Union Readies For Today’s Civil Disobedience

Students and janitors are gearing up for a rally and a display of civil disobedience in the Square this afternoon in an effort to pressure Harvard into making wage concessions in the on-going labor negotiations.

Tomorrow marks the start of the sixth week of negotiations between the University and Service Employees International Union Local 254 (SEIU), which represents Harvard’s janitors.

The negotiations are the first following the Dec. 19 report of the Harvard Committee on Employee and Contracting Policies (HCECP), which called for higher wages for low-paid workers. University President Lawrence H. Summers largely accepted the report last month.

At the rally this afternoon, however, workers will be asking for an hourly wage that is about $3 above the $10.68 “living wage” figure the city of Cambridge set last year and the $10.83 to $11.30 of the HCECP recommendations.

David A. Jones, Harvard’s top labor negotiator, said the union’s refusal to accept offers around that number was “more than surprising” in light of the call last spring by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) for Harvard to pay a “living wage” and Local 254’s agreement in November for Tufts University janitors to receive base wages of $11.45 starting in 2004.

“It’s kind of hard to follow what the [union] hopes are when the goalpost moves repeatedly,” he said.

SEIU spokesperson Sylvia Panfil defended the union’s demand. She said that since Harvard had more resources than Tufts, it should thus pay a higher wage.

PSLM member Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’02 said that costs of living were growing and were higher in Boston than in Cambridge.

“You can never pick a clear cut-off line between what’s poverty and what’s not poverty,” he said.

Where They Stand

Although the union and Harvard management had set Feb. 19 as a goal date for the talks to conclude, wages and health benefit discussions remain unresolved, and union representatives have repeatedly characterized Harvard as making “no movement” on the two issues.

Yet Jones, who directs the University’s Office of Labor and Employee Relations, said that agreements have been reached on issues including sick leave, vacation time and overtime—in all, 13 of the initial 19 proposals. Four other proposals were withdrawn.

“There has been some rhetoric about the lack of progress in these negotiations, but I would say it is quite to the contrary,” Jones said. “There has been much progress made, and we’ve whittled this down to two issues.”

But Skomarovsky, who has been attending the negotiations, said the agreed-upon issues were “minor” compared to the two that remain—wages and health benefits.

After an early end to last Tuesday’s negotiations, which saw both sides leave frustrated, the University e-mailed a new proposal to SEIU that offered a base wage higher than that of the HCECP report’s range of $10.83 and $11.30, Jones said.

Workers had requested starting wages of $14, while, at the close of Tuesday’s meetings, Harvard’s latest offer had been a base wage of $11.

Jones declined to specify the amount of the e-mailed offer beyond saying that it was higher than the report’s recommendations. He said he would formally propose the new offer at tomorrow’s negotiations.

Panfil declined to comment on the latest offer because it has not yet been officially proposed at the bargaining table and the entire SEIU bargaining committee was not aware of its contents.

Jones said that in addition to the new wage proposal, Harvard was “intrigued” by the union’s health benefit proposal. The proposal would have Harvard contribute to a fund that would help workers’ pay their share of a health care fee.

“We believe it’s in the right direction, [but] we don’t want to agree to it until we know where we’re going with wages,” Jones said. “It’s an expensive proposition, and many of the proposals already agreed to are going to be expensive.”

He added that “it’s something that we think we may be able to live with.”

Complicating the negotiations is what Skomarovsky called a recent “escalation” in union tactics such as civil disobedience.

The Protest

Harvard would have officially proposed its new wage number last Tuesday, but the negotiations broke early because of a civil disobedience session scheduled by the union, Jones said.

Last week, PSLM members and janitors practiced blocking traffic in front of Au Bon Pain in what was billed as a prelude for a larger display of civil disobedience today.

A group of janitors and students have volunteered to be arrested after blocking traffic on Mass. Ave. at 4:45 p.m. today in Harvard Square, while others plan to rally outside of the Holyoke Center.

Skomarovsky said organizers want to “send a message that workers and students don’t see negotiations as a game.”

In addition to last Tuesday’s protest, about 20 students entered Mass. Hall Thursday afternoon for a 15-minute “teach-in.”

Jones, though, said such tactics were unproductive and were more of a publicity stunt than an effective way to influence the negotiations.

“I think that the action being proposed [today], in which people have been recruited to be arrested, is way over the top,” he said. “I can’t imagine why the union is proposing this action, other than for the union itself to get attention. I believe it has little impact on the workers.”

An End in Sight?

Both Harvard and the union said they were prepared to continue negotiations indefinitely and would only go to mediation as a last resort.

In the case that both parties believed no progress was being made with negotiations, they would select a mediator who would make a non-binding recommendation on the contract, Jones said.

“I believe that even if it’s slow going we’d rather make a small amount of progress than no progress,” Jones said. “I’d rather keep at this until we reach agreement.”

Panfil said the union was also committed to avoiding mediation.

Once a contract with SEIU has been agreed to, Harvard will begin talks with the dining worker and security guard unions—negotiations that Jones said may well be affected by the outcome of the current discussions.

Jones said Harvard was considering what he termed the “me-too doctrine,” where the dining and security worker unions would expect the same wage figures as the University would pay the janitors.

—David H. Gellis contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.