Not as well endowed

Unions labor to save jobs

By CARA BAYLES

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Last Thursday, the front of Harvard's Holyoke Center filled with more than 50 protestors chanting into bullhorns at 1pm, and a larger crew of 150 marching at 4pm, in response to staffing cuts and ominous talk from the university.

Harvard lost an estimated 22 percent of its endowment in four months, but the $28.7 billion remaining still makes it the wealthiest university in the nation. The Medical School told its janitorial subcontractor, American Cleaning Company, to lay off 13 of 27 custodians by April 1st, and OneSource, another subcontractor, must reduce its costs by 30-40 percent (given the low overhead for supplies, many consider that a 40-percent staff reduction). A letter from Dean Michael Smith last month announced "some changes to our current workforce," adding, "We hope that the level of participation in the voluntary early retirement program will mitigate the need for further staff reductions."

Other universities have also been hit, but haven't resorted to staff cuts. MIT implemented salary freezes on its highest paid staff in response to a projected 30-percent loss in its $10 billion endowment. Boston University announced a hiring freeze just as its endowment dropped 24.1 percent, to $897 million.

In Jeff Booth's 23 years as a library assistant and founding member of the 21-year-old Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, he's never been so worried for his job. "It's not just one email, it's an avalanche of emails. It's propaganda from Harvard about how much money they lost," he says. "A lot of people see [the early retirement package] as a threat."

University administrators wouldn't comment on the decision to lay off staff, whose salaries are cheaper than professors'. "Compensation and benefits account for nearly half the university's budget, so we have to look carefully at those costs while minimizing the impact on the workforce," university spokesman Kevin Galvin said in a statement. "With that in mind, we have said that there will be no salary increases for exempt employees and faculty this year, and we have offered a voluntary early retirement program for which 1,600 staff members are eligible. We also are vigorously scrutinizing non-personnel expenses for savings."

Alyssa Aguilera, a member of the Student Labor Action Movement and a senior at Harvard, said students are willing to feel the pinch, too. "We'll make sacrifices so our friends can keep their jobs." When asked what she'd sacrifice, she answered, "There's a lot of excess spending, wining and dining ... The budget process is not transparent, so we can't present an alternative, but it's a question of priorities, of saving jobs."

Daniel Brasil Becker, an organizer for the Service Employees International Union 615, which represents janitors all over New England, called Harvard's layoffs "unprecedented." "It's a degree I have not seen at any other university. And when you consider the financial resources at Harvard University, that raises a lot of questions," he said.

Bedardo Sola, a janitor at Harvard for five years, supports his family in El Salvador on his salary. "[They] are the source of my strength and the reason I continue fighting," he says.

Becker says that each job that's cut echoes through the economy. "Family health care cuts hit children, the elderly and many others ... Even the fear of layoffs reduces family spending, which means less income for bodegas and small businesses. And less revenue means more layoffs. This is not how we are going to rise out of this recession."