Custodians Rally for More Full-time Jobs

About 50 Harvard workers and students demanded more full-time work for campus custodians in a protest outside an alumni cocktail reception in Lamont Library Friday.

Rally organizers charged that the University is not complying with contractual obligations to make 60 percent of custodial jobs full time.

“We don’t even see any evidence that [the University] is trying to reach the 60 percent mark,” said Aaron Bartley, a rally organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615, which represents Harvard custodians. “People who have worked four hours a day for 15 years are not given real jobs.”

SEIU’s contract, which covers Harvard’s 800 custodians until November 2005, requires the University to use its “best effort” to meet the 60 percent mark through attrition—replacing departing part time workers with full-time jobs. The University has until the contract ends to meet the requirement.

Though Bartley accused the University administration of “dragging its feet,” Harvard administrators said the delay is a result of a low turnover rate among custodians.

“We’re going to be close,” said Bill Murphy, director of Harvard’s Office of Labor and Employee Relations, on Friday. “But there’s no way to know what our attrition rate will be.”

Murphy said that turnover has decreased from 20 percent in 1999 to just under five percent in 2003, hampering the University’s effort to create more full-time jobs. Murphy attributed the shift to a poor economy and higher wages that resulted from the new contract.

Murphy said that 45 percent of Harvard custodians currently work full time.

Bartley, however, put the number at around 32 percent for contracted workers and 38 percent for in-house workers. He also said that more part-time workers are being hired at Harvard, at a rate of “two per week” since the agreement was signed in 2002.

The protestors told alumni entering Lamont that part-time workers had difficulties paying bills and argued that Harvard would save $750,000 a year by reducing the number of part-time workers.

Victoria Iscayau, a part-time custodian at the Law School, told the crowd through a translator that Harvard “is playing with us.”

“Pretty soon the contract will be up and they’ll be able to negotiate a different agreement,” she said.

Protestors said they were angry that the top six fund managers of Harvard’s $19.3 billion endowment earned a combined $107.5 million in Fiscal Year 2003 (FY03).

“I think it’s ridiculous that six people just got paid $100 million and workers are getting $45 a day,” said Sara T. DiMaggio ’06, a member of the Progressive Students’ Labor Movement (PSLM).

The Harvard Management Company (HMC), which manages the University’s endowment, attributed the high payouts to the managers’ job performance, which earned the University $700 million above market returns in FY03.

Geoff P. Carens, who has worked in Lamont Library’s Government Documents section for 15 years and is a union representative with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), said the HMC fund manager salaries indicate that Harvard can afford to create more full-time jobs and does not need to lay off workers.

“Many of the people in my union are being laid off now,” said Carens, who held a sign reading “Justice for Janitors” during the protest. “Harvard should be the gold standard of how workers are treated and it’s just the reverse.”

Harvard College Library will layoff 10 workers on June 30 in an effort to eliminate a $2.3 million deficit for the 2005 fiscal year.

Bartley said he hopes that the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), which he said has “extraordinary informal power” within the University, will speak out on behalf of the workers.

“We hope that they will in an informal and formal way, maybe a letter to [University President Lawrence H.] Summers, support the need for more full-time workers at Harvard,” he said.

Under the rain—and the gaze of Harvard University Police Department officers—PSLM members handed wet fliers outlining the workers’ complaints to alums as they streamed into Lamont for the reception. Alumni were attending the final event of an HAA leadership conference.

“Alumni may not know about the problem and we’re here to educate them,” said Bartley. “We see alums as allies in this issue. Alumni don’t want there to be problems that can be easily resolved.”

HAA President John Reardon did not return requests for comment, and several alums entering the reception declined comment.

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.