UNITE HERE Local 26

Victory at Harvard! Workers Settle Strike with a Winning Contract

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HUDS workers celebrate their new contract. Photo Credit: UNITE HERE Local 26

After a three week long strike, over 700 Harvard dining workers settled their contract with the Harvard University on October 25, 2016. After months of negotiations, over 700 Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 26 went on strike at 6AM on October 5, 2016. HUDS workers’ new contract meets all of their demands: a $35,000 per year base salary for full-time workers, no increases in healthcare costs, and more opportunities for year-round work. For more on the contract, please the WBUR interview with Brian Lang here.

The NE JLC was active in supporting HUDS workers throughout their fight. We joined workers on the picket line, rallied, and supported students organizing in solidarity with workers. NE JLC Campus Initiative Fellow Grace Evans and former Fellow Gabe Hodgkins helped lead the solidarity efforts of the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM). Our annual community meeting focused on the HUDS strike, where we were honored to hear from three HUDS workers, Aaron Ducket, Annabella Pappas, and Chris Pappas, as well as from Brian Lang, President of Local 26. We collected almost $400 for the HUDS strike assistance fund. NE JLC Board Co-Chair Don Siegel wrote a letter for The Harvard Crimson in support of the strike.

Harvard and Dining Workers Reach 'Tentative Agreement'

10-25Union supporters gather outside of 124 Mount Auburn St. during the Monday's protests. Photo Credit: Thomas W. FranckBy BRANDON J. DIXON, HANNAH NATANSON, and LEAH S. YARED, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERSUPDATED: October 25, 2016, at 2:59 a.m.Harvard and its dining workers reached a “tentative agreement” around 1:05 a.m. Tuesday morning—the closest the two parties have come to a contract settlement during months of tense negotiations.Brian Lang, president of UNITE HERE Local 26—the Boston-based union that represents Harvard’s dining workers—said the accord “accomplished all of our goals.” The deal is yet to be ratified; it must first be sent to a 30-member bargaining subcommittee Tuesday, Lang added, before the full membership of dining workers in the union vote on the deal Wednesday.Though he declined to provide specific details on the agreement, Lang said HUDS employees could return to work as early as Thursday. According to an email sent last week by College Dean for Finance and Administration Sheila C. Thimba, it will take at most two days from the official end of the strike before the University’s dining halls can resume “normal operations.”University spokesperson Tania deLuzuriaga wrote in an email that further details about the agreement would be forthcoming Tuesday morning.Protesters greeted news of the tentative deal with cheers and jubilation outside 124 Mt. Auburn St., the Harvard office building where Monday’s negotiations took place.“I’m feeling great about it, everything feels good,” dining services worker William H. Sawyer, who participated in the negotiation process, said at around 1:30 a.m. as he prepared to bike home. “The students and everyone behind us [have] been really inspirational… they kept us up, up, up, up and alive about this.”“Even right now, they still here,” he added, pointing to the handful of students—all members of the Student Labor Action Movement—who remained outside the building, shouting and jumping up and down in celebration in the wee hours of the morning. “Everybody else gone home.”In early October, HUDS workers launched an unprecedented strike—their first to take place during the academic year—calling on the University to increase wages and to maintain the current health benefits package it offers to dining hall employees. The last HUDS strike occurred more than 30 years ago.The tentative agreement came after a day of intense picketing and rallying by both HUDS workers and student supporters. More than 500 students walked out of class—the second walkout of the strike—before marching to 124 Mt. Auburn St. for a sit-in that lasted late into the night, wrapping up around 10:30 p.m. at the urging of police officers.By the time Harvard affiliates and union negotiators announced their tentative agreement, only a small cohort of students remained outside the building, along with a few HUDS workers. At one point during the night, students and strikers joined hands and marched in a circle, singing “We Shall Overcome.”Abhinav Reddy, a School of Public Health student and graduate student union organizer, described the final moments of the night. Local 26’s bargaining team joined the demonstrators remaining outside, he said, and “everyone gathered back up and started chanting.”“You could just see it on their faces before they even said anything,” Reddy said. “And everybody was like screaming and yelling, and then they said ‘we won, we got it.’”SLAM member Grace F. Evans ’19, also present at the negotiations’ conclusion, said workers came out of the building visibly emotional before Lang announced to the assembled crowd of supporters that the union had “won.”“It was a really emotional moment,” she said. “The workers were crying but Brian Lang was smiling, so we knew it was good news.”Reflecting on the day’s events, Evans said she felt students had been important to HUDS workers’ success, a sentiment some workers echoed.“It was definitely powerful that we were here,” Evans said, referring to the earlier lobby sit-in. “The negotiators looked down and they saw that.”Hundreds of students and HUDS supporters marched into 124 Mount Auburn Street, home to several Harvard offices, where negotiations over contracts continue Monday afternoon. Communication between Harvard and UNITE HERE Local 26 is being facilitated through mediators.The nearly three-week long strike shook Harvard’s campus, led to multiple dining hall closures, and spurred waves of student activism and nation-wide support. At the largest strike event Saturday, more than 1,000 HUDS workers and supporters marched to Cambridge City Hall.Edward B. Childs, a dining services workers who picketed from 7 a.m Monday morning until around 1 a.m Tuesday, said he had suspected Monday’s negotiation session would be fruitful.“Well, with the escalation we had this weekend and today, I was expecting something,” Childs said. “I knew something had to break.”harvard-strike-occupation-from-slamHundreds of students and HUDS supporters marched into 124 Mount Auburn Street, home to several Harvard offices, where negotiations over contracts continue Monday afternoon. Communication between Harvard and UNITE HERE Local 26 is being facilitated through mediators. Photo Credit: Thomas W. Franck via The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Crimson Letter to the Editor by Don Siegel, NE JLC Co-Chair

Image credit: UNITE HERE Local 26, which represents the Harvard University Dining Services workers

By Don Siegel, Co-Chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee

Originally published in the Harvard Crimson. Read the original here.
To the Editor:
It is always sad when a great university misses a significant teaching moment. The prolonged strike of food service workers at Harvard is an example of just such a missed opportunity.
Press reports indicate that negotiators are bogged down over two issues: a guaranteed annual income for full-time staffers and health insurance. The first derives from the seasonal nature of the academic year and the inability of many Harvard food service workers to collect unemployment benefits during seasonal layoffs. The second is a universal problem that has an outsized impact on low wage workers like the strikers.
When I studied at Harvard, labor relations greats were on the faculty. I studied with Derek Bok and Archibald Cox and Business School Professors James Healy and Thomas Kennedy. Over the decades since then Harvard has led the way in establishing reasonable-and in some cases generous-labor standards for its employees and its contractors.
Approximately 25 years ago, Harvard set an area wide precedent in the construction industry by entering into a wide ranging project labor agreement for university capital improvements. Brokered by the late John Dunlop, it set meaningful minimum area standards guarantees in exchange for a no-strike commitment on covered jobs. Billions of dollars of construction work has been completed under that agreement and its successors.
More recently Harvard extended its creative problem solving to service employees and service contractors. In an effort to avert a protracted custodians strike the University adopted a "parity policy" extending many of its own meaningful employment standards to its service providers. Not only did that step resolve a labor management dispute, it improved the wages and working conditions of hundreds of area workers and their families.
That creativity and ingenuity have yet to show their face in the negotiations to end this dispute. The University seems dug in and the workers feel disrespected. Local 26, on behalf of hundreds of longtime, loyal employees has brought legitimate issues to the employer's attention. The response has been disappointing and demoralizing.
As income inequality continues to grow surely the world's wealthiest university can take the steps necessary to address the legitimate needs of some of its lowest paid workers. Harvard has proven that it has the capability to creatively respond to the needs of its workers. It is time to prove that it still has the will to do so.
Donald J. Siegel, a 1971 Harvard Law School graduate, is an attorney in Boston at Segal Roitman, LLP.

We encourage you to support the strike by attending the rally this Saturday at 3PM at the Cambridge Common park and by donating to the strike assistance fund, which provides striking dining workers with material assistance.

Showing Up for Harvard Workers

On October 5, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) workers, represented by UNITE HERE Local 26, went on strike over stalled contract negotiations. They have two major demands: a guaranteed annual salary of $35,000 and affordable healthcare. Many HUDS workers don't get any hours during the summer when students leave and dining halls reduce service. Yet they are unable to collect unemployment. This leaves families struggling from May to September just to make ends meet. This is the first strike at Harvard in 33 years--it's critical that we show up and remain united during this historic moment. There are many ways we can support striking Harvard workers:

  • Donate to the strike assistance fund to help provide material assistance to striking workers, who continue to need to buy food, make mortgage payments and rent, etc: bit.ly/harvardstrikefund
  • Sign onto the Jewish community statement of support: tinyurl.com/Jewish-community-HUDS-support
  • Show up on Saturday at 3PM for a major rally and march! 
  • Join our email list and like our Facebook page for updates and ways to stay involved.
  • Post to Facebook and tweet using the hashtag #SupportTheStrike.

 Read more about the strike:https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/16/harvard-university-strike-dining-hall-workers-protesthttp://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/18/huds-supporters-walk-out/http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/15/huds-strike-traffic-streets/http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/13/huds-strike-scrutiny/http://www.wsj.com/articles/dining-hall-workers-strike-at-harvard-147568170714691136_946617585444563_1801865924255534311_n

Harvard Dining Workers' Contract Fight

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Photo: Brian Lang, the president of Local 26, stands alongside HUDS employees during Wednesday's rally on Massachusetts Avenue. LAUREN A. SIERRA via the Harvard Crimson

Harvard University Dining Services workers' contract expires Saturday, September 17. HUDS employees, represented by UNITE HERE Local 26, are fighting for a sustainable yearly income and affordable healthcare.The average HUDS worker earns $21.89/hr, and most support families. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, the living wage for 1 adult supporting 1 child in Boston/Cambridge/Newton is $26.87/hr. After months of collective bargaining, workers announced that they are considering a strike dependent on the outcome of these negotiations.

"HUDS workers’ contribution to Harvard goes beyond feeding hundreds of students, cleaning up after them, and maintaining order in the dining hall. They also help build and fortify the community and offer support to students. Harvard needs to recognize the important role—one that is not fungible—that HUDS workers play on campus, and compensate them accordingly."
Support HUDS workers by signing the petition:TINYURL.COM/SUPPORTTHESTRIKE
Read more about the campaign:http://www.thecrimson.com/artic…/…/9/13/support-HUDS-strike/https://www.thecrimson.com/article/…/9/8/HUDS-prepares-vote/

15th Annual Labor Seder

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Labor2015picCheck out photos from the 15th Labor Seder on Flickr!What makes it possible for people to move out of slavery and into liberation? What are the ingredients that go into a successful movement against economic injustice? What moves people to action and what gives people hope?In the Passover story there were many people working together to strategize the coming out of Egypt and walking to liberation. There were Puah and Shifra, the midwives who refused to kill the Jewish newborn sons, there was Miriam who put her brother Moses in a basket so that he wouldn’t be killed. It was Bitya the daughter of Pharoah who lifted him from the basket and took him home, it was Jethro of Midian who took Moses in when he was fleeing those who wanted to kill him, it was Moses himself who answered God’s call to liberate the Jewish slaves. And then it was the hundreds of thousands of Jewish slaves who bonded together and had the courage to leave Egypt and walk into the sea and then into the desert, not knowing what the future would bring. There were many people from different backgrounds that played a role in the story of liberation.Our 15th Annual Labor Seder was our most successful Labor Seder. More than 300 people attended—up by approximately 20 attendees the previous year. We raised almost they same amount of money as last year. Many people said that this was the best, most spirited Labor Seder ever.This year we held our Labor Seder at IBEW 103. As in past years, elected officials, union presidents, Jewish community leaders, religious leaders, workers and students attended. Barbara led the Seder beautifully and we shortened the program at the request of several attendees. Almost everybody took home their Labor Seder Haggadah. We honored Mayor of Boston, Martin J. Walsh. He spoke movingly about the struggles of working people. We recognized these three campaigns: “Fight for $15”, Faculty Forward, and the Doubletree Workers Campaign. As it happened, the DoubleTree workers had just received a neutrality agreement from management, paving the way for a vote for UNITEHERE Local 26 to be there union representative.Year after year the Labor Seder continues to be a unique and powerful event. Perhaps it is the compelling Passover story—one of liberation from oppression—which so closely parallels the current struggles of workers and affects people on a deep level. Perhaps it is the connection attendees build with people from different communities that makes this evening so magical. Perhaps it is also the joy of celebrating a diverse community’s shared commitment to economic and worker justice. It takes all of these pieces for the Labor Seder to be the successful and moving event that attendees come to expect year after year.