No end in sight to strike by Harvard’s cafeteria workers over wages
Cafeteria workers at Harvard go on strike Wednesday, October 5.
A dispute over wages and benefits between Harvard and its cafeteria workers has led to a strike that is now in its seventh day, with no immediate resolution in sight, an official at the nation’s wealthiest university said Tuesday.
Harvard was relying on employees who volunteered to work in the university’s dining halls, which were operating on a skeleton schedule and offering reduced options and boxed lunches.
In a draft of a letter to be posted universitywide Tuesday, by Marilyn Hausammann, Harvard’s vice president for human resources, detailed the university’s disappointment with the workers’ union, Unite Here Local 26, for what it said was a refusal “to participate in any meaningful dialogue” to resolve the dispute.
“We stand ready to continue to work with the union and mediators to try to find a fair and reasonable resolution,” Hausammann wrote, “but this will require engagement by the union on these issues.”
The dispute with Local 26, which represents about 750 cafeteria workers, had been brewing since May, and students were said to be hoarding food supplies in anticipation of a strike. Workers finally walked out Wednesday.
On Tuesday, cafeteria workers and their supporters marched on campus with picket signs and megaphones, chanting, “If we don’t get it, shut it down.”
Several messages to the union were not immediately returned Tuesday, but on its website it vowed that the strike would continue “until a fair agreement is reached.”
The union said workers’ two major demands were for affordable health care and incomes of at least $35,000 a year.
“Harvard dining hall workers are asking Harvard to back off proposals that would make basic medical services, such as taking their kids to the doctor, prohibitively expensive,” the union said.
According to Harvard, which has an estimated endowment of $35.7 billion, cafeteria workers are paid well for their services: Workers make an average of $21.89 an hour each with benefits that include 42 days of paid time off. Workers earn about $33,000 a year for 38 weeks of work, according to the university.
“Our hourly wage is the highest among cafeteria workers and university service workers in Boston,” Tania deLuzuriaga, a spokeswoman for Harvard, said in an interview Tuesday.
In bargaining talks with Local 26, Hausammann said in the letter, the university offered to raise the average wages for dining workers to $24.08 an hour and to provide summer stipends of up to $250 a week. The university said that it had not made changes to its health insurance costs for union workers since 2008, and that the monthly health insurance cost ($104 for an individual and $281 for a family) was below national averages.
Harvard said it was offering to delay any increases in this program until 2019, a proposal that it said the union rejected.
The university has said that Local 26 requested a 22.5 percent increase in compensation over a four-year period and stipends of $450 a week during summer and winter breaks.
As the strike loomed, Harvard’s students took to ordering provisions online, according to The Washington Post last week.
“I understand it’s for legitimate purposes, but I’m worrying about midterms right now,” Sofia Garcia, a freshman, told The Post. “I don’t need to worry about where my food is coming from.”
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Christopher Mele contributed reporting.
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