Harvard To Cut Last In-House Guard Positions

Harvard has been steadily decreasing the number of in-house security guards in past years, outsourcing these jobs to security subcontractors.

University officials said last summer that the University was aiming to move to a single security provider.

After June 30, the seven guards will be offered jobs with Allied Security, Harvard’s largest security provider, according to Herms, a former extension school student, in an e-mail to his watchdog group. [Please see correction below.]

Harvard University Parking, Security and Museum Guards Union (HUPSMGU) President Danny Meagher confirmed yesterday that he and the guards will meet with University representatives and the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Friday morning to “discuss [the guards’] futures.” HUPSMGU represents the seven guards and HUPD oversees their unit.

James A. LaBua, deputy director of the Office of Labor and Employee Relations, said the University will talk to the guards about “alternate job offers” available at Harvard during the Friday meeting, but would not confirm or deny that the guard positions would be eliminated.

“The purpose of the meeting is to have a discussion and try to inform the guards as to what direction we are headed in,” LaBua said.

But LaBua said he could not say whether job offers will be made to all seven guards or whether they will be offered severance packages until after the Friday meeting.

Meagher said that the union began negotiating with the University about a month ago over the status of the shrinking Harvard guard unit. The University once employed more than 120 security

security guards, but has gradually outsourced the positions to contractors.

Although Meagher refrained from providing details, he said talks have proceeded in a “straightforward, frank and fruitful way” since their beginning.

“The negotiations have been about the best thing for the people involved,” Meagher said.

“I can’t stop layoffs, but I do have the ability to enter into impact bargaining over those issues,” he later added.

Impact bargaining is negotiations in response to individual decisions made by the University.

Emma S. Mackinnon ’05, an active member of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) said that the elimination of Harvard-employed guards showed the University’s lack of commitment to unions on campus.

She said that the trend toward the elimination of union jobs at Harvard undermines the University’s wage parity policy that mandates that the University pays outsourced workers the same amount as unionized Harvard employees for the same job.

“It weakens the position of all the guards for their to be fewer unionized workers. And it weakens campus unions at Harvard as a whole,” said Mackinnon, who participated in last summer’s protest to protect security guard jobs from outsourcing.

The parity policy was instituted after the Dec. 2001 Katz Commission report, which was prompted by a PSLM-led sit-in at Mass. Hall.

“It’s inconsistent with what Harvard said they were going to do,” said Mackinnon, who is also a Crimson editor.

Last June, LaBua said that the mix of in-house and contract security guards did not represent the best way to provide security for the school community.

“Any major employer would look at this and say there seems to be some merit in unifying all those forces,” said LaBua in June. “We are in the process of looking to unify the existing security guard force.”

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

CORRECTION:  This story incorrectly sourced information that the seven remaining Harvard-employed security guards whose positions will be eliminated will be offered jobs with Allied Security to James Herms.  Herms said that Allied Security would replace the guards, not that they would rehire them.