Bridging the Gap

Tweak a few details, and the scene painted on The New York Times Op-Ed page last month could have been a cut from the movie about the Progressive Student Labor Movement’s (PSLM) occupation of Mass. Hall two years ago. “Students confronted picket lines, hunted for meals off campus, picked their way past uncollected trash and wondered when graduate-student teachers would return to class,” the piece read, describing a strike at a prestigious Ivy League university.

But rather than chanting slogans demonizing Harvard, the protestors were striking against Yale’s labor policies, and as the article would have it, Harvard was a paradise for workers in comparison. Citing Harvard’s generous benefits and salaries, the article chided Yale for its poor treatment of staff and urged it to emulate its archrival. Unlike Harvard, which lets its workers take courses at the Extension School for a pittance, the piece said Yale “views workers who try to take classes with its distinguished faculty as workers who don’t know their place.”

It was a 180-degree reversal from the picture on the page two years ago, when columnist Bob Herbert slammed Harvard in two separate columns for its refusal to grant the protestors’ demands for a “living wage” for workers. Had Harvard really cleaned up its act in such a short time?

Workers at the University say that neither viewpoint completely reflects their experience. Harvard is an unquestioned leader when it comes to fringe benefits: in addition to its tuition assistance, it offers easy access to health insurance and free English courses on paid time. And in the wake of the Living Wage campaign, it’s keeping pace on lower-end salaries. But the concerns raised by PSLM remain salient for many of Harvard’s unionized employees, who fear losing their jobs to outsourced competition. Others complain that Harvard leaves them out to dry in the summer, when their services are not needed and they are left without work or unemployment insurance. Further, workers say, it’s the employees on the middle rungs of the pay scale who are feeling the crunch.

It’s Thursday morning, 10:10 a.m., and nine students—each from a different country—are copying down vocabulary words furiously from a newspaper article on the war in Iraq. Celia C. Chacon, a woman from El Salvador, works as a janitor in the Semitic Museum, and Viena I. Erazo, from Honduras, works for Restaurant Associates at the Business School. Before heading off to their jobs at the University, they sit around a conference table above Planet Aid on JFK Street and work on their English for free, courtesy of Harvard University. They’re attending the Bridge to Learning and Literacy program, which allows 471 University employees to pick up language and other academic skills on paid time.

There’s a slight confusion over the developments in the Middle East, as Marie G. Perpingnant mistakes an insurrection for a resurrection. Her classmates helpfully clarify that resurrections are reserved for Jesus Christ. After an hour and a half, the students get tired.

One of the final words is “wary,” and one student remarks, “Yeah, I am tired.”

“No! That’s ‘weary,’” the teacher, Carol Kolenik says, to scattered chuckles.

All the students are over the age of 25. Many spoke no English when they came to Harvard. Now they’re working towards passing the high school equivalency test (GED) by the end of the course.

“We have a large population of workers with no exposure to school in their native country,” says Kolenik, who founded the Bridge program. “We’re talking about countries like El Salvador. You’ve got all these mountain towns with no schools...For many students, we start by holding up an object like a pen and asking them what it is. Some of the students are 40 years old and learning this information for the first time.”

The program began with 171 students in 1999, and currently enrolls a range of pupils, including dining hall employees and subcontracted cleaning workers. Kolenik, who has taught English as a second language at institutions from Roxbury to Vietnam, began Bridge as a pilot program at the Harvard Faculty Club. Employees were having trouble reading notes their guests had left for them, she says; requests for new light bulbs, an extra pillow or an undisturbed desk were either ignored or misunderstood by the housekeepers due to their poor English.

Louisa Lugo, a waitress at the Faculty Club remembers requests for a glass of water which she didn’t understand. “It is very uncomfortable, and it made me nervous,” she says.

Kolenik recalls one employee who was ready to quit her job because of communication problems. Kolenik offered to tutor the woman, who responded “I don’t even know what that is!”—pointing to the letter “N” in a newspaper.

“I was blown away,” Kolenik says. “I didn’t know we needed this level of education. I asked the girl who else was in her position, and told her and anyone else who wanted to come to meet me in the basement of the Harvard Club the next day.” Thirty-eight workers joined the fledgling program. According to Kolenik, by the second semester, the employees were reading the notes left by patrons without the need for a translator, filling requests for food in the restaurant without confusion and staying in hotel bedrooms when guests entered rather than hiding in the closet. Thirty-three of these students eventually moved on to higher level classes at the Harvard Extension School.

Two years ago, PSLM ended their 21-day occupation of Mass. Hall when the University agreed to appoint a new committee to examine employee pay rates and other employment practices. Harvard implemented most of the committee’s recommendations, which suggested one-time pay increases for employees but no promise to continually augment wages.

Pressure from unions during the PSLM sit-in transformed the Bridge Program from a pilot program to a university-wide undertaking. It now boasts nine different class levels, from beginning literacy classes which work on phonics and spelling to an academic prep class designed to aid employees in getting the equivalent of a high school diploma. Classes meet twice a week for two hours, and run on Harvard’s semester schedule.

Lugo, who came to Harvard from Colombia three years ago without knowing a word of English, is a prototypical Bridge program success story. After three years of English courses alongside a Bridge program computer class, she moved from serving water to a desk job at the Bridge program’s office. She answers phone calls, uses Microsoft Excel and files papers. “I can do anything in this country if I learn English,” says Lugo.

A study conducted by the Bridge Program showed that 61 percent of its students felt that the class had helped them in their everyday life “a lot,” while 100 percent of Harvard employers with Bridge student employees felt that their workers seemed more motivated.

For Kolenik, the progress that students make is not purely statistical. “The greatest thing is meeting people I’ve taught three years ago,” says Kolenik. “Now they’re reading, filling out their own personal information and talking on the phone. It’s remarkable.”

The Bridge program is only the most recent addition to Harvard’s considerable slate of benefits. The majority of University employees, from workers at the Adams House dining hall to security guards at Harvard’s art museums, are entitled to take Extension School courses through the Tuition Assistance Plan (TAP). The plan allows employees who put in at least half-time at Harvard to take a course every semester for only $40. The educational benefits that Harvard employees receive are matched by their health coverage. Workers are given the choice between 9 health plans, including HMOs like Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and the Tufts Health Plan.

According to Merry Touborg, director of communications for the Office of Human Resources, the University has prioritized communication between itself and its lower-level employees since the PSLM sit-in. Each union now has a benefits brochure explicitly stating what their contracts offer, and the University proactively informs workers about classes they can take, reduced cost subway passes and retirement options. All relevant University documents are now being translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French and Mandarin Chinese. “We’re trying to make sure the employees are better able to know what resources Harvard has and how they can access them,” says Touborg.

But while the public scrutiny drawn to the plight of Harvard’s least-paid employees may have led to improvements in their dealings with the University, Harvard has yet to address many of their more substantive complaints. Workers cite University employment policies, which leave them without pay or unemployment insurance between school years. “The number one issue that we deal with today is the 3 month layoff during the summer,” says Ed Childs, chief steward for the Hotel Employees, Restaurant Employees (HERE) union. “During good times we can find some jobs. This is a bad time.”

In 1989, the Massachusetts State Legislature prohibited university employees from receiving unemployment insurance while their services were not needed during the summer. The summer layoff issue was addressed, but not resolved during the living wage negotiations. This failure has led dining service employees to apply for jobs through the University, such as cutting lawns or performing custodial services. “We’re an industry with a lot of single parents,” says Childs, explaining how vulnerable many of his union members are to being laid off.

Employees who earn higher salaries are not without substantial gripes of their own, and complain that their struggles have been ignored by a University preoccupied with placating its lower-end workers after the public relations debacle of the sit-in. And while English courses are an affordable aid to some workers, addressing many mid-level employees’ complaints could prove a much more expensive—and less palatable—venture.

Before the sit-in, a Harvard committee recommended that the workers receive more educational opportunities in lieu of a salary increase. Neither PSLM nor unions found this sufficient. “Workers should have both good wages and access to education,” says PSLM’s Daniel Dimaggio ’04. “Yes, there has been progress, but it is still difficult to work at Harvard in order to pay for all the things you need to live in Boston.”

Philip R. Fenstermacher, a security guard and door checker at Littauer Library, agrees that lower-level benefits are insufficient. “Taking English is important, but it isn’t as important as being able to pay the rent,” he says.

He highlights Harvard’s ongoing outsourcing practices as the primary cause of salary deflation and job insecurity for workers. “It wasn’t always the case that Harvard workers were below a living wage,” says Fenstermacher. “It has happened because of outsourcing.”

Fenstermacher is a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), which includes secretaries, lab technicians and library workers. When Harvard goes to the bargaining table with a union, he says, it can use the threat of outsourcing as leverage. “Harvard can say, ‘Okay, if you don’t want lower wages, your job will go to an SSI guard,’” says Fenstermacher. Thus, lower wages and the fear of potential unemployment looms on the horizon for many of the guards. “I’m one of the guys that is in danger of being outsourced,” he says.

Then again, things could be worse: they could be working in New Haven. That would be something to strike about.