Four Students Arrested at Protest

Four Harvard students were arrested at the Prudential Center yesterday in a protest seeking increased health benefits for Boston janitors.

The three Harvard undergraduates and one Harvard Divinity School student were among nine who intended to convince Boston Properties, a realty company, to publicly support higher wages and health benefits for 10,000 janitors currently in the midst of contentious contract negotiations.

Though Boston Properties, which owns the Prudential Center, hires its janitors through outside companies, students said Boston Properties’ support would convince the contractors to give ground in the negotiations.

“We wanted to bring attention to the fact that janitors in the city don’t get health care,” said Anna L. Falicov ’02-’03, one of those who was arrested. “This is insulting to them and their families.”

About 20 to 30 students and local residents entered the Prudential Center’s Food Court at 5 p.m. and began loudly criticizing the company’s position on a megaphone at about 5:30 p.m., Falicov said. Police arrived at about 6 p.m.

Some protesters feigned sickness—wrapping bandages around their bodies, coughing and writhing on the floor—to demonstrate a “visible show of sickness at the injustice,” said Stephanie Wang, an MIT student and member of the Boston Student Labor Action Project, which organized the protest.

Besides Falicov, the Harvard students arrested were Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’03, Jessica A. Fragola ’04 and Divinity student James P. Hare. They were charged with disrupting the peace and trespassing, both misdemeanors, and began to be released at 10 p.m.

According to Wang, the other protesters arrested included two Northeastern University students, one Emerson College student, one Emerson professor and one community activist. Wang said dozens of others were protesting outside the building.

The Boston janitors are represented by Service Employees International Union Local 254, which also represents Harvard’s janitors. Though these contract negotiations do not include Harvard workers, they will affect janitors at area educational institutions including Northeastern and MIT.

Boston Properties-owned buildings do house Harvard facilities, including Law School offices at 124 Mt. Auburn St.

Fragola said she hoped the action would both bolster janitors’ spirits and put pressure on Boston Properties, a multibillion-dollar corporation that owns property in Boston, Manhattan, Washington and San Francisco.

“A lot of cameras were there,” she said. “The janitors are going to read [the news coverage] and they’re going to see that the students are behind them fully.”

“I expect it to be effective because Boston Properties is the remaining building owner that is really standing in the way of this resolution, simply because all of the other major building owners in Boston have made statements in support of the janitors,” Wang added.

The protesters had refused to leave the building until the company issued a statement supporting janitors.

Two different undergraduates and two Harvard Law students were among nine arrested last February for blocking traffic in Harvard Square in a protest for higher wages for Harvard janitors, then conducting contract negotiations.

Students in both yesterday’s and February’s arrests were members of Harvard’s Progressive Student Labor Movement.

Unlike in that action, which was coordinated in advance with the Harvard and Cambridge police, organizers said they worried yesterday that Boston police would shut down their protest too quickly.

“We wanted to be able to prolong the action,” Fragola said. “If this had happened for 30 seconds, how many people would it have gotten to?”

Fragola added that she was “very pleased” with the proceedings, while Falicov said the effort was well worth the criminal charges against her.

Wang said many other students and residents—about 50 in total—have said they will also risk arrest if negotiations show little progress.

Boston janitors have threatened to strike if the negotiations are not completed soon. Their contract expired Aug. 31.

—Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.