“The building manager [of the library] is in close touch with the contractor,” said Aaron Bartley, an organizer for Harvard’s janitors’ union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 254. “It’s not as if the contractor’s off on its own without any oversight by Harvard.”

Roughly 40 students and workers gathered on the steps of Widener Library Friday afternoon to protest Soprani’s firing and alleged discrimination.

The rally, which was sponsored by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) and SEIU Local 254, was one of the largest recent PSLM actions. The Radcliffe Union of Students was also involved in planning the event, according to RUS Co-President Jessica M. Rosenberg ’04.

The protestors gathered signatures for a sign that read “Management Stop the Abuse: Reinstate Marlene Soprani with back pay.”

After the rally, they marched around to the back entrance of Widener to deliver the petition to library management, chanting slogans such as “No Justice! No Peace!” The group was not permitted to enter the library but left the petition outside its back door.

During the rally, Bartley accused Harvard of failing to hold its subcontractors to the labor principles that it embraced in the wake of the Spring 2001 living wage sit-in.

“I think both students and the union are fed up with treatment such as Marlene received in a University setting which has adopted a statement of principles which explicitly states that each and every individual on the campus deserves respect and fair treatment,” he said. 

Bartley told the crowd that they would not stop protesting until Soprani’s issues are resolved.

“We’re going to tell the library management that they have to deal with this problem and if not, next time we’re going to go to [University President Lawrence H.] Summers and tell him he has to deal with this problem,” Bartley said.

Soprani—who spoke to the crowd in Spanish through a translator—said she originally worked a day shift when she started at Harvard about two years ago. But ACME/Pioneer’s management forced her to take a night shift last September to keep her job, she said.

Soprani said that while she was still employed on the night shift, she applied for a day-shift opening in Lamont Library. She said that is when her boss, Da Silva, told her that the position was “more a man’s job,” saying it required heavy lifting.

Although the job was first awarded to a man, he turned it down, and it subsequently was awarded to a female employee with less seniority than Soprani, she said.

The standard practice would have been to give Soprani the job because of her seniority, according to Bartley. He added that this was especially true because she had originally held a more-desirable day shift before being forced to take a night shift.

At Friday’s rally, Soprani said she is having trouble paying her rent, though she said in an interview afterwards she has managed to make ends meet with a friend’s help.

While Soprani said she hopes this complaint might end the discrimination she said she experienced, she is skeptical of how she would be treated upon returning.