by Kevin Dillon in Health Care, Tufts, Workers' Rights
Posted on May 16, 2008 at 2:25 pm
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Hi, my name is Kevin and I’m a full-time student at Tufts University, where I started a student group, the Jumbo Janitor Alliance. The group focuses on bringing Tufts janitors more into the Tufts community. The janitors are currently in contract negotiations with their employer, the cleaning contractor ABM/One Source. Due to current labor laws, the union which represents the workers, Service Employees International Union local 615, may only target and deal with the cleaning contractor and is allowed only very limited interaction with 3rd parties, namely Tufts. Therefore, the union relies on students, such as myself, and community members, to put pressure on Tufts so that the university will ensure that its janitors receive the pay and benefits they deserve.
Tufts strategically made themselves a 3rd party, and yet retain control over workers’ pay and benefits, by outsourcing the janitorial services in the early 1990s. Since the cleaning contractor is pretty much a skeleton company, with very little profit margins, it is up to the client (Tufts) to decide what the janitors are paid, as whatever Tufts pays the contractor translates into pay for the workers. Tufts was actually one of the first schools in Boston to outsource its janitors, leading to drastic pay cuts and loss of Tufts benefits for all the workers involved. This is a little bit contradictory for a school that purports a commitment to social justice.
The workers are currently in negotiations with ABM/One Source (the cleaning contractor). The workers’ biggest demands are wage increases, move from part-time to full-time work (part-time workers don’t receive any benefits), and more sick days (the workers only have 3 per year right now). In order to make this happen though, the university must be pressured to make the right decisions and pay the contractor more, so that the workers may get their demands. In the past, Tufts has tried to shed all their responsibility in the matter, saying this was strictly a concern between the workers and the contractor. Yet, this is clearly not the case, and Tufts will only accept its responsibility if pressured to do so.
Given that negotiations are during the summer, many students, a valuable resource for community action, cannot get involved in the bargaining process and pressure the university (this scheduling was done on purpose). Therefore, most of the pressure must come from staff, faculty, and the surrounding community. There are many ways to take action, whether small or large, to help the workers in this pivotal time that determines much of their livelihood for the next four years. Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow’s email address is Bacow@tufts.edu and his phone number is 617-627-3300. If he were to receive a multitude of calls and emails about this issue from the surrounding community, it would send a powerful message that would help move the administration to action in the current contract negotiations. Another way to help out is to be part of a delegation of concerned Somerville residents and request a meeting with the President to discuss this issue in more detail. To just learn more about this issue, please visit the blog justicefortuftsjanitors.blogspot.com and if you have any questions, feel free to email me at Kevin.Dillon@tufts.edu.
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Thank you for this information, Kevin. I’ll be sending Bacow an email. What can you tell us about the relationship between other local colleges and their janitorial staffs? Are they facing similar issues or is Tufts unique?
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This is the first time in memory we’ve heard from a progressive from within the Tufts community! There is a meeting on D-Day, the 6th of June, to renegotiate the Memorandum of Understanding the University has with the city’s non-profit community, outlining mutual benefits between students and their agency “partners,” and the readiness of the university to compensate those partners for helping with undergraduate social and cultural awareness. Since I currently pay one-twentieth of what the University pays-in-lieu-of-taxes, and a lot more in federal and state taxes (which regularly fund university research that ought to be supported by that same endowment), this is a great argument for some solidarity. When Tufts pays taxes and pays its workers, they can be considered really members of the Somerville community. Their students are always welcome, but as neighbors and not as representatives of a remarkably insensitive, provincial and isolated college bureaucracy.
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Hi Greg. Thank you for your support. Few colleges in the area have respectable relationships with their janitors. Following in Tufts’ footsteps, most colleges in Boston outsourced their janitors, which caused the workers to lose their status as actual members of the college community (a status that virtually every other person contributing to the college has). Harvard is the only university I’m aware of that still employs its own janitors. Consequently, these janitors are some of the best compensated janitors in the area. So while Harvard’s janitors receive decent compensation, this problem of outsourcing has become endemic throughout the Boston area. The union is able to accomplish little on its own due to current labor laws, which is why community support is critical for any progress.
Hi Joeb. I would be very interested in attending the June 6th meeting. Where is it at and what time? If it’s easier, you can email me at Kevin.Dillon@tufts.edu. And thank you for your support.
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