Mejia said the incident had occurred nearly a month ago to a male worker, but would not name the worker. He said that to his knowledge, the University had done nothing to address the issue.

Touborg, who said she could not comment on the specific case, did say that no complaint of such abuse would fall through the cracks.

“Any incident like that would go through the grievance process and certainly would need due process, investigation, in a reasonable way,” Touborg said. “This kind of thing is taken very seriously.”

The janitors also expressed concern about the timing of vacation pay.

When the University payroll system converted to Peoplesoft last October, Touborg said, the pay period for paychecks was shifted. Before, each paycheck was generated partly on the basis of work that had been done and partly on work that was still to be done.

Now, however, all pay is in arrears, which means that employees are paid only for hours they have already worked. This means that vacation pay is given to workers after they take their vacations.

The janitors’ union still wants its members to receive vacation pay before they take their vacations.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.