Securitas Cuts Harvard Guards’ Lunch Hour by Half, Eliminates Daytime Breaks

Security guards assigned to library posts in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences were notified last Tuesday that their break hours would be cut from 90 to 30 minutes across eight-hour shifts.

Under the new policy — announced in a memo from Securitas, the international company through which the University contracts its guards — workers saw their lunch breaks cut from one hour to 30 minutes and lost two 15-minute breaks throughout the day.

The amended break policy is consistent with the contract between Securitas and Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ — the union representing Harvard security guards — and falls within Massachusetts state law, which stipulates that “no person shall be required to work for more than six hours during a calendar day without an interval of at least thirty minutes for a meal.”

But Michael A. Nowiszewski, a guard at Widener Library and a union shop steward for SEIU 32BJ, said the new policy breaks with widespread precedent on campus.

“Across campus, guards regularly get benefits in excess of the bare minimum,” Nowiszewski said, “whether it’s a free meal at the Houses or whether it’s an additional 15 minutes for break or the 15-minute scheduled breaks, which have been occurring for 15 to 20 years.”

According to Nowiszewski, the lunch break reduction was “enacted the day of” the memo’s release, and “the 15-minute breaks were eliminated two days prior to receipt of the memo.”

Nowsiewski said “everybody’s very stressed” by the new policy.

“Going from 90 minutes to 30 minutes is, as you can imagine, very stressful,” Nowiszewski said. “I think it passes down the chain.”

“We’re scarfing down something from a vending machine quickly, and I think it affects the way we do our job,” he added. “If you can’t get sustenance and you’re additionally stressed — you’re not performing as well on the job.”

A Securitas guard who works in a library post said they have been “struggling every day” under the tighter time constraint.

“When I’m running back and forth just to eat lunch, it feels pretty demeaning,” the guard said.

Nowsiewski said more guards have taken to eating meals at their posts as a result of the policy change, which his boss has noticed.

Though the memo was sent last Tuesday by Robert Sabater, an account manager at Securitas Security Services USA, Nowsiewski maintains that the momentum behind the decision came from Harvard.

“The ultimate implementation of the policy is Securitas, but the development and the theory behind it, and who calls the shots is always Harvard,” Nowsiewski said. “It’s never not Harvard.”

A University spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that “Harvard does not dictate breaks for Securitas employees,” and “Securitas employees are not Harvard employees.”

Still, Nowiszewski said the change sends a message.

“We like to be happy, we like to be comfortable, we want to be secure while providing security for everybody else,” Nowiszewski said. “We like to be treated fairly and feel like we’re part of the community.”

“When you give someone one-third of the break you’re giving everyone else — it says a lot,” he added.

—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.

—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.