Thursday, April 29th, 4:00 pm
Massachusetts Hall

Join other students, faculty, and workers next Thursday to honor the working members of Harvard's community, during what is still a trying time for Harvard's employees. We will walk together through the yard, stopping at intervals to recognize labor at sites of its operation—Harvard's buildings—performing a Bread and Roses ceremony, and hearing from campus voices, all to make visible a binding force in our community: workers.

The issues affecting Harvard's workers are complex and varied across sectors of the workforce. Among custodians and dining hall workers, cuts in hours and positions have led to further speed-ups, in some cases compromising workplace safety. Among clerical and technical workers, those now unemployed struggle through in a desolate job market (see our most recent testimonial), while so-called temporary workers employed for over three months by the university still seek the benefits of regular employment status. Dining hall workers, who each summer undergo seasonal layoffs, are no longer supported by the administration in finding summer employment. And today, in spite of our parity policy, non-unionized workers employed by outside contractors remain without equal benefits and continue to experience workplace intimidation.

In the face of these circumstances, we must continue to fight for a university that sets the standard for labor relations at universities across the country. Although Harvard has made great strides in the past in advancing workers' rights, the ongoing economic recession presents us with a momentous challenge and we must face it with uncompromising courage and intellect. As an institution charged with the task of confronting the world's most pressing issues, why must we back down from mobilizing these very intellectual resources toward solving problems here on our own campus?

There is historical precedent for our call. After two years of organizing, the Progressive Student Labor Movement reached an agreement with the administration to form a committee of faculty, workers, and students to study Harvard's labor policies and recommend changes by the year's end. Many of the Katz Committee's proposals were eventually adopted as policy by the Harvard administration.

The Student Labor Action Movement is again engaging members of our community in seeking an alternative route to current policy. We have already spoken to a number of prominent faculty members who are now forming a committee to draft a statement. We're working closely with workers and union organizers. And we need your help as well. So come to 'Walk With Workers' next week.

Harvard must have a decision making process that actively responds to the concerns of its community while all of its members are still here on campus. We need more than a set of vague trajectories and working groups—none of which include workers in their ranks—and we deserve concrete budgetary details to be made available to us before the summer months. Other universities, such as Dartmouth, have already begun to practice greater transparency. We can do the same, if not much more.

On February 4th, 2010 more than 400 people gathered at a candlelight vigil to protest impending layoffs at Dartmouth College. I accompanied several other members of the Student Labor Action Movement to the rally so that we might show our support for Dartmouth’s jeopardized staff and allied students. The experience was especially personal to me because I grew up in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a town adjacent to Hanover where Dartmouth is located; the trek to the area was familiar, as were many faces at the rally.

I unexpectedly ran into Lisa, the mother of a high school friend of mine, who expressed personal concern about the possible repercussions of layoffs. She works at Dartmouth’s medical center, and was worried that her oldest son, also an employee of the university, might be one of the first to be laid off. Later, Nancy Vogele, the priest at the church my family attends, gave a speech about the hardships she has seen in her ministry, and predicted the expansion of these problems should Dartmouth cut the positions of its lowest-paid employees. Any number of positions cut can have disastrous effects on the community. The diversity of speakers at the rally spoke to the broad impact of the university's fiscal crisis: workers, union leaders, community members, students, and faculty all spoke passionately against Dartmouth's impending layoffs. In addition, Dartmouth students garnered 75 faculty signatures on a petition denouncing these cuts.

This activism directly prompted action on the part of the university's administration. Four days after the vigil, President Jim Yong Kim responded to demands with a detailed statement of prospective budget cuts. An initially notable difference between the actions Dartmouth and Harvard have taken with respect to their fiscal crises is the willingness of Dartmouth administrators to sacrifice their own salaries in order to save the jobs of others: President Kim, Vice President Steven Kadish, and Provost Carol Folt have all taken 10% salary cuts, an action which top Harvard administrators have not taken.

Furthermore, the message breaks down Dartmouth's cost-saving measures into several distinct categories and clearly identifies every layoff. Such transparency has thus far not been witnessed in Harvard's communication with the community of students, workers, community members, and faculty affected by its layoffs. For example, compare Dartmouth's correspondence to Harvard's current source of disclosure of the steps it plans to take in closing the rest of its budget deficit, the FAS Planning website. This site makes no mention of recent and ongoing cuts affecting Harvard's workers. Like its peer institutions, Harvard must adopt a new attitude toward transparency and communication with the community it affects in its reactions to the financial crisis.