In response to the arraignment of a Harvard custodian for two counts of indecent assault, Harvard’s security and custodial contractors will soon have to perform criminal background checks on their workers.

Merry Touborg, a spokesperson for the Office of Human Resources (OHR), said that Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel is preparing a letter “with all deliberate speed” to request that contractors begin to investigate the criminal records of their Harvard workers.

The measure comes after the Jan. 20 arrest of Geremias Cruz Ramos, an employee of the custodial contractor Sodexho Inc., for two indecent assaults in Harvard Square.

Ramos, who said he has attacked about 100 women over the past few months, was under a detainer from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at the time of his arrest.

Police say that Ramos is currently under the custody of immigration officials.

Touborg said that the issue of mandatory background checks for contractors was raised in February after Ramos’s arrest. Harvard already does criminal checks on all in-house employees.

Though the University is currently requesting—not demanding—that contractors perform background checks, Touborg said that these checks will be made mandatory when new agreements are signed with contractors. Touborg said that most agreements are one year long and many will be coming up for renewal soon.

Randy Fenstermacher, a labor activist and a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, said that the new policy may have unforeseen consequences and called the background checks “yet another hidden cost of outsourcing.”

“The contractors will no doubt complain that this will increase their administrative costs and that they are therefore entitled to a larger markup on their workers’ labor,” Fenstermacher wrote in an e-mail. “None of this would happen if these jobs, which are clearly a continuing need, were filled by Harvard employees vetted by Human Resources to the same depth and by the same means as any other Harvard employee.”

Touborg said that contractors will have to vet their workers using the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check, the same check that Harvard uses for its own employees.

Stephen McCombe, the founder and past president of the Harvard University Security, Parking and Museum Guards’ Union (HUSPMGU) representing Harvard’s in-house security guards, questioned the feasibility of implementing background checks.

He said that the fact that many workers are recent immigrants would make it difficult for contractors to comply with this policy.

“I don’t want a criminal or predator working on campus but it is hard to do [background checks] on foreign workers,” McCombe wrote in an e-mail. “The CORI goes back to 18 [years of age].”

However, contractors who already do background checks on their workers say doing checks on immigrants has not been a problem.

“We don’t hire anyone who can’t go through a backgrounding process,” said Anthony “Tony” Miceli, Vice President of Sales at Securitas Security Services USA, a security contractor at Harvard.