Workers Consider Strike In June

Harvard electricians, plumbers and carpenters of the Maintenance Trade Council (MTC) authorized a strike in as little as 30 days after rejecting the University’s second contract in a heated meeting Monday.

Citing University President Lawrence H. Summers’ 32 percent salary increase last year, workers said that the University could afford to give them more than the 1.5 percent increase called for in the first year of the proposed contract.

The strike authorization gives the University 30 days to respond with a counter-offer before the workers walk out of the job.

Workers represented by MTC, an association composed of five different unions, have been working without a contract since Dec. 8, 2003. Workers refused to ratify the contract proposal put forward by the University last month.

One worker present at the meeting who did not wish to be identified said that “almost all” of the workers at the meeting voted against the contract and “at least 70 percent” of workers voted in favor of the strike authorization. Official estimates of the vote were not available.

“People were standing up screaming,” said the employee, who voted for the strike authorization and against the contract. “Can you believe it? We’re getting one and a half percent and [Summers] is getting 32 percent increases? Here they are telling us ‘we’re broke, we have no money’ but there was plenty of money to go around for the University’s upper management. I really think that that’s what turned the tide.”

The contract rejected on Monday calls for a wage increase of 1.5 percent retroactive to Jan. 1, another 1.5 percent increase in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2 percent increases in each of the next two years and a 3 percent increase in the last year of the contract. Wages will rise by at least ten percent by the end of the contract—much less than the 20-plus percent increase workers received over the life of their last agreement.

Bernie Toland, an employee took part in the meeting, said that workers are only looking for the “same raises as previous years.”

Another worker who also did not want to be identified said that workers were wrong to vote in favor of the strike authorization.

“I think it was just too soon to vote for a strike,” said the employee, who has worked at Harvard for 25 years. “It was only the second meeting that everyone had to discuss the contract negotiations. I don’t want to lose my job over a stupid thing like a strike.”

That employee said that she voted against the contract because the University will apply the retroactive 1.5 percent wage increase back to Jan. 1 of this year, instead of expanding it back to Dec. 8—the day the old contract expired.

Joe Borelli, an employee in Yard maintenance, predicted that the workers would nonetheless not go on strike.

“I’ve been here 12 years and every time we negotiate a contract we lose something,” said Borelli. “What will happen is that [the contract ratification vote] will go on again and [senior union negotiator Allan] McQuade will come back and say this is the best we’re going to get and we need to take it or they’ll go to someone outside. Everyone will vote for it and we’ll lose things like we’ve lost them before.”

“We don’t ask for much, just cost of living increases,” Borelli said.

A spokesperson for the Office of Human Resources, which is responsible for contract negotiations, said she could not comment on negotiations in progress.

McQuade could not be reached for comment yesterday. A staff person at his office said that he was in negotiations all day yesterday.

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.