the guy by the door …

We’ve been getting ready for you.

And we’re glad to do it, but here’s the thing. We need to live. That pretty much means we need a living wage. Some of y’all worked on that as did some of today’s graduates. The new bunch changed the name to Student Labor Action Movement [SLAM]. I understand that each generation of students has to have it’s own sense of contribution, but the idea that they alone can transform Harvard permanently is probably a bit of infantile omnipotence. Certainly leaving y’all out of the picture [as they pretty much did this year] makes no sense.

Anyhow, the Dining Service Workers, represented by Unite-HERE! Local 26, are coming up on contract renewal [June 19]. There is apparently a tentative contract agreement. Administration, no doubt, wanted to put the best possible spin on this for y’all. Harvard’s PR machine also cooked up this new bit for y’all. SLAM doesn’t have quite the same resources as administration :), so give them a bit to come up with their response.

SLAM has pointed out on their list that the tentative agreement says nothing about summer employment. Without new language in the contract, most of Harvard’s cooks will not work during the summer and thanks to the Bush administration [there’s that ugly word again] they cannot collect unemployment. Long ago, Dining Service workers could bid on other summer jobs on campus. Harvard administration no longer allows that.

There is another point in the tentative agreement that SLAM has not looked at yet. Joe Wrinn cites $31,000/year as the average salary. Is that an actual $31,000 or is it $23,250 for nine months ANNUALIZED! Lest you think I’m just being picky, administration did something like the latter with the HUCTW contract. They claimed a 4.5%/year increase for the first year, but it would not take effect until 4 months into the contract. In dollar terms that worked out to 2.8% which was about the the rate of inflaltion at the time of contract negotiation. Subsequent oil shock inflation pushed our “raise” into the negative in real terms.

So I hope y’all enjoy your visit. Sorry about the whether. I told Sally to order up some better whether, but she’s the last one to listen to the employees. Anyhow, I hope y’all will keep an eye on things over the summer. We won’t have as much student support so your help is unusually important.

Thanks.