Activist Group Protests Employee Downsizing

The No Layoffs Campaign (NLC), an activist group formed in opposition to staff reductions and budget cuts across the University, is calling on professors to protest plans to slash jobs and services at the Harvard College Library (HCL).

In an e-mail last month to more than 200 professors from across the University, the group outlined grievances about the administration’s spending decisions, questioned the legitimacy of claimed budget crises and demanded a more aggressive approach from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). The e-mail says the union has been too accommodating to the University.

The e-mail’s recipients were chosen from a list of professors who had exhibited a particular interest or took an active role during a previous union campaign.

“We hope they will become part of the push to stop the layoffs,” said Tom Potter, one of the letter’s authors and an employee at the Law School library. “I think we may have found a vein of serious scholarly discontent. Hopefully, we’re already having the impact of making the administration hesitate about announcing layoffs.”

Nancy M. Cline, the Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College, said HCL will announce a list of layoffs this month as part of an initiative to shave $3.9 million from the library’s budget over the course of the next two fiscal years.

Cline said the layoffs were a necessary last resort and would not compromise library services.

Increasing expenses, coupled with an unusually small payout from the University’s endowment, have contributed to the need for a reassessment of the library’s spending, she said.

Cline said that administrators have done what they can to minimize the need for layoffs. “In the current budget year, we’ve transferred money from what had once been collection support to keep positions funded,” she said, referring to a move to slim down journal subscriptions announced earlier this year.

But members of the NLC take issue with Cline’s claims. “These Harvard employees, most of them long-term, will be laid off during one of the worst job markets in recent memory and without prospects for improvement in the near future,” reads their e-mail to faculty. “HCL claims the layoffs are necessary due to ‘budget shortfalls.’ Inevitably, the layoffs will degrade library services for faculty and students.”

NLC argues that the University could increase endowment payout, and should cut back pay to top money-managers.

The e-mail goes on to quote a letter to Cline from Professor of Latin American History and Economics John Womack Jr., in which he criticizes the library’s cataloguing system and reports problems with missing books, deterioration of services and a lack of communication between the library and the depository. More layoffs, according to Womack, would only worsen the situation.

“I do not have the imagination to understand how monumental the difficulties of even maintaining, much less improving, one of the world’s greatest libraries must be; I sympathize with whoever holds this responsibility,” Womack wrote in his letter. “But I will not silently accept that the world’s richest university should spend so much on making money and spending it on real estate and physical structures, while it cuts its services for teaching and research.”

According to Potter, several professors—including Professor of Romance Languages Brad Epps, Professor of Anthropology Michael Herzfeld and Lecturer in Public Policy Pauline Peters—have subsequently written the administration along similar lines.

While the NLC’s campaign shows some sign of success with the faculty, it has not gained much ground within the overall union. Potter and fellow NLC member Randy Fenstermacher were soundly defeated in union representative elections last month. Both favored adding a “no-layoffs” clause to the upcoming HUCTW contract.

Bill Jaeger, director of HUCTW, said that the NLC is exaggerating the problem, and although the prospect of layoffs is scary to employees, the activist group is misrepresenting the magnitude of upcoming job cuts.

“Members of our union are worried about the fact that there have been some layoffs in some parts of the University, and they really want to feel as secure as possible and really support a goal of trying to make sure everybody has a place at Harvard,” said Jaeger. “The vast majority of members of the union line up pretty strongly behind our main philosophical idea about security at Harvard, which is that it’s not practical or effective for a union to say nothing should ever change. Clearly the university is undergoing some huge changes.”

Rather than trying to fight the inevitable layoffs, the union management is focusing on building a safety net for those it affects most directly, according to Jaeger. HUCTW is currently negotiating a new “Work Security” clause that would give preference to previous Harvard employees when new positions open up.

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.