To the editors:

Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore (“Guards Rally for Wage Hike,” Apr. 30) isn’t the first to be misled by the Harvard Committee on Employment and Compensation Practices’ ambiguous presentation on guards’ wages. The security guards who left Harvard in 1999 were not higher paid than those who remained. The department froze our nominal pay for six years; that’s why our average real pay was lower at the end of that time—by $5,400 a year. We lost 27 of our members in the 1999 buyout. Harvard lost three centuries of accumulated work experience.

The guards’ replacements, contracted from Security Systems Incorporated, can’t provide the same quality of service. They’re obligated to obey SSI’s directions, even when a faculty or staff member asks them to make a one-time special exception. Such refusals are not always accepted gracefully.

This unhappy arrangement appears to reflect what economists refer to as “managerial slack.” In making decisions about outsourcing, administrators have not always put the interests of the University community above the pursuit of their own personal objectives. Thanks to the hard work of the janitors union and the Living Wage Campaign, University President Lawrence H. Summers is now attempting to achieve a cultural change.

The coverage of the rally mentions our union and the PSLM, who demonstrated their strategic creativity once again. Other participants included representatives of the Service Employees International Union Local 254 and the Independent Security Union at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Why should students care about our rally, or about museum guards? Consider that the market value of Harvard’s museum collections exceeds that of its housing, research facilities, offices, equipment and construction added together. During former President Neil L. Rudenstine’s administration, Harvard suffered two multi-million dollar thefts (both from non-union buildings).

In addition to confronting crime, vandalism and irate drivers, the security, parking and museum guards had to confront the lowest wages at Harvard, as well as the greatest reduction in membership due to outsourcing.

Stephen McCombe

May 9, 2002

The writer is president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 580, the Harvard University Security, Parking and Museum Guards Union.