In such a scenario, security guard wages could be reduced if they were matched up to certain in-house positions like the parking and museum guards, whose entry-level salary is only $11.35, pending the outcome of these negotiations.
Unlike security guards, parking and museum guards have seen a much smaller threat of outsourcing in recent years.
The Source of Problems
Nonetheless, the specter of outsourcing has cast a shadow over some University positions in recent years, and it has weighed heavily on the minds of many employees.
In the HCECP report, the committee urged Harvard not to employ outsourcing as a tool to weaken working conditions.
“Harvard should not use outsourcing to undermine its obligations to be a good employer and to bargain in good faith with its unionized employees,” the report said. “Outsourcing should not be used to lower wages and weaken the unions representing Harvard’s employees.”
The University said it was adopting its parity policy to that end.
But outsourcing continues to be one of the most common complaints that unions and employees level against the University. Union leaders and student activists charge that the University continues to lower its labor standards by contracting out its work despite its commitment to avoid such tactics.
“Harvard is supposed to be curtailing this type of behavior,” Potter says. “It’s clear that Harvard is still attacking unions through outsourcing.”
And the current dispute with the security guards evidences the University’s continuing use of this practice, confirming workers’ fears that Harvard is acting like a cost-cutting corporation, says Jeff W. Booth, a HUCTW member and library employee.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg at Harvard—it’s not just the security guards,” he said. “The guards are at the cutting edge of what Harvard is trying to do to all its workers.”
For security, the issue is particularly acute, according to Meagher. He said campus safety depends on having familiar, steadily-employed guards.
“Harvard needs to have in-house security guards,” Meagher said. “The nature of the outsourced workers is that they come and go.”
—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.