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

HUCTW Leadership Open Letter on Library Layoffs

Library System in Jeopardy

By Carrie Barbash, Alex Chisholm, and Bill Jaeger

Published: Monday, March 05, 2012

Since 2009, Harvard has been reorganizing its 73 libraries into a consolidated entity, the Harvard Library. Library staff members are deeply concerned that some of the proposed changes, including workforce reductions, will result in serious threats to the integrity of the Library. We worry that if the voices of staff are not heard and the reorganization continues on its present course, thousands of books and materials could be lost, service standards could drop to unacceptable levels, and human relationships that are key to research, curriculum, and collection development could be severed.

In recent communications, Harvard Library leaders have implied that staffing levels need to be reduced to put us in line with our peers, asserting that Harvard spends more on its library than other universities. But HL leaders have not provided the community with any data to support the assumption that this discrepancy is caused by “overstaffing.” We would expect Harvard Library to be more expensive to operate than its peers—it is larger, with a spectacularly broad and unique collection that requires sophisticated maintenance. It has significant offsite holdings, and offers deluxe services such as HD Transfer and “Scan-and-Deliver.”

Additionally, since 2009 (which is when the data comparing Harvard to other schools were gathered), Harvard Library staffing levels have dropped by more than 20 percent. More recently, the University offered eligible library workers an early-retirement package. With the threat of possible layoffs heavy in the air, many long-time staff members will likely take the package and leave. Harvard Library cannot afford to lose any more skilled workers. Across the campus, librarians and library assistants report serious quality problems resulting from understaffing and overreliance on poorly-considered cost-cutting measures.

In order to reduce labor costs, HL increasingly sends books and materials to external vendors for outsourced cataloging. The results are alarming: outsourced materials are frequently cataloged with mistakes in title, author, subject, or call number. Since staff members often do not have time or permission to make corrections, the errors have led to thousands of materials becoming undiscoverable. The materials reside physically on shelves or in the Depository, but patrons are unable to locate or retrieve them. Precious books, films, journals, documents, and other treasured resources are being lost.

In all library departments, students and temps provide valuable assistance to overworked permanent staff, but dependency on short-term staff actually creates more work. Although temporary workers seem low-cost, the amount of time permanent staff spend training them on sophisticated tasks, and checking and correcting their work, cancels out most or all of the savings. When a short-term worker leaves and is replaced, this process begins all over again.

Staffing shortages are also affecting circulation, with some departments reporting 30 percent staffing reductions since 2009. For smaller libraries, this often means that there is only one person on duty, and tasks like searching for missing items and preparing materials for transfer necessarily get set aside to help patrons. Staff regularly skip lunch and breaks, or work when they are sick, because there is no one else to cover for them.

Conservation technicians talk about how a deep understanding of their particular library’s collections allows them to know which of the rare, fragile materials need attention. Their unique expertise and cross-departmental relationships often enable them to repair items on the same day the work is requested. But as this skilled group becomes scarce, technicians struggle to maintain high levels of quality.

Librarians and assistants regularly work on projects that span departments and require advanced skills. Often these projects fall outside of official job descriptions, but they are vital to patrons’ efforts to carry out research, develop curricula, teach courses, and diagnose patients. If staffing levels are cut further or jobs are over-simplified, these critical functions will suffer.

No one person can claim to have the authoritative model for the great Library of the 21st century. But there is only one effective approach to such a major reorganizational effort: the process needs to be transparent and participatory. If the cautionary cries of library staff about severe understaffing and quality concerns are not heard and heeded, the Harvard Library Transition will not be successful.

One staff member sums up the urgency of the moment beautifully: “There is such a breadth and depth of knowledge within the library support staff that could easily be used to make the new Harvard Library a reality and a rousing success without cutting a single job. We are already at bare-bones staffing level in my library, and I hear the same thing from everyone I talk to. Don't fire us. You need us. Put us to work, give us new tasks, new ideas, new technology—we are knowledge junkies, we love drowning ourselves in books, media, anything containing the written or spoken word, and we can do anything you throw at us… I enjoy learning. For its own sake. That's what makes a librarian (or in my case, a library paraprofessional) tick. That's what I love. And I'm not alone, not by a long shot. Everyone I work with shares the same passion.”

Carrie Barbash, Alex Chisholm, and Bill Jaeger are organizers with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, which represents close to half the Library workforce at Harvard. This piece was written with the assistance of unionized library staff and non-unionized librarians from across Harvard.

Crimson 2009 Archives - Faculty Calls For Library Funding

Faculty Calls For Library Funding 
Over 100 Professors support letter to University administration 

By Noah S. Rayman and Elyssa A. L. Spitzer, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Published: Monday, December 07, 2009

With budget cuts looming over Harvard’s numerous libraries, more than a hundred faculty members signed off on an impassioned letter calling on top University administrators to increase funding for library acquisitions.

The letter, sent on Friday to University President Drew G. Faust, Provost Steven E. Hyman, and Faculty of Arts and Science Dean Michael D. Smith, follows a report released last month by a University Task Force suggesting that Harvard could no longer “harbor delusions of being a completely comprehensive collection.” The University will need to drastically restructure its “labyrinthine” library system in the face of budgetary pressure, the report said.

Read more »

Law School Announces Layoffs

Dear Members of the Law School Community,

I am writing to update you on the HLS budget process and to share some difficult news about cuts that are necessary in order to absorb the impact of our declining endowment.

As we have gone through the budget process over the past several months, many of you have offered ideas for achieving savings, especially during the recent staff focus groups on the current HLS financial environment, co-sponsored by the Joint Council and Human Resources. I am deeply grateful for your input, much of which we have adopted.

As I outlined for you at the Town Hall meeting in April, the distributions we expect to receive from our share of the endowment in FY10 and FY11 are expected to fall by as much as $19 million from FY09 levels—a decrease of more than ten percent of our current annual operating budget.

After extensive review of all our operations, we have now settled on an FY10 budget that represents a major step in our response to this new reality. As part of this process, all departments across the school were mandated to design budgets for FY10 that were approximately 10 percent lower than what they had to spend in FY09. Those plans have now been finalized.

I know your overriding concerns are with the staff reductions that I told you were likely when I communicated with you in April, so I will address these first. It’s a difficult subject, and the news that jobs will be lost will certainly come as a blow even if it is not unexpected. Nothing I say here will bring much comfort to those who will be impacted the most, but I can tell you that every one of these decisions has been extremely tough to make.

Today, we will begin the process of notifying 12 of our employees that they are being laid-off. We expect all of these notifications to be made by the end of the workday tomorrow. This is by far the most painful of a number of measures that, together, ultimately will result in the reduction of our staff by close to 10 percent. The bulk of these reductions and savings will come from a combination of the university’s early retirement program, the elimination of current vacancies that will not be filled, the ending of several limited-term appointments, and several offers of redeployment.

The people who are being laid off are drawn from a broad range of pay-grades and departments, and include managerial staff. After these reductions are made, the size of our workforce will be similar to what it was in 2005—when the value of our endowment was closer to what it is today.

Understandably, many of you have expressed a wish that I be as transparent as possible about the process by which these decisions have been made. I can tell you that it was straightforward. Our compass was set according to our strategic goals: to make sure that Harvard Law School will continue to offer first-class teaching and scholarship; attract top-tier students and faculty; build its world-class clinical program; support the finest law library and legal materials collection in the world; and maintain its longstanding commitments to financial aid and the encouragement of public service.

Be assured that layoffs were considered only after an exhaustive look at all other possibilities, and only after we took a series of steps to cut costs in ways that minimized the impact on our workforce—freezing salaries for faculty and exempt staff members, strictly limiting new hires, reducing the use of temporary labor, and offering a voluntary early retirement program.

I believe that these decisions, including the layoffs, were the right decisions for the Law School. I reviewed each of these decisions personally. They were difficult decisions to make, and I know they will be even more difficult for those most affected to absorb.

As we’ve gone through this process, many of you have asked how the faculty will be contributing to the effort to minimize the impact of the economic downturn. The faculty, senior administrators and I are in full agreement that the staff should not shoulder the burden alone. We have taken a number of additional measures to share that burden. Reductions in faculty allowances and certain stipends have been instituted for FY10. Changes in procedures for developing the teaching program in FY11 and beyond have been put in place to ensure that the permanent faculty will teach as many of our core courses as possible, and in some cases teaching above their required loads, in part so that fewer visiting professors will be needed.

Furthermore, members of the faculty and senior administration staff have pledged to contribute several hundred thousand dollars in cash contributions and have waived certain other forms of compensation to help us ameliorate the severity of this downsizing. Their contributions have made a material difference in avoiding even deeper cuts, and I’m deeply touched by their generosity.

In the months ahead, we will continue to explore additional opportunities for streamlining our operations and identifying efficiencies. This will include looking at ways to rationalize certain aspects of our organizational structure and also our space. The decisions we have made for FY10 have given us a solid start towards equilibrium during this period of diminished endowment distributions. But we don’t know how long this period will last, and we must continue to prepare for what could turn out to be a long interval before the endowment recovers fully.

In closing, let me say that the people who will be leaving us will be missed. Their collective contributions to the Law School over many years were substantial and valuable. I also recognize that we will need to adjust to the workplace without some longtime friends and colleagues. I assure you that we will do all in our power to support the staff who are directly and indirectly affected by this change. Those who are leaving will receive a transition package including eligibility for enhanced severance, continuation of subsidized health benefits for 12 months, a 60-day paid notice period, and access to outplacement or case management services.

It has been a privilege to serve as acting Dean these past several months, especially because I’ve had a chance to see and understand more fully how dedicated and professional you are in going about your jobs here on a daily basis, and how deeply you care for this institution. Harvard Law School is indeed a tremendous place, in no small part because of all of you, and I am confident that you will share your many ideas and your support with Martha Minow, as you have done so graciously with me.

These are challenging times, but the school will get through them—not just because of the tough decisions we’ve had to make, but because of the hard work and cooperative spirit of the good people who work here.

Best wishes,

Howell Jackson

275 Layoffs Announced!

This letter was sent to Harvard Staff today from President Drew Faust:

Dear Colleagues,

As all of you know, this past year has created a set of extraordinary financial challenges for our university as it has for others. I am grateful for the continuing efforts made by people across Harvard to confront these new realities with thoughtfulness and care, and with an emphasis on sustaining the strength of our core academic programs.

With compensation accounting for so high a proportion of our budget, we will enter the 2009-10 academic year with salaries held flat for faculty and exempt staff; we have also offered a voluntary early retirement program in which more than 500 staff members across Harvard have chosen to participate.

While these actions have helped us reduce expenses, we nevertheless have more we must do. In the coming days, Harvard’s Schools and units, as well as its central administration, will be carrying out a reduction in the size of our workforce — modest in comparison to the overall size of our University-wide staff, but nonetheless painful for those people directly affected, as well as for our community as a whole. Most of the Schools will carry out the process this week; the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Medical School, the central administration, and several of the allied institutions will follow, beginning on June 29.

Such decisions, in their human dimensions, are among the hardest that an institution like ours can make. But difficult circumstances have called for difficult decisions across the University.

As we proceed through this complicated transition, I want again to express my appreciation to all of you for your dedicated efforts on Harvard's behalf. A letter from Marilyn Hausammann, our vice president for human resources, explaining more about the planned reductions, appears below.

Sincerely,

Drew Faust

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to let you know that most of the Schools, allied institutions, and units in the central administration at Harvard will be carrying out a reduction in our workforce over the next seven business days.

The size and scope of the reductions will vary across the Schools and units, but when taken together these changes will result in the elimination of approximately 275 staff positions. About 40 more staff members will be offered positions with reduced work hours or an academic year schedule. Deans at the affected Schools and department leaders will be communicating directly with their staff members about the changes taking place in their local communities over the coming days.

We regret the impact this will have on the lives of our valued colleagues. This decision was driven by the financial challenges facing the University after a projected 30 percent drop in our endowment, as well as pressure on other revenue sources, and it should not be allowed to diminish the many contributions made by these staff members during their time with the University.

Over the past six months, managers across the University have scrubbed their budgets for non-personnel savings, canceled or curtailed travel, and limited other discretionary spending. We have slowed development in Allston, strictly limited hiring, and reduced our reliance on outside contractors. We have held salaries flat for the coming year for our faculty and exempt staff, a move affecting more than 9,000 individuals. And the Voluntary Early Retirement Program that was offered to about 1,600 employees attracted more than 500 participants.

These steps have helped to keep the number of involuntary reductions as small as possible. Unfortunately, further cuts are needed in order for Harvard to adjust to the institution’s new economic reality.

About half of the positions eliminated are administrative or professional positions, and almost all of the remaining ones are clerical or technical jobs. Service and trade workers will be largely unaffected.

The University is taking a number of steps to support staff members facing layoffs. These include:

• 60 days of pay from the time of notification,
• lump-sum severance of one to two weeks of pay for each year of service,
• enhanced severance benefits that include an additional four weeks of pay, and
• the opportunity to continue medical and dental benefits for 18 months, with a full year at subsidized rates.

Employees will have access to information about their benefits in individually prepared materials, on HARVie, and at a special walk-in Employee Support Center.

Administrative/professional and non-union employees wishing to begin a new job search are eligible for outplacement services and employment coaching. Harvard case management will be provided for HUCTW members. And, effective immediately, Harvard will institute a 30-day external hiring freeze for staff jobs to focus our efforts on matching qualified internal candidates with current job openings. I know that this is difficult news both for our colleagues whose positions are being eliminated and for those of you who will miss working alongside them. I think it is important to note that all of the steps that we have taken to reduce spending over the past six months have been taken with the aim of sustaining the academic and organizational capabilities Harvard will need for the future, while minimizing the impact on our workforce.

To those of you who are directly affected by this reduction in force, please know that we will do everything we can to make your transition as smooth as possible.

And to the entire University community, please know that we appreciate your dedication in this challenging time. With your help, Harvard will continue to be a vital and engaging place to work.

Sincerely,

Marilyn Hausammann
Vice President for Human Resources

Dean Smith email 2/17/2009, "voluntary" early retirement

Dear FAS Faculty and Staff,

Today detailed information about the University's Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program announced last week is being shared with
all those who are eligible to participate. I would like to take this opportunity to put the program in context for the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences and to express my gratitude to all those long-serving members of the staff who will now consider whether this program is right for them.

The precipitous decline in the national economy has hit every household, business and nonprofit, and Harvard has not been immune. Our plans
and emerging actions assume that the endowment will be down 30 percent this year and that we must begin to adjust to this new fiscal reality
immediately. As you know from the activities in your own departments over the last few months, we are attempting to reduce overall spending
while still investing in the vital academic programs that will ensure FAS's excellence in teaching and research for years to come. University
leadership, working closely with the Council of Deans, has taken similar actions. The voluntary early retirement program is one such University
initiative that aims to help the Schools in their efforts to cut costs while minimizing impact on the workforce.

As we consider spending cuts in the FAS, we are acutely aware of the importance of our people: the faculty, staff, and students. Through the
efforts of our staff, the FAS is able to further cutting-edge research, support innovative pedagogy, and develop the unique learning environment
that defines who we are and enables us to make our contribution to the world, both through scholarship today and through training of tomorrow's
leaders. For staff's service, their dedication, their contributions to the many activities of the FAS, I am deeply grateful.

I am pleased that the University is in a position to offer an early retirement plan for those who are eligible and who may want to take
advantage of it. In addition to the benefits normally provided under Harvard's staff retirement programs, the package will include a lump-sum
retirement incentive, a monthly supplement to "bridge" early retirees to Social Security at age 62, and eligibility for retiree medical coverage.
Personalized information is being delivered to eligible employees in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences beginning today. Eligible staff
will have 45 days from the day of receipt of their packets to decide whether to opt in. Basic information about the program, including
a schedule of informational and financial counseling sessions and a list of contacts for questions or concerns, has been posted on HARVie
(http://harvie.harvard.edu). Though the University's program is for staff only, we are considering whether it might be appropriate also to
offer a retirement program for faculty.

With more than half of our $1 billion annual operating budget dedicated to compensation costs, it is clear that realigning FAS for the future
will depend on some changes to our current workforce. Let me assure you that we continue to explore every option available in order to limit
staff changes forced solely by our budget challenges. We hope that the level of participation in the voluntary early retirement program will
mitigate the need for further staff reductions. Such considerations will be made after the program has closed and results are assessed.

These are difficult times for everyone, and we understand that deciding whether to participate in this program will be a major decision for
many of our employees. Harvard is committed to providing our employees with the information and retirement counseling that they need to fully
consider the opportunity for early retirement provided by this program.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Smith