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.

Boston Occupier article on 3/1 No Layoffs Picket

Harvard Community Protests Library Cuts

By Julie Walsh on 3/12/12 • Categorized as Local News

photo credit: Matthew Shochat

Across the country, March 1st protest actions tended to concentrate on the debt-ridden plight of students. On the snowy Thursday evening at Harvard University, the focus was somewhat different.
Fifty protesters gathered in front of Holyoke Center in Cambridge to rally against the university’s secretive, top-down handling of the restructuring of Harvard’s libraries, including plans to cut a substantial number of its 930 full-time employees. Rank-and-file members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) were joined by students, faculty, alumni, and participants in Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard.

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3/1 PICKET IN THE SNOW!

Protesters Rally Against Library Layoffs

By Samuel Y. Weinstock, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Friday, March 02, 2012

Rebecca J. Margolies

Chanting slogans such as "layoffs ruin lives and libraries," Harvard Libraries staff and supporters gathered in front of the Holyoke Center on Thursday evening to protest proposed layoffs.

Approximately 50 protesters gathered in front of the Holyoke Center early Thursday evening to rally against layoffs which may result from the Harvard Library’s upcoming reorganization.
“It may be raw out here, but it’s not as raw as the deal Harvard is giving its employees,” Harvard library worker Geoff P. Carens said through a megaphone to the crowd gathered in the wind and snow. “It may be cold out here, but it’s not as cold as Harvard University.”

After a series of chants and a brief musical performance, the group marched into the Yard and circled Massachusetts Hall, University Hall, and finally Widener Library before returning to the Square. The protesters marched down the center of Mass. Ave., slowing traffic for five minutes before disbanding.
On Jan. 19, Harvard University Library Executive Director Helen Shenton announced that “the library workforce will be smaller than it is now,” and that the University was considering voluntary and involuntary options to reduce staff as part of the Library’s reorganization.

Since then, groups such as the Student Labor Action Movement, Occupy Harvard, and the No Layoffs Campaign have held a variety of protest actions against staff reduction, including an occupation of Lamont Library Café last week.

Multimedia

Photo Library Protests

On Feb. 13, the University announced a voluntary retirement package for library workers. Two weeks ago, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, which represents library employees, proposed forming “joint councils” with library administrators to discuss the reorganization of the library.

At Thursday’s protest, Rudi E. Batzell, a doctoral student in history, told the protesters about attending a Graduate Student Council open forum earlier in the day with University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76.

Batzell said that while most of the forum was spent answering questions previously submitted online, it seemed to him that the administrators were expecting controversial questions about the library reorganization. According to Batzell, Garber said at the forum that it was possible that all staff reductions would be voluntary, but he refused to say for certain.

“He flew out of there,” Batzell said. “It was pretty disappointing.”

Harvard College library worker and HUCTW member Dawn M. Miller said that she attended the rally to express her concern about losing her job or her coworkers losing theirs. She said that she was hopeful that the councils would be helpful, but that the request for their formation was a “weak response” from the union that “should have happened six months ago.”

“I’ll try to be optimistic,” Miller said.

Francisco J. Maldonado ’14, who attended the rally, pointed to the fact that Harvard has the largest university endowment in the world to say that Harvard should not lay off workers.

Maldonado said he was satisfied with the way the rally turned out. “I think we got a pretty good showing in spite of this weather,” he said.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@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.

Crimson: Union Negotiations Made "Challenging" By Fiscal Situation

Union Negotiations Made "Challenging" By Fiscal Situation

By Sofia E. Groopman, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Saturday, July 03, 2010

The University’s difficult financial situation rendered contract negotiations between the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers and University management particularly challenging in the past year, according to leaders of both parties.

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Harvard Institutes a Gag Order?

2010 Muzzle Awards on campus

Harvard and Yale once again lead the way . . . for academic censorship

By HARVEY SILVERGLATE  |  June 30, 2010

Harvard and Yale universities felt the sting of the global economic collapse firsthand in 2009, as the endowments of these stalwart New England Ivy League members dropped by nearly a third. The schools didn't fare much better in the free marketplace of ideas, either. Since last summer, both Ivies have helped pave the censorial frontiers of the corporatized academy, while employing public-relations armies to perpetuate the aura of the liberal-arts sensibility. For these efforts, described in more detail below, two of the nation's pre-eminent academic institutions have earned Muzzle Awards, accolades unlikely to be trumpeted by their respective Offices of Public Affairs.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Harvard, a private institution, is not bound by the First Amendment guarantee of free expression. But Harvard's own Free Speech Guidelines promise wide latitude for self-expression, because "[c]urtailment of free speech undercuts the intellectual freedom that defines our purpose." In at least four instances over the last year, however, Harvard's actions spoke louder than words.

1. Med School media muzzle A proposed Harvard Medical School policy for 2009–'10 instructed "all interactions between students and the media" to be coordinated with the school's public-relations office. The policy was reportedly influenced by student comments in a New York Timesexposé of conflicts of interest among Med School professors. When students were notified about the new policy last August, the incensed aspiring MDs naturally contacted the Times. Under the Times' spotlight, Med School administrators admitted the wording was "problematic" and vowed to remove the policy from the student handbook.

2. Law School soft censorship A third-year Harvard Law student, in a November e-mail to a friend, expressed her interest in seeing further research on a controversial question: whether race and intelligence might be genetically linked. Though the 3L stressed that she "would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position," she deemed the available data insufficient for certainty.
When said e-mail surfaced in late April on a self-described "legal tabloid" blog, Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow sent a school-wide response, in which she not only misinterpreted the student's intent, but condemned the mere asking of the 3L's questions. This skeptical student's "false view," Minow wrote in her accusatory e-mail, "suggested that black people are genetically inferior to white people."
Read closely, the student's e-mail makes no such suggestion. In Minow's response, however, you'll find a textbook example of soft censorship — no direct penalty, but a declaration that certain ideas (or even questions) are off-limits. Minow was "heartened" by the 3L's acknowledging "the offense and hurt that the comment engendered." How would Minow have responded had the student stood by her inquiry? Soft, or hard punishment?

3. Employee loyalty oath It's not only student speech that is under scrutiny. Harvard employees were required, this past year, to sign a stringent "confidentiality agreement," a ban on disclosure of "information about a person or an entity that, if disclosed, could . . . be damaging to financing standing, employability, reputation or other interests [emphasis added]." This serves to insulate not only Harvard, but also its administrators, from public criticism. "Other interests," of course, are in the eyes of the beholder. And few employees would risk venturing to find out what they might be.

4. The inmates take over the asylum Given the Muzzle-friendly campus milieu, it's small wonder that students even turned the cudgel of censorship onto themselves. Radical anti-immigration activist (and Minuteman Project founder) Jim Gilchrist was invited to speak at an October 17 Harvard symposium. Days before the event, notwithstanding that Gilchrist had spoken at Harvard Law less than a year prior, the Harvard Undergraduate Legal Committee rescinded the invitation. Justifying his censorial urges, a student expressed concern "about the broader national implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name." These undergrads had clearly drunk Harvard's corporatized Kool-Aid.

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Crimson - Workers Advocates March on Yard

Workers Advocates March on Yard

By TARA W. MERRIGAN, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Friday, April 30, 2010

SIRUI LI

Christopher A. Johnson-Roberson ‘11 sings for more communication with workers in the Harvard community as he leads a procession of 30 across the Yard.

Strumming a banjo and guitar, two Harvard undergraduates led a band of 30 through Harvard Yard yesterday afternoon, stopping at various landmarks to air employee concerns and honor University staff.

The group—which included Harvard students, faculty, and staff—aimed to remind the Harvard community of the impact of last year’s layoffs on current employees, such as heavier work loads, said Neal J. Meyer ’11, a Crimson photographer and a member of the Harvard Student Labor Action Movement, which organized the event.

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

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

From OpenMediaBoston.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAS "Slims" Budget

Though FAS Slims Down Budget, Work Lies Ahead
Alumni donations and improved financial markets help FAS close deficit

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

Published: Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has reduced its deficit to $80 million, signifying a drop that FAS Dean Michael D. Smith credited at yesterday’s Faculty meeting to alumni donations, improvements in the international financial market, and last year’s cost-cutting measures.

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Harvard receives $20.5m gift for new Asia studies center

Harvard receives $20.5m gift for new Asia studies center

Will fund program on Indonesia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Workers, Students Rally Against Layoffs

Workers, Students Rally Against Layoffs
Union members and supporters express discontent with budget cuts
By Jacob D. Roberts, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Published: Thursday, December 03, 2009
Rally for Workers

Harvard workers and their supporters rally outside of the Holyoke Center yesterday evening. Rally participants chanted slogans and held signs that urged Harvard to rehire laid-off workers.

Several dozen Harvard employees and students rallied outside the Holyoke Center last night, protesting the budget cuts that may dim the holiday season for some University staff.

Read more »

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

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

Protesters Highlight Health Concerns

Protesters Highlight Health Concerns

CRIMSON/ REBECCA J. MARGOLIES

Students and union activists protest layoffs and hours reductions for janitors in front of the Holyoke Center yesterday. They say that sanitation standards will slip, and health and safety will suffer as a result.
See more pictures for this story.

Published On Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:38 AM

By PETER F. ZHU
Crimson Staff Writer

Union activists and students at yesterday’s labor rally added to their tried-and-true repertoire of bullhorn blasting and sign waving to walk to Mass. Hall to deliver a modest gift to University President Drew G. Faust: a bag labeled “Get Well Harvard,” filled with cards from protesters.

But the gesture was not a sarcastic reference to the University’s recently-announced 30 percent drop in endowment value.

Instead, the cards left space for people to write “recommendations for a healthy Harvard,” and were intended to highlight a message—that the health of Harvard’s workers is deteriorating, and that the well-being of students and staff will suffer soon as well. Protesters argued that recent layoffs and hour reductions have left janitors with more to do in less time, and that sanitation standards will inevitably suffer—hurting the rest of the Harvard community.

“The first line of defense [against disease] is sanitation, and that’s the function of janitors,” said Daniel B. Becker, a union organizer who represents Harvard’s service workers.

A Harvard police officer accepted the gift bag and brought it into Mass. Hall, but it is unclear if Faust received the offering. Harvard spokesman Kevin Galvin declined to comment on the matter, saying only that he was “confident cleaning standards are being maintained” and that no Harvard-employed janitors have been laid off this summer.

But the University did slash work hours for over 100 of its own janitors in July, and numerous janitors it employs through outside firms—a group not addressed by Galvin’s statement—have been laid off in recent months as a result of reduced custodial budgets.

Abigail S. Brown ’11, a member of the Student Labor Action Movement, said that officials need to understand that there are “all sorts of people that make up Harvard and need to be recognized as valuable.” While yesterday’s actions were not intended to be conciliatory, Brown said SLAM would be employing various new strategies this year, hopefully embodying more “positive spin” than in the past.

“SLAM is not an anti-Harvard organization,” Brown reiterated.

But other attendees of the rally were more militant. Chanting repeatedly “No justice, no peace,” and “Harvard, escucha, estamos en la lucha” (Harvard, listen, we are in a fight), roughly 50 protesters picketed outside the Holyoke Center, denouncing what they called Harvard’s greed and calling for shared sacrifice by administrators. Geoff P. Carens, a Harvard librarian and union member who frequently organizes such vocal protests, ridiculed the University for saying that it was in the midst of a fiscal crisis and had to lay off workers when the endowment still stands at $26 billion.

“These people don’t know what a tough decision really is. They’ll never know what it’s like to struggle for something worthwhile,” shouted Bryan Koulouris, a member of advocacy group Socialist Alternative, to the gathered protestors. “That’s what this struggle’s about: It’s about solidarity.”

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.

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.

Vanity Fair article on Harvard's finances

Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard

by Vanity Fair

June 30, 2009, 6:37 PM

For years, administrators at Harvard University could throw money at anything that tickled their fancy. A new medical school building for $260 million? Sure. A massive, Robert A.M. Stern—designed addition to Harvard Law School? No problem. One of the most sweeping financial aid initiatives ever undertaken? Consider it done.

Of course, that was before the money dried up.

Now, Vanity Fair’s Nina Munk finds America’s oldest university suddenly at risk of not being able to keep the lights on. Over the past year, Harvard’s endowment has collapsed (it lost $8 billion between last July and October), its fundraising has declined, and its construction cranes have been idled. Gripped by the worst economic crisis in its history, Harvard is in trouble, and no one can decide who’s to blame.

Munk exposes the behind-the-scenes finger-pointing and uncertainty that has administrators longing for the gilded age of soaring endowments. Highlights from the article, “Rich Harvard Poor Harvard,” include:

A lone bright spot
• Harvard’s year-end numbers will not be as bad as predicted, Munk learned from a source on the board of Harvard Management Company, the firm responsible for managing the university’s endowment. Although the university’s endowment has shrunk precipitously over the past year, the insider says it will be down 23 to 25 percent, not the 30 percent predicted elsewhere.

Harvard doesn't fire people; it “resizes”
• Budget cuts are not in the Harvard vocabulary—or at least they haven’t been. “I'd rather use the words ‘reduction,’ ‘shifting things around,’ ‘reorganizing’—rather than saying something that says ‘cuts,’ which implies you whack the heads off flowers,” Evelynn Hammonds, the dean of Harvard College, said at a town-hall meeting in May. But there is a lot of whacking that will have to be done. “There are going to be a hell of a lot of layoffs. Courses will be cut. Class sizes will get bigger,” conceded a Harvard insider.

In the real world, people get fired for mismanagement like this
• The Harvard endowment soared from $4.8 billion in 1990 to $36.9 billion as of June 30, 2008, and in the last half-decade or so, the men and women who run Harvard seemed to have convinced themselves that the university’s fund would grow at double-digit rates for, well, eternity. “Apparently nobody in our financial office has read the story in Genesis about Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream—you know, during the seven good years you save for the seven lean years,” says Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School since 1967.

Harvard is desperate
• If Harvard were a serious business facing a liquidity crisis, it would have made drastic changes as its endowment tanked: say, axing senior employees, shuttering departments, and selling real estate. But elite universities don’t like shaking things up. “None of these schools has the ability to cut expenses fast enough” is how a hedge-fund manager who counts Harvard among his investors describes the situation. Munk asked the hedge fund manager to look at Harvard’s finances and assess the extent to which its endowment will be able to keep pace with its immovable costs. The hedge fund manager’s conclusion: “They are completely fucked.”

• In the fall of 2008, Harvard tried to sell off a $1.5 billion chunk of its private-equity portfolio—except no one was willing to pay anywhere near the asking price for those assets. One money manager described a conversation late last year with Jane Mendillo (who in July 2008 became president and C.E.O. of Harvard Management Company) in which he offered to buy back Harvard’s sizable stake in his private fund.

“Here, I think it’s worth—you know, today the [book] value is a dollar, so I’ll pay you 50 cents,” he said.

“Then why would I sell it?” Mendillo responded.

“Well, why are you?” he said. “I don’t know. You’re the one who wants to sell, not me. If you guys want to sell, I’m happy to rip your lungs out… If you are desperate, I’m a buyer.”

“Well,” Mendillo responded, “we’re not desperate.”

Except it’s pretty clear Harvard was desperate. In December, the university sold $2.5 billion worth of bonds, increasing its total debt to just over $6 billion. Servicing that debt alone will cost Harvard an average of $517 million a year through 2038, according to Standard & Poor’s.

A $1 billion mistake
• Harvard sold those bonds because it needed cash, fast, to cover what sources say was an almost unthinkable $1 billion unrealized loss from interest-rate swaps. The swaps were put in place under former Harvard president Larry Summers in the early 2000s to protect the university against rising interest rates on all the money it had borrowed. Instead, interest rates plunged. Yet for reasons no one can seem to explain, the university simply forgot to (or chose not to) cancel its swaps. The result was a $1 billion loss.

The fall of Harvard Management Company
• The longtime head of Harvard Management Company, Jack Meyer, quit to start his own hedge fund in 2005 after growing fed up with criticism over the eight-figure salaries some of his managers were pulling down and with persistent meddling from top Harvard officials. Two particular annoyances were Summers, who had been questioning Meyer’s investment strategies, and Robert Rubin, a member of the Harvard Corporation, who frowned on Meyer’s aggressive strategies and wound up on the “warpath” with Meyer, as one person put it.

• When Meyer left, he took much of Harvard Management Company with him — including 30 portfolio managers and traders, as well as the chief risk officer, chief operating officer, and chief technology officer. The place became “like a Ferrari without the engine,” according to a portfolio manager who arrived after Meyer left. This angered Rubin, according to someone who knows him well: “In Rubin’s opinion, Meyer crippled the institution.”

Rule one about that “resizing”: Don’t talk about it
• Munk became persona non grata in Cambridge, as Harvard refused to cooperate with her on the story. But speaking on the condition of anonymity, administrators and other officials were happy to snipe back and forth. “Were the judgments we made reasonable ones?” asked a former top Harvard administrator. “At the time, I think they were reasonable judgments. It turns out, with the benefit of hindsight, you might have preferred less ambitious plans.” A member of the board of Harvard Management Company doesn’t buy it. “This story is about leadership. It isn’t about money,” the person said.

Vanity Fair’s August issue, which contains the full text of “Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard,” hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on July 1, and nationwide on July 7.

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.”

More layoffs coming for custodial staff

Cutbacks to Subcontracted Janitorial Staff Continue

Published On Tuesday, June 30, 2009 9:10 PM

By PETER F. ZHU
Crimson Staff Writer

University officials are continuing to cut Harvard's subcontracted janitorial staff despite a string of protests in Cambridge and at the Medical School campus this past spring, according to union organizers.

Acme Pioneer Building Services, which provides roughly 40 cleaners at various locations throughout Harvard's Cambridge campus, is planning on laying off the equivalent of four full-time employees at the Harvard Kennedy School, according to Wayne M. Langley, director of higher education for the Service Employees International Union Local 615. Daniel B. Becker, an SEIU organizer working with Langley, said that while the cuts have not been fully finalized, the reductions were slated to happen on July 1 and some workers may have already been notified.

Becker also said that the union learned on Tuesday morning that 10 workers at Harvard Business School, subcontracted from UGL Unicco, are scheduled to be laid off on July 13. He said that the workers were notified of the cuts on Monday, but that the Union had not been consulted beforehand.

Unicco is also planning on laying off one part-time worker at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study while cutting work hours by 8 percent for the other 12 employees there, Becker said. He emphasized that the union is still engaged in discussions with the subcontractor about the downsizing.

University spokesman Kevin Galvin declined to comment on the latest staff reductions. But Harvard officials have long cited the slumping endowment as a reason to trim compensation costs, which make up roughly half of Harvard's operating budget.

Langley said that the University's decentralized decision-making and budget-planning process have made it difficult for the union to gather concrete information about the reductions. He also warned that similar cuts to subcontracted workers will likely continue through the summer and the next fiscal year.

Earlier this spring, a number of subcontracted janitors were laid off at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Real Estate Services, prompting student protests and even a vigil for the workers. American Cleaning Company laid off 11 employees but then rehired two at HMS, and OneSource laid off seven at properties administered by HRES, Langley said. He added that due to a contract swap and reduction, Unicco also lost two employees at HRES.

While the University does not directly dictate how many workers need to be laid off at the various sites, it has asked subcontractors to cut costs by 30 to 40 percent, which have translated into staff reductions. Langley said that he does not know of any reductions made to Harvard's directly-hired cleaning staff.

Langley said he believes that Harvard has failed to provide adequate and detailed financial information to justify the cuts, and that it is debatable whether the janitorial staff reductions are necessary or effective. As such, he said, "we feel Harvard has the resources not to do any layoffs [and] there's been a choice made here, to punish loyal, hardworking employees and to keep the endowment."

Furthermore, he said, when SEIU organizers meet with human resource and academic administrators, Harvard officials are uninformed and fail to communicate openly about their specific cost-cutting needs and goals. He said that the union routinely asks Harvard how many staff will be cut and how the University plans to accomplish the same workload with fewer staff, but each time the response has been unclear and unsatisfactory.

"The University says they're willing to meet at any time, but it's an illusion," he said. "Then they ask, 'What do we mean?' I say, 'They don't answer the questions.' There's been this cone of silence over the whole problem."

John DeLuca, president of Acme Pioneer, declined to comment on the discussions with Harvard. But he emphasized that Acme is a service company dedicated to meeting its customers' needs, and he noted that beyond ensuring that the cuts are made according to seniority, the Union has little real say in the cost-cutting process.

"If Harvard says we're going to cut these services, it's what you do," DeLuca said. "[The union] has nothing to say about the cuts. If you're running a business and you want to cut somebody, you don't have to ask the union's permission. That's the way America runs."

Representatives from Unicco could not be reached for comment on the layoffs.

Langley said he is concerned that there is a "passivity" in the Harvard community about the recent University-wide staff layoffs, as well as the janitorial cuts. But he insisted that "despite what people say, [the cuts] will have an impact on the academic quality of the institution."

"We continue to insist that there's no need for layoffs at this time, and that's our position," he said. "In prior recessions, if you got laid off, you could find a job, although maybe not the best job...[it's] a whole different ball game now. This is like life or death stuff, and I'm being completely honest. We see the consequences of people losing houses and healthcare when they can't find work, and we've seen this in our own union."

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.

Article about Layoffs

Harvard Layoffs: The Axe Falls But Workers Fight Back
Jun 30, 2009
By Joshua Koritz, member Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers/AFSCME 3650 (personal capacity)

On Tuesday, June 23, after months of cuts in budgets throughout the organization, Harvard University announced 275 layoffs. Activists in the Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign quickly called a demonstration and 100 people showed up in Harvard Yard two days later to protest these layoffs.

Workers from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers/AFSCME 3650, SEIU 615 (janitors and security guards), UNITE HERE 26 (dining hall workers), students in the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM), faculty members and concerned community members all made up a spirited demonstration that marched around Harvard Yard during their lunch break. Chanting: “They say cutback, we say fightback!” “They say layoff, we say back off!” “1,2,3,4, Harvard is not poor! 5,6,7,8, layoffs are what we hate!”

Testimonials from workers who had been laid off without even so much as an inkling that their jobs were at risk, from their co-workers, and from faculty and students who will be negatively affected by this reduction in staff made for a powerful kick off.

The No-Layoffs Campaign at Harvard is unique in that it was started up by activists before any layoffs were actually announced, so a small network of activists was already in place to respond. However it will take a massive mobilization of Harvard workers and community in the coming months to prevent further layoffs and get those jobs back that have already been eliminated. This is needed not just at Harvard, but throughout society in all industries and areas that have seen layoffs and cutbacks.

Harvard's Money and the Layoffs
In September, 2008, Harvard made headlines announcing an endowment of $37 billion, making it the richest university in the world and the second richest non-profit, non-government organization in the world. Since then, it is estimated that the endowment has lost 30% of its value. It is worth pointing out that Harvard does not rely solely on its endowment for income, but received over $600 million in gifts in 2008, owns property and collects rent all over the Boston area, plus tuition, federal and private grants, not to mention the retail money Harvard makes from branding.

Harvard has used this drop in the value of its endowment as an excuse to centralize and streamline its administration. This was eventually going to result in layoffs, and in fact these are not the first. Already custodial staff and dining hall staff have had positions eliminated.

These decisions are being made by the reclusive Harvard Corporation, headed by president Drew Gilpin Faust. It is an unelected, secretive board that includes Robert Rubin (former bigwig at CitiGroup) and has cut the flow of funding to Harvard from the endowment. They run the endowment like an investment bank – for profit – yet Harvard is legally a non-profit. If Harvard is not willing to dip into the principle of its endowment in these troubling economic times to save jobs and the greater community of which it is part it should lose its non-profit status and pay taxes like the rest of us on the profits it makes.

The layoffs have been spread throughout the university but have targeted many longer serving workers who, due to union raises, were at the top of their pay scale, some of whom were only a few years from retirement.

Workers at Harvard are being forced to pay the price for the economic recession, a blatant attack on working people by the hedge fund gamblers, like those who have managed the Harvard endowment, who are responsible for this recession.

Each layoff represents rents and bills that may not get paid. Each one represents a parent who agonizes over where their next meal will come from. Each layoff is a slap in the face to workers at Harvard and workers everywhere. When Harvard can lay people off despite their riches, we need to say: if you can't run this, we will! Take Harvard out of the hands of the corporate elite. Open its doors to the community. Use the endowment for education and not for profit

Open Media Boston coverage of the rally

Harvard University Workers Demonstrate Against Mass Layoffs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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