Dining Hall Workers Move Toward Strike Next Week

Wages, health benefits, and year-round work are at issue. 

Students join workers in a rally outside Massachusetts Hall Courtesy of UNITE HERE Local 26 
Students join workers in a rally outside Massachusetts Hall Courtesy of UNITE HERE Local 26 
Students join workers in a rally outside Massachusetts Hall Courtesy of UNITE HERE Local 26 

Harvard University dining hall workers are about to begin their first major strike in nearly a century, unless a contract agreement is negotiated by next Tuesday, October 4. But the passion fueling their conflict with Harvard has long been in the making. Anabela Pappas, a pantry steward who has worked for Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) for 35 years, puts it this way: “Why now? We’ve been quiet too long. We’re not looking to strike because we want a strike—we’re looking for a solution so that we can survive.” The prospective strike follows almost four months of deadlocked negotiations between the University and UNITE HERE Local 26, the union that represents 750 HUDS workers. Dozens of workers and students marched in front of Massachusetts Hall Friday afternoon, chanting “no justice, no food,” in support of the union’s main demands: a $35,000 minimum salary for staff members who want to work full-time, and more affordable health insurance. Beyond these specific items, Harvard wants to settle on an affordable labor contract much like the previous one—perhaps especially so now, in a time of resource restraints signaled by the recently reported $1.9-billion decline in the value of the endowment. The union is interested in opening a broader conversation about the rights of dining hall workers—who work and are paid seasonally—and their position in the University’s labor force.

This is a developing story; check back for updates.

In mid September, workers had voted 591-18 to strike, a margin of 97 percent—even though going on strike would force them to take a significant pay cut (workers will be paid from the union’s strike fund at a rate lower than their normal pay). In a press release, the union announced that absent an agreement, “Harvard dining hall workers will launch an open-ended strike the morning of Wednesday, October 5.…Instead of serving breakfast, workers will walk picket lines at more than a dozen locations across Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate campuses.”

“Harvard deeply values the contributions of its dining services employees, as evidenced by the fact that they receive some of the most generous hourly wages and benefits for food service workers in the region. The fact that the average tenure of a Harvard dining hall worker is 12 years is a testament to the quality of work opportunities here,” University spokesperson Tania deLuzuriaga said in a statement. “Over the past four months, Harvard has been committed to working with Local 26 in good faith to reach a new agreement that recognizes our colleagues’ important contributions while supporting the University’s core mission of research, teaching and learning. We have proposed creative solutions to issues presented by the union, and hoped union representatives would contribute to finding creative, workable solutions at the negotiation table. We are disappointed that thus far they have been unwilling to do so.”

Given Harvard’s academic calendar, dining hall employees typically work about seven and a half months of the year; during the summer months and winter break, most dining halls are closed. Dining hall staff are hired understanding that they’re seasonal employees, the University argues, and are paid wages and benefits far above the market rate. “Harvard’s dining hall workers currently receive highly competitive wages that lead the local and national workforce for comparable positions in the food-service industry, with the average dining hall worker earning $21.89 an hour,” deLuzuriaga said in an earlier statement. The most popular health plan for HUDS workers costs $104 per month for individual health insurance and $281 for a family. Nationally, food-service workers pay on average $140 per month for individual health insurance and $536 for a family, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Pappas responds, “People don’t understand the situation for HUDS workers. They think, ‘What are they complaining about, they make $21 an hour?’ But we really don’t when we don’t work 12 months of the year. We want to, but we don’t have the work.” As a result, worker incomes remain relatively low: the average unionized HUDS employee makes a little less than $34,000 per year, according to the University. Many workers seek temporary jobs during the summer, but, Pappas adds, “No one wants to hire someone for a couple of months. We struggle to find job for those months.” Decades ago, when she first started working for Harvard, HUDS staff worked roughly nine months annually, but this schedule changed in 2009, after the Faculty of Arts and Science significantly lengthened winter break. For much of her life, Pappas lived in Somerville, where she had immigrated with her family from Portgual, but she’s since moved to Wilmington due to the high cost of living near Harvard. The union has compiled a map of workers’ home locations; many still live within a few miles of Harvard, but a significant number commute from farther away. According to MIT’s living wage calculator, the average HUDS worker’s income is not enough to support more than one person in the Boston area.  

The union now hopes to gain year-round work and a $35,000 minimum salary for employees who want to work full-time, which would likely demand significant changes in Harvard’s labor structure. At Yale, for example, dining staff belong to the same bargaining unit as workers in other trades and are able to switch among different duties; HUDS workers belong to their own union and don’t enjoy the same flexibility. The union has worked with Harvard in the past to create summer opportunities without much success. Doing so would require a great deal of creativity on both sides.  

The size of Harvard’s endowment, and its capital campaign, which has raised more than $7 billion in the last few years, feature prominently in the rhetoric of Local 26 and its supporters. The University responds that donations are earmarked for specific uses and must be used to support Harvard’s primary mission as a research university. Now, with the endowment’s value having declined more than 5 percent to $35.7 billion last year, the University worries about constraints on its resources and the possibility of continued low returns.

In a statement earlier this week, after a daylong negotiation meeting on September 27, deLuzuriaga said, “Harvard continues to negotiate in good faith with Local 26 and we hope to reach a fair resolution that recognizes the contributions of dining hall workers while supporting the University’s core mission of teaching, learning, and research. The University has put wage increases on the table, and proposed modest changes to health insurance, which have been accepted by unions representing more than 5,000 Harvard employees. The union has rejected all proposed changes to health insurance.”

The health insurance plan offered by the University is the same one it had negotiated for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) earlier this year. Members of that union earn significantly more than HUDS workers, with most making more than $55,000. The plan would create a new health-care tier for employees earning less than $55,000, who would pay the least in monthly premiums. Under the current health-care plan, the lowest tier includes all workers earning less than $70,000, who contribute 15 percent of the cost of their premiums. The sub-$55,000 tier would contribute 13 percent; this would make next year’s premiums for workers in that tier, which represents the majority of HUDS workers, lower than they are this year. But Local 26 has rejected the plan due to its significant increases in co-insurance: It would increase emergency room visits would from $40 to $100, and hospital inpatient and outpatient services from no copay to $100. Doctor’s office visits would also increase slightly from $15 to $20 next year and $25 in 2018.

Read more articles by: Marina N. Bolotnikova

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