Harvard University Dining Services Employees’ Contract Negotiations Remain Unresolved

Harvard University Dining Services employees and their union, UNITE HERE Local 26, remain in talks with the University over a new contract. They held two rallies Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 3:15 p.m. and 8 p.m., urging the University to raise wages to match those at other universities in the area, such as MIT and Northeastern.

Because of inflation in the United States, HUDS employees have faced higher rent and food costs, with the Consumer Price Index up 40% over the last 10 years. Still, according to several employees, their wages have not kept up with this increase. “I’m so proud to be an employee from Harvard, but at the same time everything is expensive,” Maritza, a Kirkland House HUDS employee, told the “Harvard Independent.”

Some employees have to work overtime or take on a second job to make enough money to provide for their families, Eddie, a Kirkland staff member, explained. Both Eddie and Maritza asked the “Harvard Independent” to use only their first names to protect their privacy. “It’s really tough for all of us. And from what I’m hearing, MIT, Yale, and all these other schools make way more money than us. So we’re behind, and Harvard just doesn’t want to pay,” he added.

Dolores Elías Pérez works in Winthrop Dining Hall and is a member of the contract committee, where he focuses on representing his Spanish-speaking co-workers. “I don’t want to work seven days; I want to work only five days and be able to survive and be comfortable and spend time with my parents and with my family and with my children,” Pérez said. “This is just a small part of my life, but it’s also what I hear from every mother, every father, every child who works at Harvard for what they have to do in order to survive.”

He wants Harvard to understand the realities many HUDS workers face. Two years ago, his father got very sick, and then a year ago, his mother got cancer. “To live here in Boston right now, we have to work seven days, six days, working both nights and evenings, and that means there’s very little time. This has been incredibly difficult this year, because [I] just don’t have the time to share with my mother, and she’s been in the hospital for the past six months,” Pérez shared through a UNITE HERE Local 26 translator.

HUDS workers, alongside UNITE HERE Local 26, started negotiations with Harvard in March, according to Seth Ogilvie, the communications director of UNITE HERE Local 26. However, the union and the University have been unable to reach a compromise, even though their contract expired in June. “The Harvard workers just want a contract on par with MIT. They’re right down the road,” Ogilvie said. “Harvard claims to be the best university in the world. It’s time for them to show it. They’re not even second or third class to the colleges right around them,” he continued.

Workers at MIT make significantly more, with even dishwashers, one of the lowest-paid positions, making $33 an hour, Ogilvie explained. At Boston University, food service workers earn $26.86 per hour.

Still, Ogilvie was clear on what the University needs to do. Harvard Dining Services employees have begun considering a strike in the coming months if Harvard does not respond to their demands, Ogilvie explained.

Ogilvie said all HUDS workers are asking the University to match its neighbors’ wages. “MIT has put a pretty easy thing to follow on the table, and if they step up and do what’s right, there’s no possibility of a strike,” he stated. “If they decide that they want to nickel and dime the people that are so crucial to their students’ lives, then the strike might be on the table.”

The Harvard Graduate Student Union’s vice president, Evan Lemire, spoke with the “Harvard Independent” about his perspective on HUDS workers’ plans, in light of HGSU’s strike this past April and May over wages, benefits, and protections for graduate student workers at Harvard. That strike lasted 40 days, and though the University did not make major concessions on HGSU’s biggest issues, the deadlock loosened somewhat.

“[HGSU’s] experience of this contract cycle has been that the University has been sort of more hostile to organized labor than they have been in the past,” Lemire said. “We want [the HUDS workers] to win the best contract possible. They do such critical work at this university.”

Multiple staff members emphasized that they do not want to go on strike. “I’m kind of scared, to be honest with you … I can’t afford it,” Eddie said.

“Maybe more than 20% of people don’t want to go on strike. But I know that I have to fight for my rights. I don’t want to; … everyone has things, bills like food, everything to pay in the house. Everybody has a different situation, right? But I say, you know what? I have to do it to get something better,” Maritza said.

The union will meet at least once more before deciding on a strike, which might come in October, and it will need a majority vote (more than 50%) from the workers in favor of striking, according to Ogilvie.

The strike would be the first HUDS strike since 2016, when it lasted 22 days before the University met the workers’ demands. “We had to do what we had to do, and, thank God, if it wasn’t for the students’ support and a whole bunch of other people, we would have never won,” Eddie, who was part of the 2016 strike as well, said.

At the time, Eddie said the workers were focused more on healthcare and benefits than wages. Pérez said the main issue then was insurance, which has continued to rise over the past ten years. In 2016, they won their basic demands: a $35,000 minimum income for full-time employees and no changes to their health-care plan for the next few years, largely thanks to student walk-outs.

Still, the situation is slightly different this time around, because there is less focus on health-care plans and other benefits. “It seems like with the benefit part, that might be out the window. So right now, I guess we’re kind of focusing on the money part, one step at a time,” Eddie added.

“I think we [were] out there for a month or so, and then they finally came around. From what it looks like now, I think it’s gonna be a bigger fight,” Eddie said.

Maritza has worked at Harvard for more than 20 years, so she was there during the previous strike as well. She said it also had a large impact on students, since the University cut the menu and sometimes only gave out sandwiches and other food to go.

“From what I know about the last strike that happened in 2016, students complained about, ‘Oh, the food got worse. Oh, the people are different.’ It’s harder to make it to the dining hall, and things like that, which are all very real inconveniences,” Luke Tan ’28 said.

Still, HUDS workers also saw a lot of student support in 2016. “They show[ed] up to the rallies; they were walking with us on the street. In that time it was amazing how they [were] with us. They [came] into the dining hall, they brought food from here and [brought it] to us,” Maritza said, tearing up. “They’re so cute. They bought pizza and [brought it] to us.”

They remain hopeful that student support will be there this time around as well. Both Eddie and Ogilvie emphasized how critical student and parent support is to getting the University to listen to their demands. Some students, like Tan, have sent out emails telling other students about the upcoming rallies. Other ways to show support include attending rallies, emailing Harvard administration, and encouraging parents and families to speak up.

“We just hope we don’t have to go on strike to make a statement like we did before in the past,” Eddie said.

HUDS workers just want to live in Cambridge without worrying about their bills every week, according to Pérez. “Our goal is to make sure that we are heard and that Harvard understands that we really need what we are asking for and what the other universities are making in the area. This is about our lives and what we need to survive,” he said. Their campaign is about making sure that the University knows what these workers are worth and appreciates what they do.

“The Harvard experience is what happens in those residence halls, and a lot of that comes from the workers that … have more touchstone with students than professors do because they see them every day,” Ogilvie said. The goal of the negotiations is to see HUDS workers’ value reflected in what they are paid. “These are the people that really make Harvard Harvard, and I think it’s time for the administration to realize that.”

Elle du Pont ’29 (edupont@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the “Harvard Independent.”