Faculty Club Does Mistreat Workers

Once again Josh Kaufman uses the protection of Dartboard's lightheartedness to write about something of which he knows very little. The protest by workers outside the Harvard Faculty Club, while supported by workers from the Harvard Dining Services, was ultimately just that: a protest by Faculty Club Workers. Their salaries and treatment have little to do with Kaufman's or anyone else's board plan (except, perhaps, the Faculty's).

I am surprised that it wasn't more obvious to Kaufman what was going on. After all, the rally was outside the Faculty Club and the one worker he quoted is an employee of the Faculty Club. The Faculty Club, while receiving some support from the University, is largely independent, charging customers in order to meet its costs, and has its own management. And as a former employee of the Faculty Club (Sept. 1993-Sept. 1994), I can vouch for the management's mistreatment of its workers.

Consider a few examples that I observed. A dishwasher I knew had surpassed the minimum total hours needed to join the union, and thus earn benefits. The day after informing the management that he would like to begin receiving those benefits, he was fired.

I saw them deliberately try to push out older workers, because they can pay newer workers less. One chef went, during my year there, from a line chef (the main chefs, responsible for preparing the entrees), to a pastry chef, to a salad preparer, and was on his way to becoming a baker working an overnight shift when I left the club. They could not fire him or reduce his wages (thanks to the union), but they could humiliate him into leaving.

Most connected to me was the fact that workers were often fired to make room for student workers, because students get lower wages and no benefits. I was in part responsible for another chef's assistant losing her job.

I did not take part in the protest, nor am I involved at all in the union. However I am a former employee who witnessed the type of worker mistreatment that the Faculty Club was protesting against. Perhaps it will make Kaufman happy to know that he can support these justified workers without risking his precious board fee. Perhaps if he weren't so selfishly concerned with his own welfare, he could have explored what it was that he was condemning before condemning it. --Jake Brooks '97   The author is an inactive editor of The Crimson.