reorganization must not result in job loss.  You already know that another round of support staff layoffs (after the 21% reduction in 2009) will result in ruined lives, will have a horrible impact on the Harvard community and result in a significant loss in union dues and power.  We can save jobs if we work together to mobilize the members.

In Solidarity,

-The No Layoffs Campaign

Library, HUCTW to Negotiate Through “Joint Councils”

By DAN DOU and SAMUEL Y. WEINSTOCK, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Friday, February 24, 2012

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers will form three “joint councils” with Harvard Library management to negotiate the library system’s reorganization, according to a University spokesperson.

HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger said that union leadership proposed the formation of the councils late last week in an effort to improve communication between HUCTW and the University.

“We’ve been frustrated that there wasn’t more serious discussion going on about some of the crucial transition details and that there wasn’t better opportunity for our members to participate in thinking about how to build a greater library,” Jaeger said.

The reorganization has been a point of contention between the University and library workers since Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton announced on Jan. 19 that the library workforce would be trimmed down as the University moves forward with restructuring its library system.

A University spokesperson said that the three councils will be formed in accordance with the union’s contract with the University and will meet regularly starting in early March and through June 2012.

Joint councils will be formed to represent the Access Services, Technical Services, and Preservation and Digital Services departments, Jaeger said. The councils will be comprised of eight to ten people with equal numbers of union and Harvard Library representatives.

In addition, Jaeger said that HUCTW is currently working on an “open letter” that will be circulated through the Harvard community next week to garner sympathy for the union.

“We think that if faculty and students can see as our members see...they’re going to be concerned about deteriorating quality in the current library,” Jaeger said.

The letter will discuss the union’s concerns that the libraries are already understaffed and that outsourcing of services such as cataloguing might weaken the library system, Jaeger said.

“We want to pay particular attention to the question of what are the minimum staffing levels needed to have a great library,” Jaeger said. “We think that our community is very much in danger of not really having a world-class library.”

On Wednesday, HUCTW leadership sent an email to inform its members of the formation of the joint councils. Library assistant Karen L. O’Brien, a HUCTW representative, expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the councils, saying that the University has provided the union few details thus far.

O’Brien said that despite numerous attempts from workers to give input to the reorganization, the University has been nonresponsive and “close-mouthed.”

Jeffrey W. Booth, also a library assistant and HUCTW member, said the councils would do nothing to mitigate the threat of layoffs, calling it a “regressive step.”

“They’re extremely ineffectual and often only take up minor issues,” Booth said. “I’m sure Harvard management is so happy.”

Booth, dissatisfied with the formation of councils, said that his union needs to respond more visibly to the University’s recent announcement. He suggested that the union conduct inclusive, membership-wide meetings that could lead to a strike vote, a large rally, or a sit-in of Massachusetts Hall.

“It feels like David and Goliath...but if David didn’t have a slingshot,” Booth said. “The union leadership is not arming the membership.”

Jaeger said that while HUCTW’s ultimate goal is to build a great library, the union is also striving to improve relations between workers and library management.

“We’d like to rebuild some trust and build some better relationships between union members and the key management leaders of the transition,” Jaeger said. “I think a lot of our members are quite deeply frustrated, and union leaders are as well. The state of the library workplace at this point, as far as we can tell, is basically chaos and demoralized disarray.”

—Staff writer Dan Dou can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

Layoffs Step 1: offer early retirement packages

University to Offer Some Librarians Early Retirement

By Hana N. Rouse, Samuel Y. Weinstock, and Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The University will offer a Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program to library employees 55 years and older with 10 years of service under their belts, according to a University spokesperson.
Those who choose to accept the offer will receive six months’ pay, plus two additional weeks’ pay for every year of employment beyond 10 years. An employee cannot receive more than one year’s worth of salary under the package.

Approximately 275 employees are eligible for the plan. There are 930 full-time employees within the University library system.

Once they receive the details of their personal plan, workers will have 46 calendar days to decide whether or not to accept it.

Workers were informed of the program via email early afternoon Monday.

The plan is part of an ongoing restructuring of the University library system, which seeks to unify Harvard’s 73 currently independent libraries.

Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton had previously said at a town hall meeting with library employees that “the Library workforce will be smaller than it is now.”

In an email to the Crimson, a university spokesperson said that with improvement to the library system 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.”

Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, said the offer was just another ambiguous message from the administration in a process that it has not handled well.
“It’s one more step that seems premature and that is poorly considered and not broadly enough consulted about,” Jaeger said. “There’s a record-breaking level of turmoil and anxiety among the staff. This just adds to the confusion.”

Jaeger said that this announcement did nothing to address the fact that, according to HUCTW members, the library is understaffed as it is.

“At this point, the case hasn’t been made for staff reductions,” Jaeger said. He added that if the library does not have a solid plan going forward, this program could cause it to lose money.
He also said that the possibility of a Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program was never mentioned in discussions between the union and the library.

“It’s really hard for the library staff to know what to make of the early retirement offer,” Jaeger said. “The big question that crowds out all the others is, ‘Why?’”

Karen L. O’Brien, a library assistant who noted that she was too young to take the offer, said that she thought that the announcement mirrored the steps the library took in the past when it sought staff reductions.

O’Brien said she thought that more employees were likely to accept the early retirement program if they had been previously scared by the threat of layoffs.

Since Shenton’s announcement, some library employees have taken to the streets to protest the possibility of layoffs, picketing outside of a meeting for library staff members and staging multiple public demonstrations.

Sunday night, members of Occupy Harvard took over Lamont Library Café, pledging to stay in the café until 10 p.m. on Friday in order to protest library staff reductions.

Andrew J. Pope, a doctoral student in history and Occupy Harvard supporter, said that the early retirement program leaves library employees with few options.

“If they don’t take the offer and are laid off, the family will be in a dire financial situation,” Pope said,

Rudi E. Batzell, another doctoral student in history who also supports Occupy, echoed Pope’s concerns.

“[The Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program] forces [workers] to make an economic decision without any sense of what their alternatives are,” Batzell said.

Sandra Y. L. Korn ’14, a Crimson associate editorial executive and a member of the Student Labor Action Movement, was skeptical about the early retirement program’s potential effectiveness.
“I think it’s stupid,” Korn said. “Harvard can’t completely revamp its library system in the next 46 days.”

The University has said it will provide more information on staff reductions over the coming weeks.

—Jane Seo contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Hana N. Rouse can be reached at hrouse@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

Students Occupy Lamont Library Café

By Eliza M. Nguyen, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Sunday, February 12, 2012

Parul Agarwal

Harvard University Police officers monitor the outside of Lamont Café while occupiers sit inside.

UPDATED: February 12, 2012, at 3:04 p.m.

Members of the Occupy Harvard movement parked themselves in Lamont Library Café on Sunday night, pledging to stay in the café until 10 p.m. on Friday in order to protest planned staff reductions in Harvard libraries.

More than 23 supporters of the movement gathered in the café to inaugurate the next phase of their protest, the first to involve a physical occupation since Harvard administrators removed the Occupy Harvard dome from the Yard on Jan. 13.

An undergraduate café employee called the Harvard University Police Department to report the protest, according to an email to café workers obtained by The Crimson.

Police officers arrived on the scene and asked the protesters to remove the banners and signs that they had hung in the café’s windows, according to protester Andrew J. Pope, a doctoral student in history

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Photo Occupy Lamont Café

“Harvard’s free speech policy protects students’ rights to express themselves on campus,” Pope said.
Pope said that a night supervisor employed by the library told HUPD that the staff supports Occupy Lamont and that the protesters’ actions did not break any library rules.

HUPD could not be reached for comment on Sunday night.

“I hope it makes people aware that the Occupy movement is ongoing, and it’s building toward the future,” said Rudi Batzell, a doctoral student in history. “I think that the location [of the occupation] here is important, especially with ongoing library restructuring. It’s a show of solidarity with the library staff.”

On Sunday, Occupy Harvard also hosted an Occupy Boston Student Summit in Emerson Hall, which was attended by over 80 students from 18 campuses in the Boston area. In Lamont, occupiers chatted with summit attendees by Skype.

Protesters say that the purpose of the new occupation, which they call the “New Harvard Library Occupation,” aligns with the goals of the national Occupy movement that began in September.
“It’s a different movement, but a continuation of the same ideals,” Pope said.

Batzell added, “I hope that it will raise awareness that the Occupy movement is alive and growing. I hope it will connect the local struggle of library layoffs to larger issues of inequality and workers rights globally.”

Protesters said they will give out candy, offer tutoring services, and host twice-daily think tanks to include other Harvard students in their activism efforts.

“The hope is to build relationships with the broader Harvard community, including undergrads and workers, and engage with them in different ways,” Pope said.

Students plan to continue the occupation until Lamont Library, which is open 24 hours a day on weekdays, closes at 10 p.m. at the end of the week.

—Jane Seo and David Song contributed to the reporting of this article.
—Staff writer Eliza M. Nguyen can be reached at enguyen@college.harvard.edu

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.

Rally Against Library Layoffs - Crimson Reports

Protesters March Against Potential Library Layoffs

By Samuel Y. Weinstock, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Friday, February 10, 2012

•  

Jessica C. Salley

Protestors join together in a rendition of “Solidarity Forever” in front of the Holyoke Center Thursday evening before marching through Harvard Yard in opposition to proposed reductions in numbers of Harvard’s library workers.

A crowd of more than 100 protesters gathered outside the Holyoke Center Thursday night in response to plans to reorganize Harvard University Library that could include involuntary staff reductions.

The protestors chanted and marched in a circle, after which several workers, students, and other supporters spoke to the crowd. They then walked into the Yard and circled Massachusetts Hall several times.

The rally sought to increase awareness in the Harvard community about the library workers’ concerns as well as to display opposition to the administration’s intentions, said William P. Whitham ’14, a member of the Student Labor Action Movement.

“I hope this lets the student leaders, lets the faculty know that this ‘glorious’ reorganization has a human cost,” Whitham said.

Library assistant Jeffrey Booth, who has worked at Harvard libraries for nearly 26 years, said that the threat of staff reductions makes him worried about his family.

“Our futures are at stake,” Booth said. “We’ve already had to make tough personal decisions because of the threat of being laid off.”

Library employee and elected Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers representative Emeka F. Onyeagoro, who spoke at the rally, said that he was opposed to the layoffs, which he said threatened an estimated 800 to 1,000 workers.

Onyeagoro said the layoffs have no financial basis, but are an unjustified attempt at greater efficiency.

Layoffs would also negatively affect workers who kept their jobs, since they would be faced with a greater workload, Onyeagoro said.

Ricardo R. S. Rey, a teaching fellow in the history department, said that he opposed the layoffs for practical, as well as philosophical reasons. He recalled an instance where he wasted time searching for documents with HOLLIS before a librarian helped him find a wealth of materials for his class.

“How are we going to find this [without librarians]?” Salazar said.

“There are people [here] that don’t normally go to rallies,” Booth, who is also a HUCTW member, said. “It’s hard to get up out of your seat and do something.”

Last Friday, HUCTW leaders met with library officials for a conversation that HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger described as “honest,” “difficult,” and “inconclusive.”

“So far we haven’t seen a change of heart, but we’re going to keep pressing, and press harder,” Jaeger said.

Jaeger said that the union still had two major concerns that the library board had not addressed sufficiently, if at all.

“We’re baffled by the unnecessary cloak of secrecy,” Jaeger said. “We don’t understand why such a committed and intelligent group would not have more access [to the community].”

HUCTW’s second concern, according to Jaeger, was that some library functions are already understaffed.

“We’re going to fight for great libraries and great jobs,” Jaeger said.

Yet Desiree A. Goodwin, a library assistant who spoke at the protest, said that HUCTW, of which she is a member, has not offered much information either.

“They’re not really telling us anything,” Goodwin said. “Not unlike the library board.”

Jaeger said that the email Faust sent on Wednesday to the Harvard community was encouraging to HUCTW members, since it referenced staff engagement.

Jaeger added, however, that so far, the administrations’s words and actions have not been consistent.

“There’s a worrisome disconnect between that quotation and the practical accessibility that our members have,” Jaeger said.

Booth said that he and his fellow workers found the content of the email to be misleading.

“They expect us to believe her assertions because she’s Drew Faust,” Booth said. “And that is insulting.”

Read more »

Feb 9 - Rally Against Layoffs!

NO LAYOFFS! -


5 PM, THURS, FEB 9, Holyoke Ctr.
1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 (next to Au Bon Pain). Redline to Harvard Square.

Who do they think they are?! Even in this bleak economy, Harvard University, a taxfree
‘non-profit’, has managed to retain $32 billion (in addition to other income), yet
it is putting people out of work and plans to lay off more. Layoffs are a burden to our
local economy where people are already struggling and where Harvard has not been
a good neighbor. Harvard is in a privileged financial position where laying off staff
is not necessity but greed. Stand with Harvard workers and community members
against these destructive plans which will devastate many families and hurt the entire
community. Rally to oppose layoffs!

5 PM, THURS, FEB 9, Holyoke Ctr.
1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 (next to Au Bon Pain). Redline to Harvard Square.
Contact harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com for more information.

If you oppose layoffs at Harvard University, please send an email protest.

--------------------------------------Email Harvard Labor Relations------------------------------------
Tell them that when Harvard doesn’t pay taxes and then puts people out of work they are hurting the local economy of your community! Tell them that you support everyone doing their fair share during difficult economic times. Harvard workers greatly appreciate this support. Thank you for sending emails to oppose the University’s plans!

Address emails to: bill_murphy@harvard.edu, (he is the Director of Labor Relations for Harvard University).
cc: harvardnolayoffs@gmail.com

Sample text: I oppose Layoffs in the Harvard Libraries. A University should be protecting these services, and especially one with the enormous resources of Harvard should not be turning people out on the street. Laying off workers when there is still so much money available (in part because of a special tax-free status) is damaging my local economy for no other reason than greed. Please do not do this. The community does not support it.

Proposed Staff Cuts Anger Library Workers

Proposed Staff Cuts Anger Library Workers

By Samuel Y. Weinstock and Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The University’s plans to reduce the size of the Harvard University Library workforce drew criticism Tuesday from library workers and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. Library officials informed employees of the University's exploration of a range of both voluntary and involuntary options in a series of town hall meetings last Thursday.

“The announcement that the library workforce ‘will be smaller than it is now’ and that some of these potential reductions will be involuntary, combined with the lack of answers to critical questions was alarming and ill-conceived,” read an email to members of HUCTW, which represents many library employees. “For many, the overall effect was panic-inducing.”

The union plans to address the issue by discussing the potential cuts in greater detail with library leaders and meeting with members to assess their reactions, according to the email.

HUCTW Director Bill Jaeger said that his union is concerned primarily with the lack of information provided by the University about the size and nature of the potential layoffs. The presentation of the plans, he said, was “extraordinarily clumsy” and left many major questions unanswered.

Library employees also expressed confusion over the details of the plan. The uncertainty has led many employees to begin speculating on the size of the cuts, according to Karen L. O’Brien, a library assistant.

“All of Harvard Library staff have just effectively been fired,” read one tweet that circulated on Thursday after the first town hall had begun.

Others suggested that the restructuring would require that all library employees reapply to keep their current positions.

The University strongly refuted this statement but recommended that all employees file an Employee Profile “to state job preferences, to articulate skills, and to provide a resume.”

Although he said that the University is currently only providing “vague” explanations, Jaeger is confident that HUCTW will be able to speak with transition leaders. As a part of the union’s contract, Harvard must consult with HUCTW and seriously consider alternative options before laying off a single member, he said.

But HUCTW’s response was insufficient for some union members who gathered on Tuesday afternoon to take a more aggressive stance against the plan for a smaller workforce.

The meeting, which included representatives from the Student Labor Action Movement and Occupy Harvard, concluded with a plan to picket University forums on library reform beginning Wednesday.
For this small, committed group of activists, preparing for a larger campaign would start with reaching out to other employees. Eventually, workers could resort to large demonstrations or another occupation of the campus, said Geoffrey “Geoff” Carens, an assistant librarian and HUCTW member.

“It’s going to get as big as it needs to be,” Carens said. “This is the seed, and we’re hoping for a mighty tree.”

Library employees who attended Tuesday’s meeting expressed frustration with both the plan to cut the workforce and how the University informed employees. At Thursday’s meeting, library officials were unable to answer many of the audience’s questions and did not provide details about the scale of the staff reductions. That information, employees were told, would come in February.

O’Brien said she believes that the University is purposefully stoking fear among the library employees in hopes that they will hurriedly accept unattractive retirement packages.

Regardless of their thoughts about the University’s intentions, many other employees expressed a fear of the upcoming changes.

“I can’t believe I feel as insecure in my job as I did before we had the union,” said Jeffrey Booth, a library assistant who said he has worked at Harvard for 25 years. “We’re already short-staffed. When my friends and coworkers get laid off, I get physically sick. That’s how it affects you.”

The Harvard Library Board, which is responsible for planning the library’s restructuring, met Tuesday to discuss the plan. If approved, it will be considered by University President Drew G. Faust.
The University did not return repeated requests for comment on this article. Harvard Library

Executive Director Helen Shenton did not respond through a spokesperson.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

Library System Seeks to Reduce Staff

Library System Seeks to Reduce Staff


By Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Monday, January 23, 2012 

The Harvard University Library system will seek to reduce the size of its approximately 930 person workforce as part of the ongoing restructuring of the world’s largest academic library, according to a transcript of remarks made by Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton at one of three town hall meetings held Thursday.

“The new organizational design has not yet been approved, but it is certain that it will be different from the current one,” said Shenton at one of the town hall meetings. “A key change: the Library workforce will be smaller than it is now.”

The University is considering both voluntary and involuntary options to reduce staff, but prefers voluntary methods, Shenton said. While Harvard has laid off employees in the past, the University has at times also offered some staff voluntary early retirement packages or waited for attrition to reduce staff.

Read more »

Crimson Op-Ed: No Layoffs for Harvard Libraries

No Layoffs for Harvard Libraries
By Geoff Carens
Published: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

On January 19, Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton told stunned Harvard Library staff that their numbers were to shrink. She announced that the cuts would be accomplished by July, through voluntary and involuntary means. Officials would rewrite some job descriptions and eliminate other jobs completely, and staffers would have to apply for a smaller number of reconfigured positions.

In the wake of media attention to widely shared tweets about Shenton’s disclosures, a University spokesperson tried to downplay the anxieties of employees. Despite such efforts, Shenton’s remarks are sparking a new wave of worker-led protests on the Harvard campus.

When the University’s clerical staffers last faced mass layoffs in 2008, their Harvard No Layoffs Campaign drew the attention of national and international press. In collaboration with Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement, rank-and-filers in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers joined forces with concerned local residents, faculty, non-union workers and members of other campus unions also hit hard by job losses. The coalition organized a sustained wave of demonstrations, which featured picketers blocking traffic in Harvard Square, as well as multiple actions during the University’s lavish Commencement exercises. Today, activists will meet to plan a revival of the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign.

During its last wave of mass layoffs, Harvard maintained, unpersuasively, that a drop in its huge endowment made job losses inevitable. After a 21.4 percent jump in the endowment during the last fiscal year, to $32 billion, Harvard cannot possibly make any such claims today. Union activists believe the University’s plans to cut costs come at the expense of local communities. In a particularly ominous development, 15 out of 22 employees at Harvard Health Publications learned on January 11 that they would lose their jobs in March. The devastated staffers of HHP must wonder how they will find new positions in the current bleak economy. As of last week, library workers must wonder the same thing.

However, since 2008, the ground has shifted. The Occupy Wall Street movement has pointed a glaring spotlight at social inequalities, the concentration of wealth, and widespread unemployment. Harvard’s workers have actively participated in Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard. Important links have been built, and potentially powerful networks have risen up. Employees who stayed on the sidelines of past years’ pickets now boldly advocate direct action to fight the planned cuts. No Layoffs campaigners know they will have many more allies this time around.

They will also have student support. SLAM has supported Harvard’s workers for years. The pro-labor students in SLAM went on a hunger strike in 2007 to press for a fair contract for security officers. Its precursor, the Progressive Student Labor Movement, occupied Massachusetts Hall in 2001, demanding a living wage for all who worked at the University. SLAM’s current incarnation, as vibrant as ever, plays a vital auxiliary role in campus labor struggles.  As recently as December, scores of workers and SLAM members picketed for over an hour in the cold for Marvin Byrd. Byrd, a 61 year old, partially-disabled employee in Harvard University Mail Services, had his weekly hours cut and was compelled to work a mandatory six-day week, alone of all his co-workers. SLAM’s participation on Byrd’s behalf helped make the action one of the largest worker-led pickets for an individual Harvard employee in recent memory. If hundreds of library workers face the total loss of their livelihoods, they can expect a proportionate response from the students who have stood with them for so many years in their struggle for better working conditions.

Meanwhile, library workers continue to perform their duties, knowing that another year of job losses would certainly hurt scholarship on campus. More automation, increased outsourcing to non-Harvard vendors, and further erosion of institutional memory will throw countless roadblocks in the way of the students, faculty and researchers who use Harvard’s libraries. Harvard’s brand will suffer along with workplace morale.  The precious scholarly resources amassed by Harvard, including online databases, will grow less accessible. These unnecessary consequences are a source of great frustration to dedicated employees. If Shenton’s destructive plans go forward, campus workers will soon have myriad opportunities to vent that frustration in public.

Geoff Carens is a Union Representative in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and a member of the No Layoffs Campaign. He is a Library Assistant at Lamont Library.

Harvard Libraries Announce Unspecified Number of Layoffs

Libraries May Reduce Staff


By Justin C. Worland , CRIMSON STAFF WRITER


Harvard University Library employees were informed Thursday at three town hall meetings that the ongoing restructuring of the world’s largest academic library system may result in a reduction in staff, according to people briefed on the meetings.

Prior to Thursday’s meetings, rumors abounded about the implications of the library restructuring on the size of the library staff.

Twitter was abuzz with speculation leading up to Thursday’s meetings and even during them. “All of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired,” read one tweet.

The University announced in the fall that it would reorganize the libraries into affinity groups to bring together library units with similar missions.

“We are consolidating the libraries in a way that will save money, and that money saved will be plowed back into acquisitions and expanded services,” University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 told The Crimson at the time. “It will make the library much stronger.”

Library leaders said that they were seeking a “smaller library” in Thursday’s meetings but left many questions unanswered, according to Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

“There were vague references made to reductions in the size of the staff,” Jaeger said. “Despite persistent questions from the audience, the [library] leaders were not able or willing to provide anything more specific than that.”

Afterward, the University sought to dispel the rumor that all library personnel would be affected by the likely downsizing.

“It is inaccurate to say that all Library staff will need to reapply for their positions,” a statement from the University said.

“Our contract with the University requires union-management consultation when a department is considering [such changes],” Jaeger said. “We’re pretty confident that as this goes forward we’ll continue to hear from them.”

According to a University statement, staff meetings in February will be held to explain the organizational changes in more detail.

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

No More Layoffs - Rehire all laid off workers - Rally - Wednesday, Dec 2, 5pm

Hey Harvard--NO MORE LAYOFFS!

Rehire the Laid-Off Workers! No Furloughs!

RALLY! Wed., Dec 2, 5pm

Holyoke Center, 1350 Mass. Ave. Cambridge

(next to Au Bon Pain, Harvard MBTA stop)

Harvard University’s highly-speculative investments caused its endowment to soar during boom times. Predictably, when the market tanked, Harvard’s risky bets on private equity, hedge funds, etc., lost some money. Refusing to resort to pay cuts for top administrators like many other institutions, Harvard has chosen to balance its books mainly on the backs of lower-paid workers. Hundreds of staffers have been pushed to retire early amid ominous noises about budget cuts and potential job losses. In June, Harvard announced it would lay off 275 clerical and administrative employees. At least 115 members of Harvard’s largest union, HUCTW/AFSCME local 3650, were laid off, not counting term employees whose contracts were not extended. Five months later, less than half the laid off union members have found non-temp positions at Harvard, despite supposedly having preference for open jobs. Some union members now face furloughs (weeks of time off without pay), when they must continue to pay their usual deductions for health-care, etc. despite getting no paycheck!

Harvard’s endowment is still $26 billion! Despite this huge pile of money, Harvard enjoys “non-profit” tax status and doesn’t pay the taxes that ordinary businesses have to pay. We rally to say that Harvard owes the surrounding communities more than layoffs and furloughs! For more information pls. email nolayoffscampaign@yahoo.com

Main Article about Layoffs from Harvard Magazine

"Resizing," before "Reshaping"

“Looming Layoffs,” July-August 2009
“Liquidity and Leverage,” July-August 2009

No weekday hot breakfasts in House dining halls. Continued constraint on faculty appointments (a total of just 15 to 19 junior-faculty searches in 2009-2010, down from as many as several dozen in recent years), and severe limits on visiting faculty, lecturers, and appointments from other Harvard schools: all pointing to more limited course selections. Reduction of junior-varsity baseball, basketball, and hockey to club status. Teaching-fellow and external teaching-assistant “allocations” under “close scrutiny,” to “ensure compliance with new and existing guidelines on section sizes”—presaging larger discussion sections. A previously announced decrease in doctoral-student admissions—adding to pressure on the future supply of teaching fellows. Thermostats lowered in winter and raised in summer. Lessened reliance on consultants, and tighter travel and entertainment budgets.

These are among the measures listed on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) cost-saving website, unveiled on May 11 (www.fas.harvard.edu/home/planning). The academic, administrative, and extracurricular changes are merely those expected to be readily apparent come fall. Neither the economies linked to each measure nor the implications for employees are disclosed, but the actions are meant to realize $77 million in annual savings.

Unfortunately, these steps, characterized by FAS dean Michael D. Smith as a “resizing” through “better use of resources and increased efficiencies,” close only one-third of his faculty’s budget gap. In a community meeting on April 14, he disclosed that Harvard’s largest academic unit (the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)—and the one most hard-pressed, in absolute terms, by the sharp decline in the endowment—faces a $220-million shortfall by the 2010-2011 academic year. FAS received $550 million in endowment distributions to fund operations in fiscal year 2008 and $650 million this past year. It had expected $750 million in the year now beginning, and more thereafter—but instead will be reduced to about $600 million now, and still less in fiscal year 2011. (“A New Economic Reality,” May-June, page 48, reported both the Corporation’s decision to reduce distributions from the endowment for the fiscal year begun this July 1 and again for the following year, and the pressure on other revenue sources.)

The $220-million gap is nearly 20 percent of FAS expenditures in the year just ended. Complicating any economies in the roughly $1.1-billion budget for the new fiscal year, perhaps $375 million is for items that cannot or, for reasons of University policy, will not, be cut: financial aid, sponsored research, and debt service. In fact, each of those items is increasing in the new fiscal year. That still leaves FAS to reduce the cost of its core academic activities by nearly 20 percent.

Smith announced at the meeting that he would charter six working groups (their financial goals yet to be disclosed) to produce cost-cutting proposals from now through spring 2010: arts and humanities, science, social science, College life, College academics, and engineering and applied sciences. Their goal, he wrote bluntly in a May 11 letter, is “a reshaping of the FAS in support of our teaching and research mission through a careful consideration of our academic and programmatic priorities.”

What “reshaping” will entail—perhaps closing or consolidating research centers, or retirement incentives for faculty members—is the subject of anxious speculation, even as the first round of efficiency measures is implemented (see “Looming Layoffs,” page 56). At the May 19 faculty meeting, Francke professor of German art and culture Jeffrey F. Hamburger asked what was meant by “structural change,” as a prelude to the working groups’ assignment. “It’s difficult to make constructive suggestions without some kind of meaningful framework,” he said. He wondered whether there were plans to merge or eliminate departments, and if so, to cut faculty or staff.

President Drew Faust said she hoped that where multiple University units addressed an issue—such as healthcare policy—ways might be found for intellectual collaboration and administrative efficiency. Smith said that the faculty had to examine the intellectual areas it most wished to tackle in the future, and to focus on how to pursue them with the available resources.

Pellegrino University Professor Peter Galison, an historian of science, said he could identify only two “ten to the eighth” (i.e., hundred-million-dollar) opportunities for meaningful savings: debt service and buildings, which were already incurred and in place; and the size of the faculty, which has grown by more than 120 positions this decade. In the end, he said, FAS would “have to be a smaller faculty than we are now,” so it made sense to stop talking about that prospect “in code.”

By planning for a 12 percent reduction in FAS’s endowment distribution for fiscal year 2011 (the Corporation has indicated a cut of “at least” 8 percent), Smith has seemingly built in a budget margin. But financial aid may rise further; past decisions have yielded a still-growing faculty and costly new labs; and faculty and nonunion staff are already going without salary increases.

Although attention focuses on FAS, similar issues play out across Harvard: for example, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, proportionally the most endowment-dependent academic unit, has reduced by 20 percent its number of fellows in the coming year. The same story is unfolding at comparable institutions that grew increasingly reliant on copious funding from their endowments—until last fall.

On April 1, Moody’s Investors Service, the credit-rating agency, issued a report maintaining its Aaa and associated ratings on the University’s debt, while taking into account “the deleterious effects of the global financial crisis and recession” on its finances. Moody’s reviewed Harvard’s remedial actions, observing that in the next few years “the University will face constraints in its capital program while also dealing with a significant reduction in revenues available to support its operations from endowment.” That said, the credit analysts advanced a “stable” outlook, in the context of one large risk: “[T]he University is more exposed than other organizations (outside of higher education)…to rapid and large additional declines in investment markets, given the magnitude of its balance sheet and equity exposures and the high reliance on endowment income over the long term for operations.” (For more perspective, see “Liquidity and Leverage,” page 52.)

Some other universities with diversified, complex portfolios report on their results throughout the year. In documentation for a bond offering this spring, Cornell disclosed that its investments, down 27 percent as of December 31, had depreciated to a 31 percent loss two months later (an estimate that did not include updated, quarterly valuations of private-equity and real-estate investments). In the meantime, it has more than quadrupled relative holdings of cash from the beginning of the year. The University of Virginia Investment Management Company’s March 31 report also indicated a sizable increase in cash, in part to be ready to make mandated future investments in private asset pools.

Both reports suggest what will attract notice when Harvard Management Company reports fiscal year 2009 performance in late summer: how defensive the portfolio has become (insulating against current losses, but depressing potential returns), and what results large holdings of illiquid and hard-to-value assets have produced.

In the meantime, Princeton president Shirley M. Tilghman on April 6 notified her community that the financial markets had “unhappily” not improved from the beginning of the year, compelling a further round of budget cuts for fiscal years 2010 and 2011—following similar rounds of deeper cuts announced by Yale and Stanford. Tilghman forecast uncomfortable pressure on endowment spending extending beyond 2011, even as Princeton pursues its capital campaign, and concluded, “The steady growth in both faculty and staff that we have enjoyed over the last 10 years will end, and the university will have to contract in size.”

The same is likely for much of Harvard. At the May 19 meeting, Faust said the community faces “very hard choices” and acknowledged, “We have to give some things up.” She urged the faculty to “focus not on what we have lost but on what we still have”—superb libraries, laboratories, students, and professorial colleagues.

For Smith, the immediate problem remains: FAS’s large financial chasm could not be closed in one year, so his working groups face months of effort to find additional cuts. In the future, he said on April 14, “it is increasingly likely…that we will not have a need for as many faculty and staff” as today. How the College and graduate school are reshaped looms as a particularly daunting set of issues for Harvard.

Article from Harvard Magazine about layoffs

Looming Layoffs

Main Article: “"Resizing," before "Reshaping",” July-August 2009

Harvard has begun downsizing its workforce. On May 11, Marilyn Hausammann, vice president for human resources, announced that 534 of 1,628 staff members eligible for an early-retirement incentive—33 percent—had accepted the offer. (The Faculty of Arts and Sciences alone offered early retirement to 521 staff members, of whom 30 percent accepted—a small fraction of its nearly 3,700-person staff.)

The retirements will lessen, but not eliminate, layoffs, given pressure to cut spending. As of October 2008, Harvard employed about 12,950 full-time-equivalent non-faculty staff members—coincidentally, nearly 500 more than were employed a year earlier, and almost as many as are retiring early. For the year ended June 30, 2008, compensation accounted for 48 percent of University expenses ($1.7 billion). Hausammann noted, “Although Harvard’s schools and departments are now analyzing the impact of the pending retirements on their budgets…for many schools further reductions in force will likely be necessary to meet budget targets….” FAS dean Michael D. Smith’s letter on the same date reiterated an earlier warning. Although the efficiencies outlined on the FAS website were “staffing neutral,” he wrote, “the financial challenge before us makes it increasingly likely that staff reductions will eventually be necessary.”

The Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM), which led the living-wage campaign for lower-paid University employees at the beginning of the decade, re-emerged around the slogan, “Greed is the new Crimson” (a play on Harvard’s environmental theme), and organized rallies against layoffs (see www.hcs.harvard.edu/slam). SLAM leaflets distributed before the May 19 faculty meeting suggested alternatives (graduated pay reductions of 5 percent to 15 percent and reduced pension contributions for employees earning more than $100,000 per year, reduced paid vacation time) and detailed cuts adopted by senior administrators at Brown, Stanford, and other universities.

Layoffs were widely expected to be announced beginning in late June, after the Commencement crowds dispersed. For updates, consult www.harvardmagazine.com.

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.

London Times on Harvard Layoffs

From The Sunday Times

June 28, 2009

What they don’t teach about cash at Harvard

The world’s richest university has seen its investments slump by $11bn

Dominic Rushe

The quiet of Harvard Yard, the centre of Boston’s famous university, was shattered last week by protesters waving placards and wielding megaphones.

Tourists trying to get their photo taken with the statue of founder John Harvard contended with angry university staff railing against proposals to cut 275 jobs. “Watch out, this is just the beginning,” warned Geoff Carens, a library assistant and protest organiser.

As the world’s richest university wrestles with the hangover of a high-risk investment spree that has wiped $11 billion (£6.6 billion) off its fortunes in the past year, more cuts are coming, he said. This is unlikely to be the last time voices are raised. Staff will not go quietly, said Carens. Future protests would involve “direct action” and be “a lot more dramatic”.

The demonstration was the latest embarrassment at Harvard, which is expected to confirm a 30% fall in its endowment for its 2009 financial year, which ends on Tuesday.

Staff expecting more cuts accuse Drew Faust, its president, of being more concerned with investment returns than academic excellence. Others have identified a more incendiary target: Larry Summers, one of President Barack Obama’s top financial advisers, who was Harvard president between 2001 and 2006.

Harvard’s endowment, a collection of funds made up from donations from alumni, funded about a third of Harvard’s operating budget in 2008. This year’s loss is the biggest in 40 years and the impact is being felt across the campus.

Salaries have been frozen, the divinity school has warned it may not be able to cover tuition for all its students and the university has been forced to add to its debt by issuing $1.5 billion in new bonds, its largest such offering – a sharp reversal of fortune for a fund that was once held up as a model of investment strategy.

Harvard’s endowment stood at $37 billion on June 30 last year, built up from a record run after the university’s fund-management arm made big bets on everything from private equity and property to timber and commodities. Now some of those risky bets have come dramatically unstuck.

The endowment is expected to have fallen to almost $25 billion by the end of the month and the always present tensions between the academics and Harvard Management Company (HMC), the subsidiary that invests the university’s money, are at boiling point.

And that is despite a donation of $100m from David Rockerfeller Sr last year, topped by a $125m gift from Hansjörg Wyss, Switzerland’s second-richest man, in October.

“Harvard has become an investment bank with a university attached,” said Carens. “When I came to Harvard the endowment was $4.5 billion. Now by most estimates it is $25 billion. Harvard has lost some money but they don’t need to lay anybody off. If they need to, they should chop at the top. Cut the salaries of the five or six people who manage the Harvard endowment – they get paid between $2m and $6.4m a year.”

In the 15 years before this year’s fall, Harvard returned an annual 15.7% against 9.2% for the Standard & Poor’s index. Until 2005 HMC was presided over for 16 years by investment guru Jack Meyer, but since his exit in 2005 HMC has gone through staff at an alarming rate, including five chiefs in four years. Last week saw the departure of Marc Seidner, head of fixed income.

New boss Jane Mendillo, 50, came to Harvard last July after running Wellesley College’s far smaller endowment. “I think all investors have had a lesson in how fast and how far the markets can move,” she said in a recent interview.

One alumnus, now a senior financial figure, said Mendillo faced a tough task but could not be blamed for the mess. He said that under Summers, now director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Harvard had given big tuition discounts, started an ambitious building programme and failed to spot the long-term risks being taken by HMC.

“They wanted the best students at any cost. They were giving away tuition dollars in the hope of making it up on the endowment. Summers was responsible for that decision. A lot of people are scared stiff that he is going to do for the American economy what he did for Harvard University,” he said.

Others are more generous. Peter Miralles, president of Atlanta Wealth Consultants, said: “What you are seeing is a reaction to a market environment. They were very early in using multiple asset classes, alternative investments, private equity, commodities. But last year you had a total melt-down in almost every asset class.” Inevitably, he said, in this environment donors were less likely to be generous to Harvard, worsening its position.

Over the long term, though, he said HMC had proved a good manager and would be so again. “The big question is, is using multiple asset classes going to work. The answer is yes,” he said.

Harvard was not alone in being caught out by the credit crunch. “The world changed so quickly on September 15 (the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy), you had to take a lot of actions very quickly,” said one senior fund manager.

What he said was more troubling was Harvard’s reaction to the crisis. “If you looked at the numbers coming out of the endowment world for the fourth quarter of 2008 they all looked the same. Yale, Princeton, Harvard, it didn’t make a difference.” But after the crisis Harvard panicked and starting selling assets. At Yale, Harvard’s arch rival, the “rhetoric was very different”, he said.

The fund manager said David Swensen, Yale’s chief investment officer, had taken a different tack. The fund manager said: “The important thing is to stay in the trade. Those who stayed in caught the bounce, especially in emerging markets. Others like Harvard, I think, started selling like crazy."

Matters were made worse, the fund manager said, by a badly-timed bet on interest rates – which collapsed after Lehman – and the decision to cut risk insurance that had been put in place by Meyer’s successor, Mohamed El-Erian, now co-chief executive of the bond giant Pimco.

Harvard would not comment on investment strategy, but Harvard watchers on Wall Street said El-Erian’s insurance had allowed the endowment to ride out some of the turbulence before Lehman’s collapse. As the crisis worsened, HMC had lost its cushion and its nerve. “If you are down 20% or 30%, the human reaction is to sell when really you should be buying,” said one fund manager.

One of Mendillo’s first moves at HMC was to sell between $1 billion and $1.5 billion of Harvard’s private-equity assets, at a substantial loss. Even after the sale, the endowment still has big private-equity commitments it has yet to pay.

And the people who are paying for the losses are the university staff, said Carens. “These people (at HMC) have made fortunes losing money for the endowment. Now they want us to foot the bill.”