Employee Story Showed Biases

"Harvard's Employees Exploited" (news story, Feb. 11, 1995) is one of the most biased articles I've ever read in The Crimson, much less anywhere else. It does not belong on the editorial page--and that it ran on the front page is a disgrace.

The article describes a worker who is not a Harvard employee. One of his employers feels that his having two jobs is not sufficient reason to raise his salary, and this is a source of great consternation for the Crimson reporter. This worker is taken advantage of by an evil employer who--after exploiting him by not paying him 100 percent overtime and even requiring him to pay $10 for health insurance-still expects him to show up on time for work. The worker doesn't even get compassion from Harvard (again, not his employer), which insists that it "knows nothing" about people who don't work for it.

Harvard and area business employ thousands of wonderful, highly qualifies employees, and I am sure that this worker is among them. However, The Crimson has trivialized more serious labor issues by printing this sort of gibberish. Moreover, the author of the article goes entirely uncredited/unblamed. It is appalling that a Crimson reporter would write such an inflammatory article and not take responsibility of authorship. The situation very much echoes the reporter's own words: "Pedro understands that the union is screwing him, but he also realizes that there is no one to whom he can complain." Joe Levy